10 Things You Probably Didnt Know About Video Game Discs

Most encyclopedias will describe optical media, or discs, as a "flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data in the form of pits and lands on one of its flat surfaces." 

Technical stuff aside, optical discs and the ability to encode data onto them, and then read them back, is the technology that allowed video games to flourish as a medium because it allowed game developers to cram tons of code, audio, and image files onto a disc that's both inexpensive to manufacture and easy to duplicate. 

With that in mind, we've put together a list of 10 things you probably didn't know about video game discs, while the future may be digital, there's still plenty of fascinating facts about your optical media to check out.

Many games like Final Fantasy 7 and Dragon Quest 7 were originally planned for the Nintendo 64 but as Nintendo used cartridges rather than discs, the games wouldn't fit and so development shifted to PlayStation. If Final Fantasy 7 had come out on Nintendo 64, it would've been on 30 cartridges. 

The Wii uses the hex code 0xD15EA5E, which reads as 0x 'Disease', and is used to separate the update and game partitions. 

Those who had a demo version of Crash Bash could actually unlock the full game (albeit, the beta version), simply by inputting a cheat code. The reason for this was that the developers felt it was easier to just include the full game on the disc and lock off a portion of it for the demo. You might think this would lead to a massive plunge in sales when people figured this out, except it took nine years for anyone to realise it. 

A PlayStation disc of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 99 inserted into a PC CD ROM drive allowed users to access a copy of the short film The Spirt of Christmas. This was viral video before viral video. The Spirit of Christmas's success lead directly to South Park but it's inclusion in the game wasn't authorised and EA recalled the disc, though it's unlikely many people sent it back.

Fixing a game disc is actually pretty easy, all you need is toothpaste. Just spread out regular toothpaste evenly over the disc until the shine isn't visible and leave it for two or three minutes, wash it off with cold water, and use a soft towel to clean the disc. This usually works for smudges, dirt, and scratches. It that doesn't work, you'll need to bring it to a disc repairing which is usually pretty cheap. 

Blu-ray discs are so called because the laser is blue, shocking I know, and this means they can store up to 50GBs. Blue lasers have shorter wavelengths than red ones, so more waves hit in less time, leading to more precision in reading and writing the disc. 

'Discs' refer to optical media like CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays, while 'disks' refer to magnetic media like floppy disks and hard disks. 

New 'memory crystal' discs have been developed in the UK which could store information for up to one million years. Data is stored in five dimensions and up to 360TB of data can be stored. You'd need about 500,000 CDs to store the same amount of information. 

Before MP3s, many games had their music as CD audio tracks. This meant you could put your disc into a CD player or PC and it would play the game's soundtrack. The downside was that this took up a lot of space on the disc, as the music files were uncompressed. 

Someone actually made a LEGO disc changer for their Xbox 360, which is loud, slow, and pretty purposeless but hey, that's what makes it cool.