An odd blip of gaming history in the form of pocket-sized games.

Playcard CD-ROM

In 2001 a small marketing company, Plastcenter Oy, got an idea: Put PC games on a CD-ROM that could fit in your pocket.

While Plastcenter acted as the publisher, a few articles on the subject reveal that the games were actually developed by Cube Entertainment, a now defunct game studio 1,2,3. The games were nothing special, but they were small enough to load fast and fit completely in memory. This made it possible to play them without installation, which was unusual at the time; at least for PC games distributed on CD-ROM.

Plastcenter as a business was focused on planning and manufacturing promotion material and they clearly had ambitious goals. In 2001 they headed for E3 to promote the concept, but Playcard was largely overlooked4.

The CD itself is a rectangle and measures 86 x 58mm (3.39 x 2.28”). The reading side features four small bumps, that prevent the CD from being scratched when placed on a surface the Playcard case. The form factor is rare, but not unheard of. Around the turn-of-the-millennium shaped or mini CDs were a thing both in business and in music.

I couldn’t track down where the actual Playcard CDs were manufactured, but there were multiple websites who offered such services at the time. The archived websites of Shape CD and Videocard reveal that the manufacturers were certainly not thinking of publishing games. Their websites focus on product promotions, press kits and business cards.

But, how do they work? As CD’s are read from the inside out, they store their content directory on the innermost “lead-in” area of the CD5. Hence, it’s possible to have a working CD and fit tens of Megabytes on the circular tracks before hitting the short edge of the rectangle. According to the Playcard website, the games only worked on tray-loading CD drives.

In total, there were 24 different games ranging in themes from puzzles to action shooters.

Playcard cover art

Legacy

Although the concept of the Playcard saw little success, the market for casual games was growing. The optimal distribution channel for small games, as it turns out, would be the internet. By today’s standards the games would be equivalent to simple browser or mobile games.

While nothing revolutionary came out of rectangular CDs, the company Plastcenter Nordic Oy still exists. They aren’t producing software or games though.

Recently, someone reached out to Plastcenter and, with their permission, uploaded the archive of Playcard games and cover art to the Internet Archive. Amazingly, many of the games still work on a modern Windows PC.

Go try one, or have a look at the dorky 2000’s cover art.

  1. Unrelated to the music industry giant with the same name. ↩

  2. Article on Playcard, 2021. ↩

  3. Lighthearted Review of Playcard games, 2006. ↩

  4. E3 guide 2001 ↩

  5. An Introduction to Optical Media Preservation, 2014. ↩