90s Floppy Disk Games: What We Played Before CD-ROM
Before CD-ROM drives were common, PC games shipped on stacks of floppy disks, and installing (or just playing) a big game meant swapping disks by hand, sometimes mid-session. This is about the format itself, not a repeat of our DOS games picks; several of those same games happened to ship on floppy.
Disk formats
- 5.25-inch floppies: commonly 360 KB (double density) or 1.2 MB (high density), mostly phased out by the mid-90s.
- 3.5-inch floppies: commonly 720 KB (double density) or 1.44 MB (high density), the standard by the time CD-ROM took over.
See where the 1991 original led: Civilization VI
This is the current mainline entry in Sid Meier's Civilization series, not the 1991 floppy-disk original discussed above. It's the modern, actively supported way to play the same core idea that started on floppy disks.
Check price on Amazon →Installation and disk swapping
Larger games shipped across many numbered floppies, and installers prompted you to swap disks in sequence. Some games also needed a specific disk reinserted during play (often as informal copy protection), separate from the install process itself.
Notable games
- Sid Meier's Civilization (1991), before the franchise's later CD-ROM and modern releases.
- Wing Commander (1990), Origin Systems' space combat series that would later become a flagship for CD-ROM's full-motion video, discussed in our CD-ROM games guide.
- id Software's original Doom (1993) shareware episode, distributed on floppy disks (and later widely copied and shared) before it was ever sold on CD.
Caring for old media
Magnetic floppy media degrades over time and is vulnerable to heat, moisture, and magnetic fields. If you still own original 90s floppies you care about, specialist disk-imaging hardware (rather than a general how-to here) is the safest way to get the data off before it's unreadable.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch floppy disks?
5.25-inch floppies were commonly 360 KB or 1.2 MB and largely phased out by the mid-90s. The sturdier 3.5-inch floppies, commonly 720 KB or 1.44 MB, became the standard before CD-ROM took over.
Why did some floppy disk games ask you to reinsert a specific disk while playing?
This was often an informal form of copy protection: the game would check for a specific original disk partway through, separate from the initial installation.
Can old floppy disks still be read today?
Sometimes, but magnetic media degrades over time and is sensitive to heat, moisture, and magnetic fields. Specialist disk-imaging hardware is the safest way to recover data from disks you still own.
Sourcing and corrections
Floppy disk capacities, Doom's shareware distribution, and release years for Civilization and Wing Commander were checked via web search against sources including Wikipedia and MobyGames in September 2026.