Is it possible to fix cracked discs?

[Ziggy]

Well I'd imagine that a game like Mega Man 6 wouldn't work, being that you can play the levels in the order you choose and return back to the stage selection screen. Maybe a game like Castlevania would be possible though. I'd say SMB, but minus the warp zones.

[Retronomy]

Since the proposed system would bring the data into RAM it wouldn't matter how the game itself is structured so long as the system is capable of taking the entire program in ram and using it accordingly. Today's ram is more than capable of doing this.

Pretty much, it'd be the same exact thing as a Floppy or Cassette drive. The software is loaded sequentially (and it would perhaps be the slowest medium to store data on besides say, a wax cylindar*.) Of course, smaller programs could be loaded in less time. And also be aware that this is just the initial load, the computer then has to make the code ready to use.

Now, this (theoretical) medium is host to plenty of issues.
If your turntable speed is not calibrated correctly, and a grooves modulation is nearing the threshold between what is 1 and 0, the possibility of error arrises, with massive potential to cause programs to be unusable. The limited capacity of the medium means there simply isn't enough space for error codes to fix read errors. A single speck of dirt, or a sudden vibration from whatever the turntable is on can all cause similar issues. Grooves also naturally wear, warp in bad climate conditions, and so forth. In addition, pressing Vinyl is EXTREMELY expensive in comparison to tape. Although Gramaphone records as data storage has been done before (By Nasa) there is little practical use here for consumers. Also note that in that instance, the gramaphone record was actually made out of gold.

I cannot think of a worse medium to store data on, although I find it absolutely hilarious and find myself wanting to start a new project >.>

More practical would be to record your data on sheets of paper. Nintendo e-Reader, is that you?

Edit*: mixed up muh words.

[Cronozilla]

"YOU DIED. PLEASE MOVE THE NEEDLE TO LEVEL 3"

>_>

[Niode]

The problem has always been storage is more cost effective than ram. When these technologies were prevalent memory was ludicrously expensive per byte. So these systems had severe ram limitations. It's what made the cartridge era such a revolution because it meant you could A pass the cost off on to the consumer (just look at NeoGeo carts which are basically just banks and banks of ROMs) and B made random access techniques possible.

The limitation was always that you could have theoretically have the game spanning the entire tape ream of the cassette but with linear access to the data you're either going to have to get creative with ways of extracting that data, or make sure all the information required could be stored in RAM. If it's the latter then it's highly unlikely to fill a cassette. RAM has always dictated the size of media. One of the reasons a lot of old games were very procedural. Procedural programming is incredibly efficient if your storage space is limited, and it all comes back to that same problem: If my storage is sequential access, how much code can I fit in RAM before I have to load again?