A reminder that CD-ROMs are pressed from glass masters, not burned like CD-Rs. I wonder if anyone has tried something like this with burned discs, though.
The multisession standard actually afforded the possibility of CD-PROM; a hybrid disc with a pressed read-only session followed by a writable section. It was only used for Kodak Picture CD (not the same as Photo CD) to hold software in the pressed session. It also apparently standardized a magneto-optical hybrid that never made it to market.
Hmm, it could work then if they’ve pressed most of the game data first and then recorded the encrypted part for each disk. But I guess the tooling for such setup would still be too expensive.
Yes, my point, if the answer is that there is no way this works without every disc being different.
It was not possible to manufacture at the time at scale.
It's still not possible. You would need to make a unique master for every individual unit.
You'd use CD-R of course.
With CD-Rs it was already possible in the mid '90s, if we're talking mass production. CD-Rs are a little more expensive to produce, but not much more so. A slight concern is that readers of the time might not have been able to read the discs, because CD-Rs are not quite as reflective as CD-ROMs.