STUPID IDEA OF THE DAY:
So the first consumer CD player was released in 1982, right?

And the IBM PC came out in (late) 1982... and while nearly everyone used it with floppy drives, you could get it without. But how would you get data into it?

THE CASSETTE PORT!

and pretty much the only thing released for it was the diagnostics software. The diagnostics software had to be on tape because it needed to be able to run on IBM 5150s without a floppy drive.

but while it's a cassette port for loading off tapes (obviously), it's not any kind of special interface. it's really just "plug this into a tape player" and it just gets the audio out of it. it's just audio!

that's how other systems with actual tape ecosystems sometimes loaded software from vinyl records, radio programs, etc.

and I'm sure you can see where this is going:

There's technically no reason why it wouldn't be possible (or even anachronistic) to distribute software for the IBM PC on CD, in 1982!

CD-ROM wasn't even specified until 1988!
but there would be nothing stopping you from loading programs off plain audio CDs...

*gets CD-R, writes 'PARATROOPER' on it in sharpie*

To clarify, I'm mainly amused by the idea of doing this to a PC.

Distributing games as audio on CD has been done before, like on the BBC Micro: