Correct. But since the minimum requirement is 10.2.8, it’s possibility that the Mac session is actually HFS+ or some variant on ISO 9660 (e.g. with the Rock Ridge, Joliet and/or Apple extensions).
The only way to find out is to just put the disc in the drive and see what mounts.
True, and no web browser made today supports the plugin architecture needed to display Shockwave/Flash content in web pages. But there are third-party software packages that might be usable for viewing Shockwave/Flash content outside of a web browser. Which might be sufficient if the apps are self-contained and don’t depend on scripts running as a part of the enclosing web page.
But third-party software, like VLC can. So if you can get access to the video files directly, instead of via the bundled app/web pages, then you can probably play them.
Windows doesn’t use its own file systems on CD-ROMs. It uses the standard ISO-9660 format with Joliet extensions to provide any file system features that aren’t part of ISO-9660. So in the worst case, macOS should be able to mount that. If it doesn’t recognize the extensions, you may see filenames mangled (all upper-case, truncated to 30 characters or maybe to 8.3), but the files should all be present. There might also be a TRANS.TBL file providing a mapping between the ISO names and the proper filenames, which macOS may or may not make use of when mounting the volume.
Most CDs (both burned and commercial) that don’t come from Apple use ISO-9660 format with various extensions to support long filenames and other platform-specific features.
The annoyance is that some CDs (especially those made by Apple) don’t use the ISO standard, but instead use a raw data session that closely resembles an HFS-formatted hard drive. If there is no other file system (CDs can have multiple sessions, each with its own directory tree pointing to the files’ data), then it can be hard to read it on a modern Mac. You’ll need third-party software and/or a computer running an old version of macOS to access the files on these.
See also: TidBITS Talk: HFS access on modern Macs
To be fair, most of its (and Flash’s) security problems exist because of the integration with web browsers (via a plugin). When used as a standalone player app, it is just fine. Or more accurately, a Shockwave or Flash app running on it is equivalent to a native apps in terms of security - be careful running untrusted content, but don’t worry about it if the content comes from a trusted source. And I would include content from a mass-marked CD distribution.
But it’s mostly moot since Adobe no longer distributes this software and archived copies probably won’t run on modern Macs (I assume it’s all 32-bit Intel code). But maybe there are third-party player apps that might work, if you can run the content separately from the web page that originally embedded it.
VirtualBox (last I checked) attempts to comply with Apple’s licensing terms. So you’d need a server edition of Mac OS X 10.4 in order to install it. And you’d need an Intel build (that is, an installation disc bundled with first-generation Intel Mac hardware), since VirtualBox doesn’t emulate PowerPC hardware and Apple didn’t include an Intel build of Mac OS X with the packaged distributions until version 10.5.
You’d probably have better luck with a later build of Mac OS X (10.5 or 10.6), even though the CD-ROM doesn’t officially support them, or get a PowerPC emulator to run 10.2 through 10.4 (if you have installation media).