Heh, is that the cd-series "Classic Fond - Best Games for IBM PC" ?
I bet US/UK members might had shareware cd series , AFAIK we also had pirate compilations here as well back in the day 😁

keropi wrote:

Heh, is that the cd-series "Classic Fond - Best Games for IBM PC" ?

Yes! How do you know that series? Did you have them in Greece?

A lot of the local BBS used to carry something called Night Owl.
http://cd.textfiles.com/nightowl/

It made it up to at least 25 volumes. All entirely legitimate, to be sure. You can still buy some of them from CD Access:
http://www.cdaccess.com/html/quick/nowl25pj.htm

What the US usually gets are either Softkey dumps of the usual moraffopgeesoleau crap and/or visual basic trash, or the same but on Softkey's other labels (Gold Medallion and SmartSaver comes to mind). yay canada shovelware company

I like Tech Express's 1o1 Of ThE BeSt GaMeS series for its icon menus with questionable icon choices and horrible alternate caps though 😀

jheronimus wrote:

keropi wrote:

Heh, is that the cd-series "Classic Fond - Best Games for IBM PC" ?

Yes! How do you know that series? Did you have them in Greece?

mmmm nope... they do have some very obscure games inside and that's how I found about them several years ago 😉

I have a friend who had a friend who had some sources in Russia and was able to obtain a few CDs from said collection back during their heyday.

I don't remember them having any malware, though. Is that really the case?

dr_st wrote:

I have a friend who had a friend who had some sources in Russia and was able to obtain a few CDs from said collection back during their heyday.

I don't remember them having any malware, though. Is that really the case?

I do not have any personal experience of dealing with infected files on these CDs (although I did own three of them back in the day). But I've just checked a discussion of a torrent with all 60 CDs, and people do seem to find some obscure viruses on them.

I do remember that some games came in password protected archives on some of these disks with no password mentioned anywhere. So they did not really care about the quality.

There where many.. but the by far biggest series where the Twilights:
Info page regarding those: https://twilight-cd.com/

Officially 89 releases, first on a single cd, then two cd's and in the end dvd. I got alot of games and software that way when I was young and innocent 🤣

One of the series cd's (I think it was number 24 cd1) actually created alot of infected computers because by error there was a virus on one of the more popular programs on the cd. 😒

Seeing the first picture made me check my current Rus CD collection and I found these. I presume the first one is part of that "famous" collection?

Here in Greece, I seem to recall a legal/legitimate shareware-demo game compilation called "Great Games for DOS" or something like it, with a yellow cover with red(?) letters. It had at least two volumes. If my memory serves me well, you could unfold the cover from the jewel case and see a full list of what it included. I had the first one and a friend of mine had the second. DOS-based menu for unzipping/installation of anything you selected. Can't find it on google though... so not famous 😢

I still have a handful of Electronic Entertainment/E2 demo CDs that came with some monthly PC magazine of some kind that my dad used to get. Also two Gamefest CDs. Fond memories of those discs filled with games I thought I'd never get to play full versions of (Dark Forces, Full Throttle, etc).

Hah! I had Classic Fond volumes 1 and 2, but the CD sleeve had the name "KING OF GAMES" and some Chinese text.

sf78 wrote:

Seeing the first picture made me check my current Rus CD collection and I found these. I presume the first one is part of that "famous" collection?

rus1.jpg

Vol. 2, actually (you can see number 2 on the bottom). I believe the first 4 or so volumes had the exact same cover.

BTW, here are probably the most famous Russian pirates — Fargus (Фаргус). Their disks looked like this:

Basically they took all popular releases that weren't published legally in Russia (so that no one could sue them), translated them and sold them for cheap. Here are just a few highlights from their glory days:

- they basically created the Russian voiceover industry. Quite a few translators/voiceover actors that worked for Fargus still work on games to this day;
- their quality was really incredible. They sold the games in their original form (without cutting any cutscenes or audio tracks) and you could choose between English and Russian. The translation was fairly accurate and the voiceover was pretty great. They even published patches for their games online! Other Russian pirates often published ripped games with computer-translated texts and no voiceover.
- at one point they decided they should fight other pirates who... pirate their disks. Basically they employed secret buyers, found a shop that sold "counterfeit" Fargus disks and... sued the owner. A month later their lawsuit was dismissed. But not because it's bizzare to think that pirates can sue other pirates for violation of their intellectual property, mind you! Basically, Fargus could not prove the guy owned the shop.
- Fargus was a relatively big company, but it is not really known what happened to them. Some believe they became a legitimate games publisher called Akella. Others think that Fargus and Akella were the same company all along: one published games legally (when they could get a proper deal with the original published) and the other published them illegaly.
- earlies this year GOG decided to start selling Fargus translations for some of the games. They wouldn't tell who they got the rights from, though 🤣

Russian piracy was really incredible, and in many ways, still is.

jheronimus wrote:

BTW, here are probably the most famous Russian pirates — Fargus (Фаргус). Their disks looked like this: […]
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BTW, here are probably the most famous Russian pirates — Fargus (Фаргус). Their disks looked like this:

Oh yeah, I had some of these but threw them aways as (like you said) they were dubbed/translated to Russian and were impossible to play. I wish I could get more of those other compilation CD's from the mid 90's though. 😢