VOGONS

I just finished my first ever book: The Accelerated Pace of the Win9x Era (+ thanks to Vogons/its users for existing)

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First post, by Xanarki

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For more than two decades, I've been visiting Vogons. It is, in my humble opinion, the premier forum for old-school PC gaming and generalized hardware troubleshooting. Not to mention the other more casual sections, a plethora of content dating back to 2002, and overall an attitude amongst the members that has a great balance of directness and generosity. I didn't create an account until early 2020, though I've lurked for eons before that. For help, I was able to search and find answers nearly each time prior to 2020, which goes to show how much helpful info exists on the forum (side note - has anyone backed up the data here? I did notice that The Archive has a lot saved, however).

So, onto the self-promotion. My first ever book, The Accelerated Pace of the Win9x Era, was just finished. I've always felt like the Win9x era (1995 to 2001) has been shortchanged in regards to historical retrospectives. Usually, whenever I come across a book or doc or article, the focus is usually on a specific genre, or the Win9x era gets improperly lumped into the DOS era, or the 32-bit consoles overshadow the PC, etc etc etc. I'm hoping that my book will correct that course, even if only slightly.

The book has 42 chapters, and as such, a digital edition was the only feasible way for me to publish it (for now). It goes over 555+ games of the era, multiplayer services, controversies, abandoned projects, and other related aspects of the era. Due to the big impact that Vogons has had on me over the years, it gets singled out as well.

I apologize if this comes off as blatant advertising, but writing is truly just a small side hobby of mine, and thus I tried to make the price decently reasonable. It technically comes out on Sunday, but more info and links to buy/pre-order it can be found here (please excuse the incredibly basic HTML, as I just wanted this to be a simple temporary home for the book): https://win9xera.neocities.org/

Thanks for hearing me out and taking the time to wander in here, and thanks for simply being a Vogons member.

(fyi i first asked dominus if i could share this and thus i got the okay - thanks again btw)

Reply 1 of 2, by sgard

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Congrats on actually finishing it! 42 chapters covering 555+ games is no small undertaking. Your point about the Win9x era getting lumped into DOS or overshadowed by the 32-bit console generation is spot on - it really was its own distinct thing, multiplayer services and all, and it rarely gets treated that way in retrospectives.

Out of curiosity, which part was hardest to research - tracking down info on one of the more obscure abandoned multiplayer services, or just verifying release dates/details on the more forgotten games themselves?

Reply 2 of 2, by Xanarki

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sgard wrote on 2026-08-26, 04:13:

Congrats on actually finishing it! 42 chapters covering 555+ games is no small undertaking. Your point about the Win9x era getting lumped into DOS or overshadowed by the 32-bit console generation is spot on - it really was its own distinct thing, multiplayer services and all, and it rarely gets treated that way in retrospectives.

Out of curiosity, which part was hardest to research - tracking down info on one of the more obscure abandoned multiplayer services, or just verifying release dates/details on the more forgotten games themselves?

Thanks for the response! (i didn't really expect any after 2+ weeks of silence lmao)

Yeah, the era getting lumped or overshadowed was a big reason why I undertook the project. And there's a lot of great efforts out there covering 3D cards, or the dot com crash, or Win95 and ol' Bill himself, etc. but creating a connective umbrella was another important angle I wanted to take.

Research wise...the hardest part, I think, was trying to figure out the actual publishers/distributors for each game. Relying on what Wikipedia or (despite the stricter system) MobyGames said, was not ideal (I've been a Wiki editor for 20+ years and, since I know how iffy it can be, I rarely relied on it for any research overall). I found a lot of inconsistencies on both platforms, even though they were usually good as a 'starting point' prior to verification. So...I had to look up archived websites, the small prints, the credits in a manual, and a magazine's early review or price list.

Figuring out the developers wasn't difficult. But man, trying to track down the correct publishers was a real task sometimes 🤣. I kinda shot myself in the foot too, since if a company only distributed a game, then I lumped them in as a publisher - I didn't differentiate between publisher/distributor. Granted, I only focused on each game's original companies in the US and UK. I didn't bother with re-releases or budget releases.

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