mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Maybe my memory is just fuzzy. 🤣 But another thing I remember about this disc was that it had this intro FMV with like these golden gears and a pyramid or something, although I might be thinking of something else. 🤣

Global Star definitely had 3d animated gears surrounding a pentagram... er golden star with a little 3dStudio earth in there.

I definitely remember having a Global Star Compilation disc (which is what introduced me to Shadow Warrior 😁), but I know I had another one as well, which I believe came with this Seanix box my parents bought around 1998-1999, and I'm pretty sure that one was made by Aztech. In case anyone here isn't aware, Seanix was a Canadian OEM that manufactured these rather crappy machines up until 2006. Their only redeeming quality was that they just used standard ATX designs, so their machines were easy to upgrade.

"game cube" 😀

That's the company alright, the UI looks familiar too, especially with its "run from CD" and "install to HD" options. The one I had was a later version though I believe, since its interface seemed to be a Win95 app.

EDIT: It turns out you can find a bunch of their stuff for download on archive.org. How cool is that? 🤣
EDIT2: Don't bother, at least one of the downloads seems to be partially corrupt. I did find a working copy of the Win3.x gem "Bad Toys" though. 😁

The one time my family ordered shareware compilation disks, they were floppy disks from an outfit called Software Labs (in Culver City, CA). They were not compilation, they were one (or two) disks per application/game. Still, they were cheap enough we ordered 30 or so. I still have most of the disks. Not sure if they're still readable. I imaged many of them in 2002-3, but then lost the drive I stored them on without backups. Many of them were my original DOS games/applications I tested with DOSBox back when it was in private beta-testing.

Also, Software Labs' mail-order catalog was amazing. I may even still have it somewhere too. 😀

I ordered stuff from Software Labs in the past. I likely still have the floppies somewhere. Not too sure about the catalog though. I haven't seen it posted yet, but textfiles' archive of shareware CDs can be found here: http://cd.textfiles.com/

sliderider wrote:

American Megatrends logo […]
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American Megatrends logo

Capstone logo

Looks pretty damn close to me.

Which both look an awful lot like the default logo in Microsoft Publisher:

I always think it's hilarious when I see businesses use that as their actual logo. (I know of at least two in Portland - both really small businesses. One is an accountant, I don't remember what the other is.)

Somewhere, I have the id Software shareware collection. It was sold as a shareware version of Quake, but contained all the shareware versions of id's software to date.

Bonus: It ALSO contained all the FULL versions of all of them, which you could unlock by calling them, paying for it, then they'd give you an unlock code.

Where were they found back in the day? I remember cheap compilation CDs being sold at the checkout counter in most computer stores and gaming shops. PC gaming mags that came with CDs sometimes had a special compilation CD insert - I think I still have a few from late 90's PC Gamer/Computer Games, etc. Video cards sometimes came bundled with a compilation disk and game companies released compilations as well - I have a 10-game compilation CD from EA for instance.

I've mostly seen them around the checkout counter in Computer City and COMPUSA too, though there's also sometimes shovelware collections bundled with CD-ROM drives. I do remember hangers of those SIRIUS 10 CD packs hanging too. By 1999 they're pretty much reduced to just shrinkwrapped jewelcases found on the software shelves instead, mostly remaining with SmartSaver, Softkey and eGames with AOL trial offers bundled with the most of them...

yep - that's what I remember..

leileilol wrote:

archive.org has a bunch of images of them, but i'll feel guilty of linking because their "shareware cd collection archive" also contains warez compilations.

E.g. Classic Fond.

Oh Russia, never change. 😜

SquallStrife wrote:

E.g. Classic Fond.

Oh Russia, never change. 😜

Yeah, but it's the administration of archive.org that didn't bother to remove the "Classic Fond" images. I wrote to Jason Scott asking him to remove them, and also had this request transmitted via another person who's in contact with the archive.org staff, but to no avail. Would be absurd to suppose that the people who published those CDs in the nineties have an influence over Mr. Scott and are preventing him from taking the images down.

When there's a user-contributed content website, there will always be people who try to upload some BS or other, but it's the moderators'/admins' responsibility to keep their place clean of such stuff.