The History of the CD-ROM Magazine (2016)

The History of the CD-ROM Magazine (2016)(atlasobscura.com)

50 points by marcopolis 5 years ago | 13 comments

dusted 5 years ago |

"Unfortunately, the model as a whole couldn’t compete with the internet."

I never think they were meant to. As young nerd, without a connection to The Internet, at a time where one would have you spend literally days online to download the amount of data a CD holds, these magazines were absolutely fantastic!

Every month, when they came out, I was off to the store to get my two or three magazines, for about half the price of a computer game, I'd get three CDs full of weird, strange, wonderful stuff to peruse. In a way, those CDs were even more like the Internet that was slowly developing, than the Internet today.

Not only were the articles in the magazines interesting and inspirational to young me, but there was simply no other way I could get access to all that wonderful random stuff that were on the CDs.

TeMPOraL 5 years ago | |

In Poland, we had[0] a CD-ROM videogame magazine called CD-Action. For kids like me, it was a great deal - it sold for 1/5 to 1/10 the price of a new, boxed videogame, and it always had one or two full game releases in it, as well as a dozen or more demo versions, plus some zines and random stuff you mention. Sure, the games we got were a while past their release date, but in those times it didn't matter - with Internet barely becoming a thing, gamers weren't in sync with the global release schedules. In fact, we were all in sync with CD-Action release schedules! So e.g., maybe we got Jagged Alliance 2 in 2001, two years after its 1999 release, but before 2001 nobody would hear of this game over here, while in 2001 every other kid with a computer would have played it, and we could enjoy talking about it together. And because the CDs were also full of demos of other games, we never had a shortage of things to play.

(And if some demo piqued your interest, there were places you could go where you could get CDs with games and other software à la carte, for cheap. :).)

[0] - Technically still have, but it's been over a decade since I last paid attention to them.

fishtacos 5 years ago | | |

If you're wanting to revisit some of those memories, The Internet Archive has ISOs of some of those from CD-Action[0], and for anyone one else who cares to look through CD and DVD magazine cover disks[1]. Going through PC Gamer and Boot magazine cover disks was a trip.

[0] - https://archive.org/search.php?query=cd-action

[1] - https://archive.org/details/coverdiscs

kangnkodos 5 years ago | |

I remember in the magazine section of Tower Records there was a section of paper magazines that came with a CD-ROM. You were mostly paying for the CD-ROM, but the paper magazine helped give you an idea of what was inside before you bought it.

I remember trying to play the content on the CD-ROMs was quite challenging. Different videos needed different video players to be installed. Or the latest version of a particular video player. Some of them needed more memory than my PC had. You had to have a relatively high end PC to play all the content, and I always had a low end PC.

But there was no other way to get that kind of content onto my PC. Download speeds were horrible. Connections were unreliable. Some of the download methods used required me to start over at the beginning when the download failed in the middle after 15 minutes. It was challenging.

Did I mention I had to walk to Tower Records in the snow, uphill both ways?

speeder 5 years ago |

Here in Brazil those still exist, reason is that tax on literature is zero, but tax on software or games is ridiculously high, but if you put your software on a magazine, it counts as literature and get zero tax...

batman-farts 5 years ago |

This publication wasn’t mentioned in the article, but I remember my first exposure to Linux was a bootable LinuxPPC image that came with the CD-ROM attached to MacAddict magazine. Must have been a KDE 1.2 desktop. Seems like the concept stuck around longer for computer enthusiast publications.

bane 5 years ago |

I'm reminded of the awesome youtube channel Pixelmusement with the "Shovelware Diggers" series that's been going on for a few years. Basically they're exploring the contents of a 2 disk CD Shareware set and more or less trying to run/play/review the 2000 programs on the disks.

It's a fantastic snapshot in time of the pre-internet CD-ROM era.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Pixelmusement

subpixel 5 years ago |

Somewhere out there are some surviving CD-ROM business cards as well.

giantrobot 5 years ago |

I remember both Launch and Blender and might still even have a disc or two. They were definitely a step above magazine cover discs in terms of content. Unfortunately for me neither was really up my alley. They were more for the readers of Spin which I was not.

I always thought Wired would make for a good CD-ROM magazine. Both the content and graphic design seemed to match the medium pretty well.

janandonly 5 years ago |

For years I was subscribed to one or the other pc magazine that came with a CD (or later, a DVD). We didn’t have broadband so the only way to get trail ware or games was via magazines.

Even younger me didn’t buy magazines but I just bought floppy’s. Yeah. 1.44mib could well fit one or even two (!) game demo’s.

thelazydogsback 5 years ago |

As I worked on the device-drivers and devices that could play them (like the Tandy/Memorex VIS lol) I still have a bunch of unopened Medio CD-ROMS. One of these days I'll have to hook up the old chan3 coax to the TV and fire it all up...

CalRobert 5 years ago |

Before broadband, it was worth paying a little more just to get the PC Gamer with the CD full of demos. I'd play all the demos on the CD and it was time for next month's issue. My inner 12 year old was a fan of the coconut monkey gags too...

anpago 5 years ago |

CD ROMs way too high tech, I recall the day when Cassette tapes first made it on to magazines no more typing lines of code from magazines. :-)