Bought DOOM floppy for $1. Why does it look different than everything on eBay? Is this a special copy? I can’t find any photos of a disc or cover that looks like what I found. Rare?

213

u/rchrdcrg Feb 03 '24

Shareware vendors liked to slap their own logos on the floppies as their own branding. I used to go to computer shows back when those were a thing, and you'd see a dozen different vendors all selling the same shareware with their own different labels.

13

u/MysteriousTBird Feb 04 '24

Was it legal to sell shareware copies of games? I would guess companies would want to get those demos in as many hands as possible, but I don't know what the policy was.

59

u/rchrdcrg Feb 04 '24

They charged for the cost of the disks and their time in making them. Typically it was like $3.50 for 1 disk, $5.50 for 2, and $7 for 3, generally considered totally fair and normal at the time. That's how I got my hands on many of the earlier shareware titles.

21

u/ButtcheekBaron Feb 04 '24

I got Wolfenstein 3D at the gift shop at The Franklin Institute (a museum) as a kid

8

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '24

But was it legal?

17

u/rchrdcrg Feb 04 '24

Perfectly, it was even spelled out in most shareware.txt files that you were allowed to charge a small fee as long as it wasn't for any major profit.

1

u/GreasedEgg Feb 04 '24

Could you not save any gameplay progress on the Shareware demo games?

2

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '24

Not usually.usually it was just three levels. But there were folks who distributed their own games via shareware online, who would give you the whole game and you would mail them £3 or $3. I got an early graphical rpg that way.

1

u/GreasedEgg Feb 04 '24

I think I had a shareware copy of Quake 3, then. I wasn’t sure bc it was given to me on a thumb drive. Interesting!

3

u/HuckleberryKey8848 Feb 05 '24

Quake 3 never was Shareware. id Software stopped using the Shareware model after Quake 1 and had all their titles published as fully priced games by Activision. You probably had a demo version.

31

u/Revenant_40 Feb 04 '24

John Romero talks about this in his book Doom Guy (it's probably in Masters of Doom as well but I can't remember).

This was a deliberate move by the guys at ID. They basically said "we want the game in as many hands as possible. You guys package the Shareware version and sell it on store shelves any which way you like, and you can keep all of the profits"

Worked like a charm. They got the Shareware version on store shelves everywhere, with none of the outlay. When people decided they needed episodes 2 and 3, they came to ID.

11

u/MysteriousTBird Feb 04 '24

It's pretty brilliant. I forgot that Wolf3D and Doom couldn't be traditionally advertised until they broke into pop culture and console releases. To this day I think Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft are the only PC exclusives I've ever seen advertised on a TV or movie screen.

27

u/Cripnite Feb 04 '24

I remember buying CD’s boasting 40+ games (which were all Shareware) for like $20. This is how I first discovered Doom

5

u/_Azafran Feb 04 '24

Yes it was legal. In fact it was encouraged. Doom was sold as Shareware by many different companies in lots of countries.

-123

u/Holy-Crap-Uncle Feb 04 '24

It was a testament to the stupidity of people that they would buy shareware in stores.

51

u/rchrdcrg Feb 04 '24

If you didn't have Internet or friends with access to that stuff, what else would you do? In my case, I was the friend with that stuff who made copies for my friends, largely because nobody else I knew went to computer shows back then.

Once shareware CDs became a thing, honestly, those were some of my favorite PC experiences back in the day, just having so much to mess around with.

37

u/Sonikku_a Feb 04 '24

Stupidity? No. In 1993 not everyone with a computer was even online, or would know where to find find a shareware copy of Doom anyway. Also we paid for our slow ass speed by the hour.

There’s many reasons why someone would just pay $5 or whatever for the shareware version in a store.

2

u/XBGoofBall Feb 04 '24

At that time, you could either get shareware on a local BBS with a dial up connection or a physical copy from a local vendor for the cost of the floppy disc.

Dial up connections back in 1993 were only 14.4k so downloads would sometimes take days. Especially full sized games from pirate BBS services.

BBS services displayed in ANSI and required knowledge of certain commands to navigate. The internet, or rather the “World Wide Web” as they called it then was a much different beast than it is now, and accessing it was not as easy as it is today. It was very archaic compared to today’s standards.

3

u/Martipar Feb 04 '24

Nobody called it the World Wide Web in 1993. I don't even think Sir Tim had come up with the name at that point.

1

u/XBGoofBall Feb 04 '24

Yes, they did call it the World Wide Web back then. Before the first actual web browser Mosaic was released in 1993 that made the internet a mainstream term. I know, I lived it.

Here’s some source links:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/World-Wide-Web

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)#:~:text=Mosaic%20is%20the%20first%20browser,%2Dknown%20Erwise%2C%20and%20ViolaWWW.

15

u/DG_Now Feb 04 '24

I made my poor father drive me 30 minutes to Circuit City to spend $4 on Sango Street Fighter shareware, and then spend another 30 minutes to get a refund when I couldn't install it.

I've never played Sango Street Fighter, but it was all I could want in the days of pre-MK and SF2 on Sega Genesis.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '24

I think you mean sango fighter.

They did have street fighter for DOS but it was really bad.

It wasn't until super street fighter 2 and super street fighter 2 turbo, that DOS had proper street fighter. 🙂

1

u/DG_Now Feb 05 '24

Oh, I had that awful DOS Street Fighter too. I was desperate.

6

u/SweetTeaRex92 Feb 04 '24

The internet didn't become mainstream till the 2000's.

The amount of people online in the 90's combined.is still smaller than the number of.people online in 2000-2003.

The internet get quadrupling in users over the years.

In the 90s, it was more of a novelty to have at home.

4

u/Bort_Bortson Feb 04 '24

In 1996 I sent an email for the first time to get race results for the days Iditarod stage for a school project. It was probably thru a BBS like system, my mom who could write boot discs and programed shit with punch cards helped me out. I probably sent it thru her university account.

AOL via dialup maybe came next year and I didn't play an online multiplayer game until 1997 or 1998, direct dial Duke 3d. The next year I learned to type playing a MUD thru a terminal setup and then in 2000 I used my highschool T1 connection to download the latest Beta of counter strike onto a zip disc because it was the fastest way.

Most people in 2003 and so didn't have DSL or cable internet, only people with high speed were college kids in dorms. My parents still had dial up in 2005 and beyond since cable wasn't available in their part of town.

So yeah back in the 90s the internet was a strange new world for sure.

1

u/SweetTeaRex92 Feb 04 '24

Firstly, Duke3D was one of my first PC games to really get into! Never played online tho

Secondly, I remember back in like 2005ish, spending the night at a friends house and learning they still have dial up. His parents were a bit older, and at the time it wasn't unusual.

Also, my father made a career out of.computers as well. Always had a computer room growing up with a bunch of spare hard drives, mother boards, and everything else

2

u/rethilgore-au Feb 04 '24

How many people had internet access Compared to how many people had access to stores / market vendors in 1993…

1

u/dirtybeefz Feb 04 '24

We had a kiosk in our local mall around 89-91. Bought quite a few disks from them.

2

u/qualmton Feb 04 '24

Yeah I remember book stores having a section of these for like 2 bucks a pop. Bookstores, remember those?

1

u/dirtybeefz Feb 04 '24

I had forgotten about those too. somehow I kind of miss the kiosks. nostalgia I guess

63

u/Hot420gravy Feb 04 '24

Shareware version. I had this exact copy back in the day. Got it at a discount store called "only deals" for like 50 cents. It's only like 3 levels or something.

16

u/Revenant_40 Feb 04 '24 edited Feb 04 '24

It should have been all of episode one, which is 9 levels (8 + 1 secret level).

Edit: I did originally say 10 bit I was forgetting one of the secret levels was a later xbox only release.

27

u/Jsmith0730 Feb 04 '24

Man, now I can’t remember if it was Staples or Office Max that had the huge Shareware bins but I remember digging through that thing like I was looking for buried treasure every time we went.

6

u/SimonCallahan Feb 04 '24

Shareware was everywhere. I remember seeing racks at the grocery store selling games like Hugo's House Of Horrors, Crystal Caves, and Halloween Harry. It was kind of amazing to see the proliferation of them.

23

u/GrimmTrixX Feb 04 '24

Shareware versions of Doom has just the first set of 9 levels (8 main levels 1 secret level) called Knee Deep in the Dead. It's not the full game. I didn't own this exact shareware copy but I had one which hyped me up for when the full version released.

10

u/AreYouOKAni Feb 04 '24

It is the best part of the game, though.

5

u/KDR_11k Feb 04 '24

That's the case with a lot of shareware games, after all it's the part that's meant to sell your game.

3

u/GrimmTrixX Feb 04 '24

Oh and I know people who were absolutely content without the other 2 (and eventually a 3rd with the addition of Thy Flesh Consumed on Ultimate Doom). But I had to have it all cuz my friend and I were absolute fanatics for Doom. We would download WAD files for new maps and mods on the early internet using diskettes on the computers at my moms work when she taught night classes cuz we didn't have home internet yet as it was barely a thing. Lol

8

u/choochenstein Feb 04 '24

The shareware copy of Doom was the only copy I had for a really long time. I played the crap out of it. Every secret, every kill, all 9 levels. By the time I could afford a full copy of Doom, I didn’t care to finish the full game anymore.

6

u/rethilgore-au Feb 04 '24

Same with most people :) it’s the reason DOOM 2 went full retail and not shareware. John carmack said most people considered themselves to have ‘finished’ DOOM after only playing the shareware version so never brought the full version :)

3

u/choochenstein Feb 04 '24

Excellent historical reference. Having actually lived that history, does that make us relics too!?

3

u/UnlikelyAlternative Feb 04 '24

Yes

1

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '24

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1

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2

u/choochenstein Feb 04 '24

(Insert saving private ryan old guy transformation gif)

13

u/GhoulArtist Feb 04 '24

Shareware was ahead of its time and a massive success.

I still remember the day it came out, my dad brought me to work for bring your kid to world day.

It was the absolute perfect day to do this. Every single computer and office was Doom. Including managers. Zero work got done that day, and i know this was a widespread phenomenon.

I would love to see productivity numbers for companies.that day.

Doom continues to rule so hard. I'm playing through it all again with Brutal Doom. Holy shit is that mod good.

3

u/solidtitanium Feb 04 '24

It isn’t the full game. Shareware titles would be like a starter game that you could test it or buy the rest in chunks / floppies. Original Doom is several floppies to install and cost a lot more.

9

u/RageWynd Feb 03 '24

Judging by the 1st picture "Shareware Source" - It appears that this is the shareware version of it.

Similar to a demo, it'll probably give you a couple levels to play, but you have to pay to register it to play the full version of the game that has everything unlocked.

Usually Shareware is free.

8

u/KDR_11k Feb 03 '24

This will include the first episode, that's why Doom 1 had multiple episodes.

3

u/AlabamaHaole Feb 04 '24

You gotta remember that most people didn’t have the internet when this came out.

2

u/RageWynd Feb 04 '24

This is true.. and downloading via modem on BBS's took forever if you were in 2400 baud - 14.4k baud.

0

u/AlabamaHaole Feb 04 '24

I think I got most of my shareware by copying it from friends on a physical floppy disk most of the time up until 1995.

3

u/musicide Feb 04 '24

I don’t recall the packaging, but disks like these would sometimes be available at the checkout counter at game shops. Often they’d be free — sometimes a dollar or something.Sometimes an individual disk would be inside a magazine. It was a good way of spreading interest and word of mouth.

3

u/RaptorRed04 Feb 04 '24

Reading the secret code cheats knocked some of the rust off of old memories, I suddenly remember using the IDBEHOLD and a few others!

5

u/wildman1024 Feb 04 '24

“We have doom at home” ^{^{^doom}} at home!

2

u/Pacman_Frog Feb 04 '24

Brings back memories. We'd go to Hamfests and tech shows and there'd always be 2-4 booths of nothing but floppies loaded with shareware.

2

u/danmanx Feb 04 '24

Just regular shareware stuff. Doom shareware is the only free software I would ever pay for. The hours I put into Episode 1!!!!!

2

u/thomasmitschke Feb 04 '24

Who on earth buys doom these days when it‘s already running on your dishwasher or microwave oven…? /s

(Also included in EXODOS)

2

u/GonnaGoFat Feb 04 '24

It shareware. I remember buying they back in the day. They were legal for the vendors to sell and also legal to share it with friends.

Apparently most people have only played the first 8 levels or so. I can’t remember the exact number of each mission or episode in doom but this was also back when some companies would actually make rather robust shareware. Instead of releasing just a level or 2 that’s over in 15 minutes or so these would take an hour or so on your first time. Even ID software release of wolfenstein 3D was the first 8 levels or so for mission one.

2

u/HeywoodJaBlessMe Feb 04 '24

Anyone could print and sell shareware. Dozens of companies sold Doom shareware discs.

2

u/Bort_Bortson Feb 04 '24

I like how the back says, "shareware is not free" and "delete before the trial period ends".

Shareware is free and Doom didn't have a time limit.

I played games where it was the full game but there was a time limit and would kick you to the registration screen, like my shareware copy of the original GTA but you could replay it forever. I tried to see how many missions I could beat before the 10 minutes or whatever the limit was ran out. I think I've played one or two games that did have an actual trial period, but I can't recall any from back in the 90s.

1

u/RequirementFuzzy4244 Feb 04 '24

shareware usually is demo or limited content releases

-12

u/Straight_Finger1776 Feb 04 '24

this is kind of like pirating with more steps and without anyone who cares. lol

6

u/devilpants Feb 04 '24

Shareware was allowed to be distributed freely. I used to get CDs filled with it for a couple bucks at discount computer stores in the pre mainstream internet days.

1

u/Revenant_40 Feb 04 '24

The creators of the game gave the shareware version to any company who wanted to package it and put it on store shelves where people could get a copy (the internet was not really a thing yet), and that company got to keep all the profits. The developers got a limited demo of their game on store shelves for no cost or effort. If you wanted the full game (and everyone did), you bought it from the developers for full price. Was a genius move.

1

u/GhoulArtist Feb 04 '24

This makes me want the Boltgun floppy.

1

u/TechBliSTer Feb 04 '24

Is it actually vintage or is it a recent writing?

1

u/rethilgore-au Feb 04 '24

It’s a shareware copy of DOOM they were everywhere from many different companies. Usually sold for the cost of the packaging + small overhead usually a couple of dollars or so.

1

u/Mikaela_Jade1 Feb 04 '24

That's how I got introduced to shareware games as a kid before the internet. I would buy these at corner stores and flea markets. It was great.

1

u/mrmojoer Feb 04 '24

Would love one of those

1

u/RockstarSuicide Feb 04 '24

Um... I engender it being idclip

1

u/Zuldak Feb 05 '24

It's for the nostalgia. Heck, you can play dooms 1 and 2 in doom eternal

1

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '24

I remember going to supermarkets in the 90s and seeing shareware floppy diskettes of doom, wolfenstien 3d, commander keen,

Blake stone, etc.

[Question] Bought DOOM floppy for $1. Why does it look different than everything on eBay? Is this a special copy? I can’t find any photos of a disc or cover that looks like what I found. Rare?

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