PC software lost to history?

Scary, isn't it? How a piece of media can just be lost to the tides of time forever if no one cared enough to archive it somewhere.

>>3930102
Maybe on porn forums...?

>mfw I'm not surprised Image-Line did this, when they more recently released a plugin called "Gross Beat" (meaning "big dick" in French)

>>3930105
The company still exists though, the rights can be bought, etc.

>>3930113
Hahaha is that true? I didn't know "Gross beat" was a double entendre - I use that plugin all the time!

>>3930119
Yeah, it's written "grosse bite" in French, but is pronounced like "gross beat" in English :)

That plugin is hard to use in French, as you've got to explain: "Now let's insert a big dick in this track..."

>yfw grosse bite do have some gross beat.

>>3930113
>>3930131
wow you are really reaching.

Fruity loops was abandonware porn? What?

>>3930102
There's a bunch for sure. I recall a game I played on a 400 FREE GAMES WOW cd-rom that came with a magazine.

It was some sort of adventure with very bad pixel art, I've tried to find it again many times over the years to no avail.

You could try some URLs on web.archive.org, though they probably don't index any files besides images.

>>3930131
> Yeah, it's written "grosse bite" in French, but is pronounced like "gross beat" in English :)

"Gross beat" only sounds the same as "grosse bite" if you can't into English pronounciation, which most French can't.

>>3930235
Hit up the archived shareware CDs for BBSs that Archive has. There's a ton of that kind of stuff on them, much more than on those consumer focused ones.

>>3930102
>Is there a bounty-hunting community somewhere where a person could pay to have old PC games tracked down?
That sounds cool as hell.

>>3930105
Just imagine the number of mods out there we have permanently lost to history. The Doom PWADs nobody bothered to archive because they were terrible but you wish to play because you are insane but can't because the only thing you have that mentions it is an old Usenet post.

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>>3930102
>Is there PC CD-Rom software that is truly lost to history?

Mine ;_;.

I made a game called Slipper back in/around '94 or '95 for Windows 3.1. I distributed the shareware (a double pack, this game and a pretty lame asteroids knockoff that sucked) to friends and usenet. Only got a few sales, but that did signal that it was played. Also, I made it in Klik and Play. Lame, yes, but I was young.

Anyway, I lost the full version forever. It's nowhere on the modern internet, the machine that had the full version is gone (and floppy disc that held it lost to water damage). Here's a pic of the shareware/demo.

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>>3930641
And a pic of the full version. I really wish I could find the full version somewhere. I'm 100% sure it's no longer on any data store under my control though. I've posted around about it before, but with no luck.

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>>3930462
The reverse is also true, "gross beat" sounds like an Anglo trying to say "grosse bite" in French with a terrible English accent.

Either way it's 100% voluntary and a fine example of Belgian humor.

>>3930641
>Klik and Play

I remember this stuff, when I was 8 years old and used that to make games that hopefully would be better than Nintendo's... The 90s now hits me like a ghost train :(

>>3930105
>>3930102
You should be going around collating all the information you can find on current games as well. Given the volume of games these days compared to the 80's and 90's far more things will fall through the cracks and be lost to time.

It might be too late for some old DOS stuff, but not too late for a lot of other stuff.

>>3930641
>>3930654
Ah I remember Klick'n'Play

I made a Pacman clone with it.

>>3930657
Just doing this for Android or iOS games (which are universally despised now, but will be considered neo-retro marvels in 2040) would be a daunting task.

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>>3930674
Same here! (Slipper-anon here)

It's pretty lame and he has a gun in his mouth, but it had to be done. I put it up online for a friend, so you're welcome to pull it down if you want.

https://drive google.com/open?id=0B-1hR0xccH9fQThtYVp5YV9nRHc

>>3930102
I remember looking forever to try and find a copy of Dilberts Desktop Games to no avail, gave up long ago.

Send an email to some weird old computer store you find in X country. Or post on /r/whateverCountryItIs See if they can help you track it down. Assumedly tens of thousands of the disks were made, they're still out there.

>>3930550
>Hit up the "a. S. cds." for .... BBSs that Archive has...
Sorry, i dont think i understood that phrase, is it the buletin boards of the shr. CDs site ?

>>3930102
Yeah, I remember a game called "Ernest Goes to Camp" on Mac that I played nearly 30 years ago that I've never seen since. It was a simple jump and collect game, but it would bring back memories seeing it.

The solution is to open source it. The entire world will take care of redundancy

I've tried to find the patch for the PC version of Plane Crazy: Uncivil Aviation and I'm fairly sure that's lost to time. As my father recalls, there game is just a black screen without it, which would mean the PC version of the game is lost without the patch.

There's still a good chuck of obscure Japanese games like Zeddas 3 and Roly Poly, but at least there's evidence that they do exist. Well, maybe not for Zeddas 3, I'm not sure.

>>3930680
That's exactly why it needs to be done. Back in the 80's and 90's no one gave two shits about most of the shovelware that was produced. But all these years later people find it fascinating. It will eventually be the case with weird Uzbeki Angry Birds clones and Candy Crush variants.

>>3930740
Have you ever done this? Just curious if there's a methodology behind this or if people wing it

>>3930102
There's an old shareware bloody game called "Construction Bob in the Bouncing Factory" that I never could find the full version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSEctvM4tI

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Some anon was looking for a Windows shareware game named "The Inside World".
https://warosu.org/vr/thread/1433024
Anybody heard something about that since then?

>>3930760
https://archive.org/details/cdbbsarchive

There's others too, niteowl was a particularly prolific series. Amusingly there's a hardcore porn CD in the linked collection.

>>3931183
Literally took me 30 seconds to track down three instances of it:
PC Collector Hors Serie 3 CD2 (vers 1.3)
ARI 100 Top-Games (vers 1.3)
PC Team CD #07 (vers 1.2)

>>3931306
all of them shareware ofc

>>3931287
Not him but holy shit, thanks. Pretty interesting to browse.

>>3930105
Why is that scary?

>>3931401
Because it was not supposed to die before we do.

>>3930116
The right to something that doesn't exist anymore.

>>3931601
Uh? Of course Image-Line still has the products in its vault.

There it was a diablo-ish hack clone named GreyWorlds Ascension, i remember playing the demo once, it came even with a level designer

but then the game and the website itself disappeared

>>3931368

There are too many too choose from, I don't know what random disk of junk I should download first!

>>3931401
That's someone's work, anon. They dedicated effort towards that. To have that just vanish without it being fully appreciated, without it leaving a mark that they've done something, I find it pretty scary how the same could happen to all of us

>>3930641
>Klik and Play
Ah shit man, I made a bunch of k&p games that I put on disks and sold at school. I wonder if I still have one of those lying around somewhere.

>>3931746
Use their original publication dates as a rough guide

>>3931635
That's the thing man, it wasn't Image-Line that published the software. According to them, it was done by the team for another, older company, called "Private".

I mean what do people do, just cold-call email people and ask if their older work still exists somewhere? Any good stories or anecdotes about that kinda legwork?

Holy shit that archive link is hype

Grimoire actual release.

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>>3932154
Fuck yeah it is. This rules.

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Wulfram 2

It reminded me of Tribes in that the main gameplay was shooting but base building and repair was also critical, but it also had a board game element where one designated player on each team controlled three orbiting supply ships on a 6x6 grid above the map, and these ships could drop weapons crates/repair stations/respawn points/etc. while also maneuvering to destroy the enemy ships

Individual games could take days IRL as eventually one team slowly ate control of the huge map in ebbs and flows

It had a manual matchmaking system where moderators actually watched every individual player and promoted them from the newbie server to the medium skill server to the veteran server as their gameplay warranted

It was online only, it was closed source, it never had more than 100 people playing it at a time and it is gone as if it never existed

>>3932185
What a shame. Your description of that game made it sound very interesting. I mean, how many games comine shooting and base building at the same time?

>>3931171
The guy that made it is apparently still selling it though. Pardon the youtube vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLUkA0QVK98
>Around 7:05-7:14

>>3931635
They may very well have lost the archives

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>>3931018
>Zeddas 3
It was sold once on an auction site. Other than that, there's the Amazon JP page where it's never sold and it was on the company's website at some point.
http://web.archive.org/web/19980117051658/http://caravanserai.com:80/horror3.html

For those who don't know, it's the third game in the "Horror Tour" series. The second game is super obscure itself, search "Zeddas" on Youtube to find playthroughs of the games.

I'm wondering if anyone has ideas on how to find this. It's impossible to even find people who were working with the company knowing their names.

>>3931183
I've been wanting to play the full version of this for a long time, I first played it in 1998 on the ValuSoft 1001 Great Games CD.

>>3932252
After watching that video, I think I'll pass.
Thanks, anon.