Exclusive CD demos

[Hallfiry]

BTW, I've checked that Apogee shareware CD compilation I mentioned above, and was a bit disappointed because I've expected it to have a nifty graphical interface like the one that is used by the Duke Nukem 3D Shareware CD (which somewhat resembles the Rise of the Triad menu but in a different colour scheme).

Are there any other shareware CDs officially licensed by Apogee (it is my understanding that they had agreements with several publishers)? Were there any nice extras there? I'd definitely classify a nicely done graphical installer as one! ^_^

Maybe this helps:

I met Bill [Roper] through an introduction by Roger Arias, who at the time was
working for FormGen in Scottsdale, Arizona. Roger's company, FormGen, was
a leader in retail publishing of Shareware games (as well as publishing
the hit title Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem 3D by Apogee/3D Realms) and had
acquired the Shareware publishing rights to WarCraft among other titles.

[MrFlibble]

I remember the FormGen company title - I think they distributed the additional episodes for Spear of Destiny, didn't they? Must have been a big CD publishing company back in the day.

OTOH, there were others as well, like LaserSoft who distributed their exclusive version of Rise of the Triad shareware with some additional levels.

Online Games Datenbank gives a list of games published by FormGen, but Warcraft is not mentioned (guess the list is incomplete)?

[MrFlibble]

There are reports of an exclusive demo of Dark Colony that was published on a PC Format cover disk - anyone ever enountered it?

[MrFlibble]

Here's the pre-release demo of Descent to Undermountain, a Dungeons & Dragons licensee first-person action/RPG made on the Descent game engine. The demo was originally from a Computer Gaming World Magazine cover disk:
http://www20.zippyshare.com/v/45799600/file.html

The included readme promised an updated interactive demo available from Interplay's website:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTERPLAY DISCLAIMER
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This version of the DESCENT TO UNDERMOUNTAIN demo is a special Computer Gaming World
only preview of the upcoming interactive demo. It does contain some known bugs which
may lock up your system.

For an updated version of the DESCENT TO UNDERMOUNTAIN interactive demo, please point
your browser to Interplay's Dragonplay website at http://www.interplay.dragonplay.com and
download the demo from the DESCENT TO UNDERMOUNTAIN product page.

However, it appears that only a non-interactive preview was released for download (here's an archived copy of the demo downloads page).

[MrFlibble]

While doing some Googling I've stumbled upon this blog entry, according to which, Super Dune II had been released on the cover CD of Computer Gaming World Magazine #200 (March 2001). I wonder if this version is any different from the others floating on the net.

[leilei]

I own #200's CD, there's a bunch of full version games on there, some of them were admittedly "ripped from the underdogs" by the guide interface it came with, and some of them are intact scene rips (!). My guess is that they ignorantly assumed "abandonware" to be totally legal since it's on the internet (much like Napster's early days, even promoted by Computer Chronicles as a "good way to get music for free"), and that Super Dune II = Dune II, which is strange for a computer game magazine lasting since the '80s.

The only real exclusive thing on the disc (other than blatant "abandonware") is a special cake for The Sims.

Since you care about Super Dune II, it's on a zip (dated 2000-11-14, when they (CGW) downloaded it), which contains 3 zips inside - sdune1, sdune2, sdune3.zip, dating 1999-09-07 and 2000-06-09. Inside the zips are files with timestamps to 1995-07-29.

[MrFlibble]

Since you care about Super Dune II, it's on a zip (dated 2000-11-14, when they (CGW) downloaded it), which contains 3 zips inside - sdune1, sdune2, sdune3.zip, dating 1999-09-07 and 2000-06-09. Inside the zips are files with timestamps to 1995-07-29.

Thanks a lot, that is quite important info! The multiple-zip distribution I know of has four archives, called sd2-1.zip to sd2-4.zip, with most files inside stamped 01.06.1994* 0:00. The date stamps on the archives themselves have been lost though, and in any case I have certain doubts that those are the originals. I think that the original release from Power C and Shadow Knight could have been without most of the original Dune II files.

Other versions I've run into are the same set of files just put into a single archive, plus-minus a couple of files.

* dd.mm.yyyy

[MrFlibble]

I'm only going by my fuzzy IIRC memory. Strange because the newer demo was already out when Full Throttle came out in '95. On the other hand, a 1994 demo of Full Throttle was on the Dark Forces CD.

Differences to begin with is that the hud is a bit different, and there are no difficulty settings. red5 still grants all the arsenal, not much different there.

Unfortunately it's not in a zip and yes it is a CD exclusive demo...

Here's what appears to be the demo from the Full Throttle CD (or maybe from the Star Wars Dark Forces CD, I've heard that it contains the demo as well) - somehow it got onto a third-party compilation demo CD:
http://cd.textfiles.com/qsamania2/MANIA ... /LUCASART/

The reported version number is 0.16D (as opposed to 0.163D for the downloadable demo you can get from LucasArts' FTP), however I haven't noticed any differences in the level design or gameplay, just some of the files are different or modified to make it install and run from a CD. The date stamp on the files is actually from March 1995, while the downloadable demo is from 1994.

[MrFlibble]

Some exclusive demo versions from a CD-ROM Games CD:

Fade to Black PC DEMO version 0.90e
The CD version of the demo includes the intro cinematic.
http://cd.textfiles.com/cdromgames/cdro ... /DELPHINE/

I.M. Meen two-level sampler
A playable demo of the edutainment game, includes the intro cinematic.
http://cd.textfiles.com/cdromgames/cdromgames6/IMMEEN/

Mortal Kombat II playable demo
Liu Kang and the three male ninjas are available for play in the demo.
http://cd.textfiles.com/cdromgames/cdromgames6/MK2/

The Need For Speed - PC/CD DEMO version 1.0
Compared to the smaller website demo, this one has extras like the video intro preview of the playable car.
http://cd.textfiles.com/cdromgames/cdromgames6/NFS/

[MrFlibble]

Hmm, someone posted a demo of Wings of Glory from a cover CD of PC Format April 1995 issue:
http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/w ... lory-demo/

The only difference from the Internet demo is an included 9 MB Origin product catalogue though.

[MrFlibble]

The Need For Speed - PC/CD DEMO version 1.0
Compared to the smaller website demo, this one has extras like the video intro preview of the playable car.
http://cd.textfiles.com/cdromgames/cdromgames6/NFS/

Actually, the CD demo appears to have a completely different racing track too.

[MrFlibble]

Age of Empires II CD Demo (CGW)
The Computer Gaming World February 2000 issue cover disk contains a release of the Age of Empires II demo with different custom scenario and mutiplayer maps compared to the Internet download version. The custom map is called Trial Baltic Map.scn and allows to play as the Celts against two computer opponents. By contrast, the Trial Coastal Map.scn in the Internet release allows to play as the Britons, and the map itself is also different. The multiplayer map in the CD demo is called Trial Multiplayer Team Islands Map.scn (in the Internet demo, the multiplayer version of the same Coastal Map is used instead). Apart from that, the demo is identical to the Internet release.

The installer is called a2cddemo.exe (49 091 848 bytes) and its date is November 2, 1999.

[Litude]

That's an awesome find, didn't know about this one. Could almost swear I looked through that CD myself but seems I forgot. Haven't found a single mention of there being an exclusive demo version of this game for CGW anywhere and considering how known the game is the fact that no one knows about this is quite the mystery.

However I did come across the lines "Trial Baltic Map" and "Trial Multiplayer Team Islands Map" when looking through the trial LANGUAGE.DLL at one point and thought they were just some maps they decided to throw out for some reason. Nice to know that the scenarios were indeed released.

I think there could also be a CGW exclusive demo of the expansion with a scenario called "Yucatan" and it could also include the second scenario in the campaign, not just the first one. This is judging by information from the LANGUAGE_X1.DLL file, but it could just be leftovers.

[MrFlibble]

However I did come across the lines "Trial Baltic Map" and "Trial Multiplayer Team Islands Map" when looking through the trial LANGUAGE.DLL at one point and thought they were just some maps they decided to throw out for some reason. Nice to know that the scenarios were indeed released.

There's one weird thing about the maps - the date stamps are exactly the same as on the Trial Coastal Map and Trial Multiplayer Coastal Map in the regular demo. I can't think of any reason for this, the developers don't seem to have used the date stamp/version number convention, or it's more complicated than in the old times.

BTW, I've also noticed that the demo doesn't display any version number in the "About" window.

I think there could also be a CGW exclusive demo of the expansion with a scenario called "Yucatan" and it could also include the second scenario in the campaign, not just the first one. This is judging by information from the LANGUAGE_X1.DLL file, but it could just be leftovers.

Interesting! Would be nice if it really existed, and were found

[Litude]

There's one weird thing about the maps - the date stamps are exactly the same as on the Trial Coastal Map and Trial Multiplayer Coastal Map in the regular demo. I can't think of any reason for this, the developers don't seem to have used the date stamp/version number convention, or it's more complicated than in the old times.

The file modify dates don't match exactly, they are off by some 20 seconds or something.

I think what is going on here is that the single player maps were created first using the scenario editor in the full version. They were then put through some kind of conversion program that converts the files into a format supported by the trial, (unlike the first game in the series, the file format here differs more than just the file format version number in the header) hence one of the files has been modified about 20 seconds later (that is the time it took to convert the second file into the trial format).

They probably decided a few days later that it would be cool to have separate multiplayer maps in the trials and created them both and put them through the conversion program.