Exclusive CD demos

[Hallfiry]

Thanks for the PC demo links!

And GOTY:
http://www.kultcds.com/Catalog/index.ph ... 2FCiv3goty

This is actually a demo of Civilization 3 (a different game). I remember downloading it a while ago from FilePlanet. It's actually the full game which allows you to play for an hour, then forwards to a site where you can purchase the unlimited full version.

Oh boy. I always believed CTP was Civ 3 since it came third in the series, and since I never liked any of the Civ games, I didn't bother to get informed on them. Thanks for clearing this up!

[MrFlibble]

Oh boy. I always believed CTP was Civ 3 since it came third in the series, and since I never liked any of the Civ games, I didn't bother to get informed on them. Thanks for clearing this up!

You're welcome

Anyway, I just realised that the Windows CTP demo you found seems like it could have only been released on CDs, thus a CD exclusive demo. Thanks for adding that one!

[MrFlibble]

Once again thanks to Hallfiry's wonderful catalogue I stumbled upon what seems to be a different demo of Heroes of Might and Magic:
http://www.kultcds.com/Catalog/index.ph ... s$2FHeroes

The disk it's found on is Interactive Entertainment (IE) CD-ROM Magazine Episode 22 (February 1996).

I tried to install it but the IE installer doesn't seem work in DOSBox. Apparently it tries to load Windows 3.1. The source file HEROES.Z might be an archive but the format is unsupported by 7-Zip.

[Hallfiry]

Once again thanks to Hallfiry's wonderful catalogue I stumbled upon what seems to be a different demo of Heroes of Might and Magic:
http://www.kultcds.com/Catalog/index.ph ... s$2FHeroes

The disk it's found on is Interactive Entertainment (IE) CD-ROM Magazine Episode 22 (February 1996).

I tried to install it but the IE installer doesn't seem work in DOSBox. Apparently it tries to load Windows 3.1. The source file HEROES.Z might be an archive but the format is unsupported by 7-Zip.

And the catalog master saves the day: The format can be extracted with Universal Extractor (you can fool to the program into scanning for any archive format by changing the extension to .exe). The file is an Install Shield 3.x archive according to Universal Extractor.
The game version is just a stripped down version of the CGW/PCGr/TGM version:
http://www.kultcds.com/Catalog/index.ph ... 23231&o=da
Anim and Sound folder are missing, aswell as the readme. However it has a .cfg gile from January 30, 1996 (most likely from the folks at IE).

EDIT:
Also, February is a euphemism for canonical May.

[MrFlibble]

The game version is just a stripped down version of the CGW/PCGr/TGM version:
http://www.kultcds.com/Catalog/index.ph ... 23231&o=da
Anim and Sound folder are missing, aswell as the readme. However it has a .cfg gile from January 30, 1996 (most likely from the folks at IE).

Which means that it is not going to work because of the copy protection thing (unless the EXE was somehow hacked - ?). (BTW, have you tried running it?) Thanks for clarifying this!

[Hallfiry]

The game version is just a stripped down version of the CGW/PCGr/TGM version:
http://www.kultcds.com/Catalog/index.ph ... 23231&o=da
Anim and Sound folder are missing, aswell as the readme. However it has a .cfg gile from January 30, 1996 (most likely from the folks at IE).

Which means that it is not going to work because of the copy protection thing (unless the EXE was somehow hacked - ?). (BTW, have you tried running it?) Thanks for clarifying this!

I tried to run it but it says that I have to insert the HOMM CD and then refuses to start.
So yea, that version seems to be a little fail.

[MrFlibble]

BTW, thanks for the tip on the Universal Extractor!

That could actually be a helpful tool to deal with all those Win16 installers that some DOS games were packaged with (e.g. DigIt! v1.1 shareware)

[Hallfiry]

BTW, thanks for the tip on the Universal Extractor!

That could actually be a helpful tool to deal with all those Win16 installers that some DOS games were packaged with (e.g. DigIt! v1.1 shareware)

Actually I've got quite a suite of unpackers on my PC:
ExtractNow (for some mac stuff)
StuffItExpander (more mac)
UPX (for packed EXE files)
Dislite (for some other exe files)
X-TRACT (when the EXEs get really annoying. I think it makes Dislite obsolete...)
7zip (for obvious reasons)
WinRar (because it fails less on certain exe types than universal extractor)
Universal Extractor
MPQ Master(?) (and some other MPQ thing that I can't remember) (for unpacking blizzard stuff, including MPQs inside EXEs)
Bink & Smacker RAD Tools (to convert bik/smk files properly, including when they are packed as exe)
Adobe Director (to handle dir (and dxr?) files. however my adobe font cache or somehting got messed up unrepairably, so I can't use that program anymore)
Res Hacker (iir the name correctly. To get stuff from PE EXEs)
and probably more programs that I can't remember...

[MrFlibble]

Apparently there's a CD demo of Necrodome:
http://kultcds.com/Catalog/index.php?n= ... 2FNecro-cd

The CD image is available at archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/NextGeneration23Nov1996Disc

The readme identifies itself as "Shareware Release 0.36" (this is identical to the Internet download readme though).

[Cire]

Can't remember this being mentioned Before in this thread (my apologies if it's indeed been), but there was an exclusive CD demo of Strife that I remember Reading about over at Doomworld. I guess the cover art was the most exciting thing about it though, since the demo was identical to the one in the /idgames archive, except it was packed in a self-extracting DOS zipfile. Still Worth mentioning, I guess.

[MrFlibble]

I certainly don't remember anything about the CD demo of Strife. I think we discussed the regular v1.0 which only came as a split-file version.

Did you refer to this conversation at Doomworld?

[Cire]

Yup, that's correct.

[MrFlibble]

A CD alpha demo of Absolute Zero:
http://cd.textfiles.com/101bg3/PAGE2/AZ/

The date in the readme is Mar 14, 1995. For comparison, the regular demo is from Dec 15, 1995.

This early demo can be downloaded from Demu.org:
http://demu.org/

[MrFlibble]

There appears to be an exclusive demo of Fantasy General on the CGW 142 CD.

[MrFlibble]

There appears to be an exclusive demo of Fantasy General on the CGW 142 CD.

Turns out this is not an exclusive demo, but rather an updated version of the regular two-level FTP demo of Fantasy General. I've zipped up the installer and uploaded it here: fg_demo .zip