What if Microsoft revived their 'CD Sampler' products to Gamepass?

Imagine if they added their 90s software to Gamepass. Both their games and serious stuff and make them workable with Win 10 and add new features to make them do more. They were limited by floppy and disc space back then but now that's not so much of a problem. The imagination is.

a reply to: SortingHat

I did like getting the sample cds in the day. Pcgamer magazine I think had some fantastic ones. I think however, that your question misses the point that it had to be done that way as a limitation of the technology of the time. Consider, if companies wanted to disseminate demos of pc games, they couldn't hope for people to download them over a kB connection. You'd have to spend all evening and half the morning downloading a one level demo of half life. Instead, cram it on a disk. The material is still available now, just with easier, much cheaper downloads straight from the source. With demo cds and the like, the only profits are conjecture in estimated sales figures being changed afterward by the demos.

a reply to: Iconic

CD's and before that Floppy's, I used to have a huge stack of PC Gamer and some other PC mag's such as PC World back then.

Most people over here in the UK did NOT have the internet at that time since it could cost a lot to use our phone lines for that purpose and run people's phone bill's through the roof so to speak.

So those disc's were often invaluable as a source of free software and old video playing app's etc as well as patches for games, actually though I would feel like an old odd bod at my age now I do miss when I was younger and could go to the PC Game shop's and browse there often huge collections of games both new and used, something that goes back for me all the way to the days of old Cassette based games on the old Amstrads and Commodores.

But one thing I do not miss is that huge - and heavy and space consuming (you bought it so were loath to throw it out) collection of magazines (Keeping them was a habit I probably picked up from reading old comic book's before my once prized collection of those things met a grisly end in my early teenage years - when my older brother borrowed them and having been out drinking then threw up over my whole prized collection of 1980's 2000AD's).

But Sortinghat you do have a good point, not everything back then was rubbish and much of it would be very much at home on a tablet (which would likely far exceed that ancient software's hardware requirements if it could be made compatible with it).

As for PC's though we have the luxury should we so choose of downloading a Virtual Machine from Microsoft and then installing an older operating system if we have the original disc such as DOS (if you could get it on disc and if your PC has a disc drive, floppy's are not common these days at all though I still have some - tucked away somewhere - but no longer have the disc to even look at what I have on them) or windows 3.1, 95 or 98 etc and then running some of that old stuff in the virtual machine, think about it like running an Emulator of an OLD PC on a NEW PC as a means to bypass compatibility issues that newer hardware and operating systems will probably otherwise throw at it.

It is a great idea though IF Microsoft could be convinced to do so but since most of that old software is museum quality in there eye's and was often pure machine code or something like Pascal. Fortran, OLD 'C' or other old programming languages (even pure Machine Code or some flimsy early assembly language that was probably badly optimized) there current programmers would have to go back to school to relearn those ancient tool's and that means it is very unlikely to occur.

However all is not lost, if you have a good AV and Malware protraction there ARE plenty of abandonware sites on the internet and archives of ancient programs to be found if you go searching for them, beware though some ancient code also had ancient malware and viruses in it and back in the day even a commercially released game once came with a virus that had slipped past the developers and the publishing house so there is also that to remember AND the fact that old software can also open your PC to exploit's as it often has programmers back doors in it.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Nice post but I wasn't even talking about magazines. I posted a link to the CD Samplers which came with Windows. They were actually on the disc itself that installed usually under extras. Oh Windows 95 and I think 98 came with a game called Hoover I played to death.

Some contained trial versions. A lot of the stuff had useful applications in an interactive way. A LOT of non violent stuff for kids that were both fun and actually teach stuff sadly most of it couldn't do any real reading because of limited disc space.

A good series were things like Microsoft Oceans/Dinosaurs,Musical Instruments and other oddities which if it could be read to you would've been useful to me as a kid as I could learn to read with it. I was taught reading early.

What killed it Dad told me was some of it went to subscription only later in the 90s where you had to pay to keep it updated. Pretty sucky and it wasn't cheap either it was very expensive.

We had internet in 1996/97 via Earthlink and it actually wasn't that slow except for turning it on as it had to be turned on manually.
Took 2 mins to download a single wav or MP3 song which is slow by today's standards but wasn't totally unbearable even back then: My favorite place to get some sounds were a wav site called Sound America which no longer exists.
Dad later told me he made sure our computers we had were always maxed out on RAM so that may be why? 😕

We skimped and saved for computer upgrades so he made sure we got the best but always built himself so they were not actually 'gaming' machines but could run 3D titles without stuttering in the slightest making sure to have mid range graphics.


I wounded up fillling the computer pretty fast with game music which caused my parents to get me my own by 1999 and we had two computers plus our Commodore 64 which I still used. We also even had and still have the Commodore Plus 4 machine.

Note: I never looked at porn and didn't even know what it was till I got to high school and still didn't look at it and don't want to ever. Well I knew there were naked stuff online from hearing other people talk about it like it was the coolest thing but I just felt from my background they were sickos and still think so so don't go seeking about it.

They don't know what they are doing to themselves getting involved in that spiritual rat trap. 🤮

Back then people cared enough to try and archive history and stuff online and that was more exciting. Now people stopped caring for the most part and your lucky to find stuff that isn't debunking or anti Trump whipping posts stories.

a reply to: SortingHat

Had a plus 4 but never used it's inbuilt applications, I spent too much time playing Icicle work's on it a boulder dash clone.

Sadly I gave it to my nephew and when I next saw it the computer had been trashed and thrown out into the garden of my sisters house.

It was NOT as good as the earlier 64 for gaming but was still a good little machine and looked really good as well with that sleek design.

The internet in some ways used to be a far better experience and there was a lot less monetization going on back then with a lot of great sites that have sadly now long gone.

Your dad sounds like a great guy.

a reply to: LABTECH767

I have autism so he steered me away from the violent games and knew what was good and bad. I always wondered how he picked the right games that were both fun and educational at the same time. He purposely avoided games like Reader Rabbit. We both saw it in school and compared to the other software we owned it was B-O-R-I-N-G. If I recall all you could do was count carrots and chickens. A little kid would be amazed for like 10 mins and want to go back to Super Mario Bro or Legend of Zelda which both would be much more fun.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Amiga 500 for life yo !

a reply to: everyone

We almost got one but I can't remember why. We were having job issues at the time (don't we ever!) and I think he said they were simply not available anywhere where we were. Butte County California early 90s. Though I did see some Amiga's running a bunch of server's. There's this game called 'Sorcery' by Virgin something that required 2 discs to complete and we only had 1 so there was this key you couldn't open until you had the 2nd disc and we learned of a guy that had it but something happened and he couldn't give it to us sadly. I was little at the time. I remember his house tough LOTS of Amiga's with wires everywhere and a whole lotta phone lines. This was Paradise California. He did the local BBS for the whole county.

a reply to: SortingHat

I had one after owning a C64. I think i was 13 or so when i got the C64 and 15 when i got the amiga 500 and man was that a game changer. The PC was years behind that thing man. It is also how i got into music production using sound tracker and the many other "Trackers" that followed. One of them being scream tracker which funnily enough was a coding group that turned into the game studio star breeze who still produce games today.

Also 3Dmark birthed out of the Amiga demo scene. Coders, GFX artists and musicians alike. The landscape would have been very different without that machine. Such a shame that when commodore was bought that it was only bought for a cash grab and then later disoved.