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> My sister and I were so excited to discover this on the CD as we were clicking through every folder. This was a common experience back then, you got ahold of

> My sister and I were so excited to discover this on the CD as we were clicking through every folder. This was a common experience back then, you got ahold of some new "piece of software" and you started discovering new stuff in it. My fondest memory ever is one day in February 2001 browsing through the Windows 98 Add/Remove Windows Components dialog and realizing I could install the same Desktop Themes I remembered from like 1996 from my friend who had been lucky enough to have Plus! for Windows 95 (which had, years before, disappeared from his computer in that endless virus/reinstall cycle that characterized those times). Next day I showed the themes to said friend and we were speechless. It was this promise of endless discovery that made me want to study CS.

to11mtm 9mo ago
I want to give a huge shout out to the UK magazine PC Format for the most absolute banger 90s magazine CD that I ever encountered. It didn't just have Demos of new games, if you poked around you'd find that it had "this cool program called Scream Tracker 3" and a whole bunch of these ".MOD files" that played music that sounded like a CD![0] [0] - Well, it was the 90s, and typical bundled multimedia speakers were so bad you couldn't tell the difference...
- Lorkki 9mo ago
  At their best they had an exceptional amount of demoscene / game development content overall, as well as several full (usually "previous") versions of various creative software like 3D modeling or photo editing apps. Later on with the Internet biting into the cover disk magazines, they started to steadily fall towards the lowest common denominator and shift to the gamer lad segment. But I wouldn't have had as much fun with computers if it wasn't for a subscription back in the day. Thanks for the reminder.
- extraduder_ire 9mo ago
  mod files include their own samples, so they could have very easily been (close to) CD quality while still being quite small. You only need to encode the notes you play on the instruments you use.

to11mtm 9mo ago

I want to give a huge shout out to the UK magazine PC Format for the most absolute banger 90s magazine CD that I ever encountered. It didn't just have Demos of new games, if you poked around you'd find that it had "this cool program called Scream Tracker 3" and a whole bunch of these ".MOD files" that played music that sounded like a CD![0] [0] - Well, it was the 90s, and typical bundled multimedia speakers were so bad you couldn't tell the difference...

Lorkki 9mo ago
At their best they had an exceptional amount of demoscene / game development content overall, as well as several full (usually "previous") versions of various creative software like 3D modeling or photo editing apps. Later on with the Internet biting into the cover disk magazines, they started to steadily fall towards the lowest common denominator and shift to the gamer lad segment. But I wouldn't have had as much fun with computers if it wasn't for a subscription back in the day. Thanks for the reminder.
extraduder_ire 9mo ago
mod files include their own samples, so they could have very easily been (close to) CD quality while still being quite small. You only need to encode the notes you play on the instruments you use.