Question to Jeff, and any others that might know: Old marketing / indie publishing info.

[Drakemoore]

Strange but suddenly I remembered an old demo disc that Spiderweb used to market their games on, I don't recall the exact year but it was in the mid 90s because it had Exile 1, 2 and 3 sharewhare demos on it.

 

The title of the demo series was called "Games One Thousand" or something like that. It was packaged with a lot of PC games at retail centers at the time but I do not recall the publisher which packed this, or any concrete information on the disc and the contents any longer as I lost it a long time ago.

 

The reason I ask this is mostly because the 2 disc demo series had many classic titles, lots of shareware and very little known RPGs which I'm interested in learning about again.

[Lazarus.]

If I'm thinking of the same demo disc as you are, then I think it was called "Over 1000 Games." A google search reveals that it was published by nodtronics. The info I could find about this version sounded about right, but I couldn't find a screenshot of the disc or a list of the games on it, so I'm not sure if it's the right one.

 

I first got hooked on Exile 3 from this disc. I was like 7 at the time and had no idea how to go about registering the game, so I would just replay the demo version over and over. Except I never figured out how to beat either of the 2 available plagues. Ah good times.

 

Edit: I went and asked my sister for a second opinion, and she thinks the disc was called "1001 Games." It sounds kind of familiar to me, and she has a ridiculous memory for detail, so that's probably it. But I couldn't find it on google, so I'll post more info if I can find the original disk.

[RCCCL]

I also learned of Spiderweb from one of these discs, though I think there were a few different ones around, one of the other game series I found, and still enjoy, from the same disc was Space Empires.

[Earth]

I have somewhere Mac-cd where's alot gamedemos and 1 of those is Exile 2: Crystal Soul.

[Celtic Minstrel]

I got it on MacCubed. I still have the discs actually. It didn't have Exile 3, though.

[keira]

I was first introduced to SW by a little 2-disk deal called '100 shareware games for windows' or some such. It had E3 on it and a whole bunch of other stuff. Sadly, I lost the disks to a garage sale many years back

[Aoslare]

Exile: Escape from the Pit came in one of those First Class style silver-folder-with-icon folders, including in old versions of Realmz. And compared to Realmz, it didn't look very good originally.

 

Then there was Exile II, with the KPT Bryce splash screen that I think was a requirement circa 1995.

[Ishad Nha]

It is called 1000 Games for Windows. Disc is produced by Nodtronics and is all full at 685MB. I still have it on my PC. It has Exile 1 and Exile 2 but not Exile 3.

[Astinus]

Ah, shovelware.

 

Shovelware was common practice in the nineties with few actual good games hiding in a pile of mediocrity.

 

Luckily for RPG fans Exile was one of the good'uns.

[Drakemoore]

Thanks for the info so far. I think I might have found it, though the installer is a 16-bit application. Time to see if I can get it to run properly in a vm workstation.

 

And yeah, I understand. I remember a lot of the titles on the discs were junk but there were a few gems among it and I wouldn't mind checking into them again, seeing if anything was continued, or if the companies just shut down.

 

Thankfully Spiderweb, Exile and it's successor have continued to survive.

[Arch-Mage Solberg]

I got Exile 1 and 2 from a CD called 'Galaxy of Games' back in 1997.

 

Post #502

[Drakemoore]

Hmm.

 

Well the one I found is indeed the one I was looking for, except it's the wrong volume. Though there's no mention of a volume number it doesn't have the same selection the one I had did though a few similar titles, no Exile. But it is the same overall release.

 

The title is "Over 1000 Games The Complete Encyclopedia of Games" With a title logo of 2 gold spaceships orbiting each other.

 

No mention of any company publishing the disc anywhere in the files or the main menu of the thing though.

[Rowen]

Like others have posted, I too found spiderweb games through a mac cd that had lots of other games on it too. I found Escape Velocity on that cd too for the first time and Realmz. I still have it in a box with my old mac performa that I played on back then.

[craziivan]

I came across it by subscribing to Mac addict the magazine. There was 'shovelware' as was noted above. In those heaps was Exile III demo. I played that game for years.