In 1993, I purchased a shovelware CD from Walmart. Now, in 2015, everything about that sentence seems odd.
I would have been 9 years old at the time. Already a nerd. But I’m glad that 9-year-old me thought to buy this particular CD, because by doing so I may have accidentally saved a bit of gaming history.
One of the things I’d like to do on this blog is crawl through the CD, directory by directory, and report on my findings. A lot of it is stuff you’ve probably seen before, but there’s just enough weirdness on this CD that some of these games might never have been documented before.
But first: what the hell is shovelware
“Shovelware” is a term you don’t hear often anymore. These were CDs filled to the brim with a random assortment of files, usually collected from various BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems). They flourished in an era where a CD could hold an order of magnitude more data than most computer hard drives. When given access to that amount of storage, people went a little nuts, dumping anything and everything onto discs that were then traded back and forth. The emphasis was quantity over quality, which made browsing each CD like panning for gold. The contents were rarely labeled, and never organized–mysteries that I remember approaching with equal parts fear and awe.
Because people were so indiscriminate with what they put on these CDs, they stand as an accidental archive of the BBS era. No one thought to back anything up at the time–with such small hard drives, we were used to overwriting the old with the new. In the end, almost nothing remains of that entire generation–except these CDs.
“Gamefest” is one of these discs, and one of the few that I’ve held onto. Assembled by a company called Software to Go, it’s a dump of over 300 games. A lot of these games are familiar. A lot of them aren’t. And some, I suspect, have been completely lost to time. CDs don’t last forever–I managed to create a copy of it just before it succumbed to bitrot. I’m not the only person in possession of this particular collection, but my copy is definitely one of the last.
So, let’s take a look at what’s on this CD. I’m going to be going through the CD directory by directory and reporting on what I find there. It’s going to be a lot of panning, but who knows what gold we might find?
You’d think that finding information on a twenty-two-year-old shovelware CD would be hard to dig up. For a minute, I thought researching this one would be easy. The CD carries a company name on it–“Software to Go”. It turns out there’s only one company barring that name, and they still exist. So, I reached out to them. Sadly, they said they had absolutely nothing to do with the CD, and since they only have a staff of five and the current president (the person who responded) has been there since 1992, I believe them.
Okay, so let’s follow Google rabbit trails for a few days straight.
When you browse the menus of the CD itself, “Software to Go” is never mentioned. Instead, the company only ever shows up at “STG Computers Ltd”. It’s also bit of a dead end. There are a bunch of companies called STG Computers in Australia, India, the UK…none of which seem like the sort of company that would release a CD like this twenty-two years ago. In, you know, North America.
But the STG Computers that made this disc did leave one thing behind–another Gamefest. There are copies floating around of a disc bearing the exact same name, but this other disc was pressed in 1994. They’re still labeled as the product of STG Computers, but there’s a second company listed on these as well: Advantage Plus.
Advantage Plus was a company that produced a number of shovelware CDs around 1991-1995, including a series of CDs called Shareware Solutions (as well several editions of The Holy Bible on CD-ROM). This 1994 copy of Gamefest isn’t the same disc as the one I have–it has a different directory structure, different games, and replaces the original menu with the menu seen in Advantage Plus’ other CDs.
After a bit of digging, I discovered that Advantage Plus had been run out of someone’s house in Tampa, Florida, after which it moved to a small office space in the same city (which is now home to a catering company). Later, it moved to another house, this one in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina. There’s no trace of what happened to it after that, though–only a handful of dead ends. There’s a chance that Advantage Plus became “ASP Advantage”, but that’s based on a single reference that could mean absolutely nothing. Maybe “ASP Advantage” became or merged with “LanSupervision, Inc”, a “developer and marketer of enterprise computer software products.” The description fits. Kind of. But by this point we’re already following very thin threads, and searching for LanSupervision results in…nothing I can make sense of.
There is one crazy lead: I’ve managed to dig up a few phone numbers, and while they’re all landlines (with, as far as I can tell, no way to tell who had them in the early 90s), two of those numbers were registered to people with the same last name. But those, too, appears to be a dead end–it’s a pretty common name, and trying to connect those two people doesn’t result in anything. Google, you’ve failed me. Also, I’m absolutely not cold-calling anyone in this process, like a psycho. Could it instantly answer some of these questions? Maybe. Is it worth the panic attack? lol no
My guess is that the original Gamefest CD was created by Software to Go / STG Computers Ltd, and after that first pressing they got the attention of Advantage Plus, who–being pretty experienced with the production of shovelware collections like this–likely took over pressing and distribution.
Of course, there’s always a chance that STG and Advantage were the same person. Or friends. People were fast and loose with company names at the time, and a lot of individuals decided to “brand” themselves with a company name (or names) to make them appear legit.
“Thanks, Hanna. That was a really long-winded way to say you know nothing about this CD.”
Not true. I do know that, somehow, Software to Go managed to get their CD onto Walmart shelves. And that’s really odd.*
As an aside: damn, these were fun searches. There’s something incredibly satisfying about hunting for information that’s only mentioned once–maybe twice–on the entire internet, each one a single breadcrumb. Maybe we’ll crack this at some point. I’m not posting the phone numbers and addresses I’ve found directly on this site–from this article, it’d be pretty easy to figure them out if you’re so inclined. This last year just made me really, really sensitive to posting names, addresses, or phone numbers online. It’s the internet. Shit can get dark real quick for no reason whatsoever.
Download the games
Most of the games on this site are easily available elsewhere. Some aren’t. Regardless, every game I’ll be taking a look at is sourced from the shovelware CD Gamefest, which I’ve made available for download here:
Software to Go Gamefest (1993) (56mb)
The CD is in ISO format. An ISO is a copy of a CD that, using software, you can have your computer load as if it were a physical CD. I’d recommend Virtual CloneDrive for this (which has the benefit of being one of the best and also free). You can also use software to burn the ISO to a CD, creating a perfect copy of the original disc.
* Okay, probably less odd than it sounds. In the early 90s, Walmart was actually a really good source of shareware–there were even giant displays with packaged floppy disks that held shareware episodes of various games for $5 each. Remember, I was 9 at the time–I coveted these disks. They’re how I was introduced to a lot of different PC games of the era.