Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - Shareware

Episode Date: August 5, 2023

From gaming hosts Josh, Paul, and Ryan we're bringing you even more gaming content each week.  Gaming Quick Takes are a short series of game recommendations, funny moments, off-topic chat and more. A small dose of gaming to brighten your Saturdays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online, and sign-up only takes a few minutes.

Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and we'll be releasing these quick takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public. And these quick takes are a little more laid back and they're hosted by just one of us. So sit back, relax and enjoy this quick take episode. Shazam! Boom!

Hey guys, time for another Quick Take episode here with Paul. I wanted to start off by saying thank you so much to all of you out there for helping support the show. We really could not make it without supporters like you. And we really do appreciate that you've chosen to help support the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. All right. What I wanted to talk about here today is an old model of gaming that doesn't really exist anymore. And a lot of our younger listeners might even be kind of surprised to hear about this. But I wanted to talk about old shareware games. Now, back when

my family purchased our first computer, I was in third grade, and we didn't really do any gaming for the first couple of years. Mostly it was used for the WordPerfect processor. And our computer did not even have Windows on it. It was mostly just like utility function. But eventually we did start to buy a couple of games for the computer. And one of my favorite things to do. So this would have been back in oh goodness i don't know like 1994 i used to go with my mom when she would go grocery shopping and right next door to our

grocery store was a computer store that sold mostly software but they did also sell some hardware and i loved to just walk over. My mom would let me, as soon as she got in line for paying for groceries, I was able to walk over and take a look at the games. Well, one of the things that was really common back then is that there were games that were called shareware, where basically you were allowed to share them with other people. And sometimes it was like freeware where it was totally free you were okay to share it with anybody sometimes there were models where you could play a game for free and it was just like a demo but then you could purchase the full version i think people were still trying

to figure out the best ways to advertise their games and nobody really knew what way it was going to come out on top back then. But I remember they had a giant rack that was labeled shareware, and it was all the old school three and a half inch floppy disks, and they would have games on them. They were not inside boxes. They had the most simplistic label. Basically, like if you were to print your own labels at home, slap it on the disc, and they had just the titles of the name on the front. You didn't really know what the games

were. You kind of just like saw a title. And if you thought it sounded interesting, then you could get it for a dollar. And that was more or less kind of like the deposit of, you know, you could bring the disc back, but it was basically a dollar to take home. And then you're able to play through a lot of these games. Well, I remember one of my earliest experiences with games like this were the Hugo and Penelope games. I don't know how many they made in whole. And I know that I've mentioned this like one or two times on the podcast. But the first one, I believe, is called Hugo's House of Horrors.

And these are the old school games that are kind of like point and click adventures, except back then you would, you know, control your character where to walk and you would have to type in commands. And the game had to recognize, you know, close enough to certain commands and then they could do it. So for example, in the beginning, you're not able to open the door of the house because the door is locked. So you have to find the key and the key is inside a pumpkin that is sitting next to the door. So you can type different commands like break pumpkin or open pumpkin and then it tells you there's a key you can pick up the key type use key in door and then you can get inside the house and so these are like kind of similar to the monkey island games except they're even older and more rudimentary and i remember being so excited when i walked over one day and found hug and Penelope 3, which I had no idea existed. It takes place out in the jungle. I remember you get like tranquilizer darts and

you shoot elephants and you got to do all kinds of stuff to change the water level so that way you can walk across these empty riverbeds. And I remember there being like a witch doctor and all kinds of stuff. And I remember being so excited. And back then, being just a young kid, it's not like I really had any money. My allowance at the time was, I don't know, maybe at the most $5 a week. I mean, this is back in the early to mid-90s. And so being able to get these games for just a dollar and be able to take them home and play them, you know, this is before you could really share software over the internet. That wasn't really a thing yet because you had dial up and even just pictures took so long to load, let alone actual games. But I do remember every once in a while saving up, having that money, being able to

buy like a nicer game. I remember buying NBA Live 94. I think it's actually just called NBA Live. I think it was the first one, but I remember buying that from the same store. But every week that we'd go grocery shopping, I would just grab one based on a random title, take it home, and you just kind of hoped that it would be fun and that it wasn't a waste of a dollar and i remember also sharing that with my friends that had computers because back then i think like half of my friends had pcs but the other half didn't and so if you ever discovered that really fun game then you would definitely run and tell all of your buddies and share it with them i i think the original Duke Nukem was also like that.

Commander Keen was another very popular series. I think for Commander Keen, they actually made like a good eight or nine, excuse me, eight or nine of them. They made a whole bunch in that series where you were a dude on a pogo stick and you just kind of hopped around everywhere fighting aliens and the games back then were pretty wild it was just kind of random but that's just what we had to work with so anyway shareware games don't really exist anymore more but if you were a gamer back in the 90s that's probably a phrase you haven't thought about in a long time and just thought

it would be fun to reminisce a little bit all right well that's it for today's quick take we'll see you guys for the next episode happy gaming