Shovelware Disks & Where to Find them.

[kalinus]

I am interested in playing some of the shovelware maps for Doom as well as other fps games. Such as Duke Nukem 3d, Heretic, Hexen, Wolfenstein, Rise of the Triad Etc... If anyone has links please share them here.

The Internet Archive has quite a few isos

Just look under D

https://archive.org/details/cdbbsarchive

I'd really like to find more so Please share what you can.

There is a Disk called Rott Cafe that I'd like to find Amazon has it but I can't buy internationally apparently.

[kalinus]

Here is a link to buy it as well as a pic
http://doomwadentryway.weebly.com/uploads/2/1/4/1/21413608/3308705.jpg?203

http://www.amazon.de/R-O-T-T-Cafe-Booster-Package-R-O-T-T/dp/3896277286

[mrthejoshmon]

I own .zip copies of pretty much most of the Doom shovelware, I also have some on disks just in case.

Some of the things you can find in there are... Interesting to say the least.

That "Laura Bayer Doom" (Or whatever the fucking awful thing is called) shareware version I found on one is a complete gem for all the wrong reasons, I also found a Hell to Pay shareware version (Which I played to death, apparently the maps past the shareware version, MAP16 to MAP32, are absolutely terrible compared to the first half so I didn't bother securing a full version) and some utterly horrible custom sprites of some kind of spring man.

I might just document all of my findings one day (But I might not bother as I doubt anybody really cares).

Anyway, thanks for those links, I am going to look up some of that stuff now.

[Zed]

kalinus said:

The Internet Archive has quite a few isos

Just look under D

https://archive.org/details/cdbbsarchive

I'd really like to find more so Please share what you can.

I don't know if you already saw this, but here is the "main" page for the Doom CDs:

https://archive.org/details/doom-cds

[FireFish]

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/66709-shovelware-on-the-internet-archive/

Just adding that here because there where some interresting things mentioned there, about the same subject.

[Doomkid]

I miss the days of shovelware CD's. I remember my Doom Heaven CD fondly, it was a gift from a friend of my dad's. Had some good wads on it (or I thought they were good when I was a kid at least)

[betabox]

mrthejoshmon said:

I own .zip copies of pretty much most of the Doom shovelware, I also have some on disks just in case.

I created an immense list, probably outdated now even, of Doom shovelware that was sold over the years that probably says otherwise. Let me know if you're curious.

[Gez]

buttspit said:

I created an immense list, probably outdated now even, of Doom shovelware that was sold over the years that probably says otherwise. Let me know if you're curious.

Well I'm curious. We have a shovelware article on the wiki, listing about 50 titles. There's probably more to add to it, though. (Though only for wiki-relevant titles: Doom, Heretic, Hexen. I doubt there's any shovelware for Strife! And when Doom 3 was released, the era of shovelware had ended. Shovelware for Wolf3D, ROTT, Duke 3D, Descent etc. are not relevant unless they also include a Doom/Heretic/Hexen section.)

[Ossi]

Even though most files on shovelware discs are just copies of what's already available there's a certain charm to them. Some of the cover art can even be great, even for all the bad reasons. Have a stack of them and still pick one up on occation if it's cheap.

[betabox]

Gez said:

Well I'm curious. We have a shovelware article on the wiki, listing about 50 titles. There's probably more to add to it, though. (Though only for wiki-relevant titles: Doom, Heretic, Hexen. I doubt there's any shovelware for Strife! And when Doom 3 was released, the era of shovelware had ended. Shovelware for Wolf3D, ROTT, Duke 3D, Descent etc. are not relevant unless they also include a Doom/Heretic/Hexen section.)

It is a text file that only lists the names and the number of levels they have, if that's available. The wiki's article goes way further into detail. I'll still provide it here anyway, as it definitely contains more than 50 and people wanna know!

http://speedy.sh/wSA96/Doom-Addons-and-Shovelware.txt

It's clear from that list that everybody wanted a piece of the pie.

[Du Mhan Yhu]

Doomkid said:

I miss the days of shovelware CD's. I remember my Doom Heaven CD fondly, it was a gift from a friend of my dad's. Had some good wads on it (or I thought they were good when I was a kid at least)

I remember my dad buying me DoomMania.. I Had great fun with it, one of my dads coworkers showed me how to use the custom enemies. Years later I found it it to be just terrible.

Keep in mind, shovelware may suck, but back in the 90's it was great. Being at Fry's with my dad and seeing "Demon Gate 666 levels for Doom" was the best back then. By today's standards its all shit, back then it was like.. I don't have words for it. Mind you, I was 10 yrs old..

[Doominator2]

The only shovelware disk I fondly remember was Duke Assault for Duke Nukem 3D, it was pretty overwhelming when I saw that it had over 1000 levels so in which I never bought it.

[RUSH]

Just out of curiosity, are there any really rare shovelware disks that actually command a decent amount of money? What's the rarest?

[GreyGhost]

I don't know about THE rarest, but probably the rarest in my collection is a boxed copy of WizardWorks' D!Zone 150 - on 3 floppies instead of a CD.

[VGA]

mrthejoshmon said:

I might just document all of my findings one day (But I might not bother as I doubt anybody really cares).

I would read the shit out of that! :-)

[fraggle]

Side topic: did id ever release any "official" shareware CDs? I ask because I've seen CDs like this on eBay a bunch of times:



The label on the CD in the picture (it's difficult to read) just says Copyright id and Copyright GT interactive - id's US distributor. Unlike other shareware CDs that include the name of the shareware distributor (like those "Gold Medallion" ones) this has nothing - just DOOM and a copyright notice. Any idea where these come from?

[Ossi]

Don't think id ever released one themselves, that CD is from the DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D shareware bundle by GT if I'm not mistaken.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/trioxin/Video%20Game%20Collection/doom_wolf_shareware_pc_front_zpscd33566f.jpg

[Maes]

But even the most 1994-ish shovelware does contain classics such as DEADBS12.WAD, UAC_DEAD.WAD, CLEIM10.WAD etc. so it can't all be a waste...

Also, lol @ Doom + Wolf3D combo: the "nazi soldier" on the cover is wearing a helmet which looks nothing like any of the german Stahlhelm models. Maybe he's bulgarian?

[Clonehunter]

The guard and his off-screen buddy are also armed with M16s for some reason

[GreyGhost]

Ossi said:

Don't think id ever released one themselves, that CD is from the DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D shareware bundle by GT if I'm not mistaken.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/trioxin/Video%20Game%20Collection/doom_wolf_shareware_pc_front_zpscd33566f.jpg

That's the one, two CDs in paper sleeves that bear the GT Interactive logo. Can't recall having seen that Doom CD elsewhere, except as a stray disk.

[geekmarine]

Weird question - anyone have any recommendations for shovelware disks that might be worth checking out? It seems extremely silly, I know, I mean there's an entire friggin' archive, obviously, of Doom levels to choose from, but I didn't own a CD-ROM drive when the Doom shovelware disks were popular, and think it would be fun to play around with some of them.

Just kinda curious if anyone has any preferences, which disks have the most interesting collections, etc.?

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

geekmarine said:

Just kinda curious if anyone has any preferences, which disks have the most interesting collections, etc.?

Out of stuff I have and tried? If you like Heretic/Hexen, H!ZONE followed by Heresies. For more Doom-oriented ones, Deathday / The Ultimate Add-on (they're functionally the same thing) also seems interesting, at the very least because of the cheesy frontend it has as well as some weird old utilities. Total Ruin is mostly a dump of the idgames archive at the time, but does have the one bit of gold in that you get a registered version of ULTRALaunch with it, which is one of the nicest oldschool frontends I've seen.

Shameless plug if you want more thoughts on my collection. Though I've been meaning for a long time to make it more in-depth and organized.

[Quasar]

Du Mhan Yhu said:

I remember my dad buying me DoomMania.. I Had great fun with it, one of my dads coworkers showed me how to use the custom enemies. Years later I found it it to be just terrible.

Keep in mind, shovelware may suck, but back in the 90's it was great. Being at Fry's with my dad and seeing "Demon Gate 666 levels for Doom" was the best back then. By today's standards its all shit, back then it was like.. I don't have words for it. Mind you, I was 10 yrs old..

My mom didn't have nice things to say when I showed her the CD I just bought with "666" under a gigantic scratching demon hand ;) That was part of the fun - rebellion, for middle class white kids.

[yourusernamee]

in a landfill

[IMX]

A new shovelware disc has surfaced

https://archive.org/compress/maxdeath-doomii

It was uploaded +70 days ago but somehow it never popped up until today in the Doom CDs section

[FireFish]

IMX said:

A new shovelware disc has surfaced
https://archive.org/compress/maxdeath-doomii
It was uploaded +70 days ago but somehow it never popped up until today in the Doom CDs section

I do not get why your link is 1 gigabyte in size when the iso is 484 megabyte, and the binary is 556 megabyte.
https://archive.org/details/maxdeath-doomii
https://ia802304.us.archive.org/33/items/maxdeath-doomii/

I realy want to download this... but the pile of wads in shovelware cd's... to... much.

[SYS]

I had this one, no idea what happened to it:
https://archive.org/details/cdrom-death-match-cd2

[IMX]

FireFish said:

I do not get why your link is 1 gigabyte in size when the iso is 484 megabyte, and the binary is 556 megabyte.
https://archive.org/details/maxdeath-doomii
https://ia802304.us.archive.org/33/items/maxdeath-doomii/

I really want to download this... but the pile of wads in shovelware cd's... to... much.

Ah crap! I realized I posted the "compress" link, which puts the whole contents of said entry in a zip (which of course makes it up to 1GB)

The link I was meant to post was actually the "details/..." one

Just as long as you download either the .bin or the .iso and the cue file you're ok

[Zed]

I also wanted to add, if you guys don't feel like reading through the last couple of threads, that there's also this one, not present in the Doom directory:

https://archive.org/details/cdrom-3d-nightmares

[IMX]

I think it's not in the /doom-cds directory because of the additional content it has for other games like Descent and C&C, but then again, I'm not sure if it's possible for a single CD to be in more than one collection.