Not so much about multimedia as such, and it's not an individual example as much as a category, but I have fond memories of freeware/shareware compilation CDs (like the three or four they issued for the Risc PC): you could pay £10-£15, I think, for a whole bunch of stuff that was allegedly free, but you had to put in so much work to find it all that you never *would*.

Then a few years later came HENSA (micros.hensa.ac.uk), and then the Internet hit us in the *face* and that was the end of CD-ROM.

But people packaging stuff up on CD-ROM and providing it for a comparatively low cost was the precursor to download.com, versiontracker.com and the likes, and that was a good use of the medium.

As was, of course, clip-art.

Not the best, I'm sure, but does anyone remember Blender, the CD-ROM magazine? It performed like a dog on the ancient Mac I had at the time, but it was fun, and oh-so-typical of CD-ROM style.

My favourite CD was a tiny Levis White Tab promo by Antirom called Choose Fun. Karlin picked it up while doing a feature for someone. It was basically a collection of short director games, mainly shape/sound loop sequencers, with some neat 3D specs requiring bits. For some reason I've still got shelves full of cover CDs filled with precious goodies like the MacOS 7.5.3 updater that could never have been downloaded when bandwidth was more precious than oil.

And while having a quick look for (and failing to find) "Critical Path" the first game I remember to have actual video footage, and a billed actress, I just found 1995's Volume 1, Issue 1 of Music Net. "Premiere Issue features RollingStone magazine's 1994 Rock & Roll Yearbook. The interactive way to shop for music. Explore 750 song selections from 250 current albums. Video Clips, Album Reviews, Artist Profiles and more. Overnight Delivery/No Premium." You emailed an order to orders@musicnet.com, or phoned 1-800-MUSICNET. Required 18MB of hard disk space, 4MB of RAM, a double speed CD-ROM drive and 256 color monitor. Greedy guts.

My reason for buying a CD ROM drive: the talkie version of "Day of the Tentacle". A LucasFilm computer game with voices.

Another defining moment: OS/2 2.10 -- Installing an OS from CD, instead of 30 floppies, was quite a big leap forward.

Yeah, my sketch on article starts with that image of installing from thirty floppies. Ah, tech nostalgia.

Being able to own pretty much *all* the Atari ST shareware on one CDROM was kind of cool, even if I didn't know anyone with a CDROM drive at the time. I got a free one from Walnut Creek cos they had some of my stuff on the disk - I bet they stopped doing that not long after.

Quake's NIN soundtrack was something that really added to the game and couldn't have been done any other way at the time. Bloody Myst as well, I suppose.

The one that really inspired me is one that I never had though - Billboard (used to?) do a disc called Rock & ROM, with the full Billboard charts for the last 50 years in it. I coveted that disc.

CD-Roms.... "Ceremony of Innocence", done by Peter Gabriel's multimedia studio back in the 90s sometime (well it would be, wouldn't it?). The first CD I saw that tried to be a "multimedia book"... high production values, real cast (one of the McGanns, Isabella Rossellini) and lots of clever interactivity. Pity it was a one-off.

I know it's unfashionable to say so, but Microsoft deserve a bit of credit for discs like Encarta and Cinemania. I remember being enthralled with Cinemania 97 that I could log on to the net each month and download details on the latest movie releases - it seemed like such a cool idea to update the info on a static format. Of course, IMDb totally took over the whole space, but Cinemania was fantastic at the time.

Are you talking about "real computer" CD-ROM?
Console games don't count? Because post-PlayStaytion (1993)
there's plenty of excellent console CD-ROM stuff.

My memory of PC CD-ROMs has been tarnished by shit like "Microcosm". I think the only game CD-ROMs I've still
got are the first two Quakes. The soundtrack to the first was OK, but I ended up dumping the game to harddisk and using Prodigy's "Fat of the Land" for the music.

My favourite discs were the proto-net stuff - Fred Fish collections for the Amiga, various BBS collections that my puny 9600 modem would take forever to download.

...oh, and porn.

Heh. I was just thinking about it a couple of weeks ago when I noticed this one http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/sto...BNStory/Technology/
which reminded me of CD-I (http://www.diaries.com/xsamplex/2003/07/09#a1788). More detailed info here: http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technology/cd-rom/cd-i.htm

Edited by author 08-01-2003 10:54 AM
I've never actually seen them but I am fully confident that the Residents' cdroms are the best.
Freak Show (1992!)
Bad Day on the Midway (1995!)

I used to work for Dennis Publishing back when they produced Blender. My job was to test the cover CDROMS in excruciating detail, to avoid irate phone calls from middle managers who were trying to install Command & Conquer demos on their work laptops.

Between Blender and the ill-fated CD ROM Magazine I think I went way over the RDA for lame 90's multimedia.

Also, Danny - didn't you & Dave 'do' You Don't Know Jack?. The questions bit, I mean.

Edited by author 08-01-2003 01:23 PM
..pasting blatantly from some 'best of' ideas I was messing with a few months back:

1. Voyager Company titles - this was the CD-ROM part of the well-known Criterion Collection laserdiscs and DVDs. Danny already mentioned these - another one I would give my eye-teeth to get hold of is the Douglas Adams 'Last Chance To See' CD-ROM - wow, I see Underdogs has it for download, naughty people that they are.
2. Cyan titles - the earlier pre-Myst titles from Cyan like ‘Cosmic Osmo' and 'Manhole'.
3. 'Starship Titanic' - Douglas Adams' last CD-ROM project and is now out of print.

ps - I think the Spinal Tap CD-ROM, though great, was actually a CD-ROM conversion of the laser-disc, which had similar bonus material and DVD-style layout? Not positive.

Edited by author 08-01-2003 02:27 PM
Wow, I didn't know LCTS was on the web! If there's one good argument for abandonware, that's it. My first task when I arrived at TDV was to make an LCTS mini-site, and we had amazing trouble getting hold of the CD. That was back in '97.

Plus one vote for "Cosmic Osmo", as it was the first game that woke me up to what CD-ROM could be used for. Also plus one for Encarta - it was the first CD-ROM encyclopedia that used the medium properly and innovatively, plus it was responsible for more CD-ROM drive sales than almost any other product. I was insistent on getting it when I got my first drive. I think I loaded it twice.

Might also be worth mentioning the early CD-based games consoles, most of which flopped terribly, such as the Amiga CD32 and the Sega CD.

"ps - I think the Spinal Tap CD-ROM, though great, was actually a CD-ROM conversion of the laser-disc, which had similar bonus material and DVD-style layout? Not positive."

Yes, I have the Spinal Tap LaserDisc, and it has some great extras.
I should point out that Laserdisc is where extras were born not CD-ROM, and DVD extras are not vastly different from LD extras -- the 1993 Terminator 2 SE Box set on LD was a great example of how to do extras, including multiple commentary tracks, and discs-full of additional material that took about a week to view.
http://www.dvdreview.com/html/terminator_2...in_the_studio.shtml

I bought an external CD ROM drive for my Mac when they were over 500 pounds.
The main 3 CDs that motivated me to buy this were:
1) The Whole Earth Catalog on CD-ROM (called the 'Electronic Whole Earth Catalog'). This was not a great success I believe since Apple shafted them (unusual behaviour from Apple, I know) by changing some file formats so that this didn't work properly with System 7.1.
It is mentioned in this antique useit article
http://www.useit.com/papers/cdrom.html
2) Grolier Encyclopedia (I think this cost over 500 dollars!, now similar things are given away with cornflake packets)
3) Voyager Beethoven's 9th (Hypercard stack). Mentioned in this fine article
http://www.mactech.com/articles/develop/is...M_Cutting_Edge.html

THere is surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) little about these on the web.

I thought Power Japanese was very good:

http://calico.org/CALICO_Review/review/powjap.htm

Thinking back, that was the only "CD-ROM genre" product I can recall thinking much of (I never bought Myst...).

Cosmic Osmo was on my list, too.. I had /no/ idea LD features were similar to DVDs.

And I remember trying to steal the Grolier Encyclopedia from work. That, and some vast full-text archive of computer magazines, called PC-Select, or something like that.

I swear I'd have mugged old ladies for bits, back then.

LucasArts' CD-ROM "Behind the magic" made fantastic use of the medium, seamlessly blending text, images, audio and video in a Star Wars encyclopedia. Obviously the seamless feel was helped greatly by the fact that the whole project was drawing on a well-defined fictitious universe, but it still remains just about the best use of 'multimedia' I've seen.

Edited by author 08-06-2003 08:16 AM
So here was the top five I settled on in the end (more because they had some anecdotal value than actually being the top CD-ROMs. This is how top fives are made in the misleading hall of mirrors that is our media.)

In no particular order: Cosmic Osmo, Myst, Encarta (boo! hiss!), You Don't Know Jack (nepotism!), Spinal Tap CD-ROM.

I think out of all of them, Spinal Tap deserves its place the least, but it was the first CD-ROM that really blew me away, and I'm allowed some personally bias, right? Continuing the obvious slants, even though we were asked to work on the UK edition, I genuinely do think YDKJ was a stroke of genius (and based on some very good principles too). I don't think any of our questions got into the final version anyway.

Encarta's there partly because of Yoz's comment, partly because it is rather impressive, and partly because I've bashed Microsoft a bit too much in the last few weeks, and I'm feeling a bit guilty. Oh, and I wanted one CD-ROM that people could actually go out and buy.

Myst is there for purposed of objectivity. I hated Myst but I know dozens of people who loved it. The deluded fools.

Cosmic Osmo is there because I used to sit and dream about playing it.

Where can I get my hands on Cosmic Osmo????

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