{"id":964,"date":"2013-03-18T13:01:55","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T18:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=964"},"modified":"2013-03-19T09:29:45","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T14:29:45","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-buying-from-epic-games-in-1996","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/964\/retro-scan-of-the-week-buying-from-epic-games-in-1996","title":{"rendered":"[ Retro Scan Special ]<\/span> Buying from Epic Games in 1996"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Epic<\/a>Epic MegaGames purchase invoice in January 1996.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

You’re looking at a rare physical artifact from the twilight of shareware’s golden age.<\/p>\n

Way back in 1996, when Gears of War<\/em> maker Epic Games still went by “Epic MegaGames<\/a>,” I ordered a few registered copies of its shareware<\/a> games through CompuServe.<\/p>\n

Since it was a special buy-and-download deal (very unusual in 1996), I didn’t receive copies of the games themselves on disk. Instead, Epic mailed an invoice, copies of the games’ instruction manuals (which have been displaced from this set, or else I would have scanned them too) and a shareware demo disk from Epic partner Safari Software<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

They arrived together in a nice bubble wrap mailer, seen below:<\/p>\n

\"Epic<\/a>Epic MegaGames mailing envelope from January 1996.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As you can tell from the invoice, I ordered the full registered versions of Castle of the Winds<\/em> and the Jill of the Jungle Trilogy<\/em> from Epic Games. Despite my perennial love of shareware, this was likely the only time in the ’90s that I registered any shareware computer game. And even then, I didn’t actually pay for it myself — my father’s company footed the bill through its CompuServe account, which I regularly used. (My only excuse is that I was 14 at the time.)<\/p>\n

\"Shareware<\/a>Shareware demo of Traffic Department 2192<\/a> from Safari Software, 1996<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I’m still a big fan of Epic’s shareware titles<\/a>, and I interviewed<\/a> the firm’s founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney, in 2009 for Gamasutra. It’s neat to be able to peek back in time and catch a glimpse of Epic Games’ early history during the years before Unreal<\/a> sparked a company rebirth and revolutionized its business plan.<\/p>\n

(By the way, in case anyone is wondering, I have digitally modified the mailing address on these scans for privacy reasons.)<\/p>\n

[ Update: 3\/19\/2013 ]<\/strong> I showed Tim Sweeney this post and he had this to say about it:<\/p>\n

Oh wow, that brings back old memories. After spending way too much time collating mailing labels and invoices, I remember buying those laser-printable invoices-with-sticky-mailing-labels for $7000, which represented a huge portion of my bank account at the time.<\/p>\n

Besides being deep into writing Unreal Engine 1 at the time, I also wrote and maintained the customer database we used to print those invoices. I was in college at the time so I had very little time available to pack and mail disks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks, Tim!<\/p>\n

[ From Epic MegaGames Sales Packaging and Literature, January 1996 ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> Did you ever register a shareware program in the 1980s or 1990s? Which one(s)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Epic MegaGames purchase invoice in January 1996. You’re looking at a rare physical artifact from the twilight of shareware’s golden age. Way back in 1996, when Gears of War maker Epic Games still went by “Epic MegaGames,” I ordered a few registered copies of its shareware games through CompuServe. Since it was a special buy-and-download […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,37,7,13,35,27,26,9,10],"tags":[213,444,376,446,432,447,445,443,60,426,440,441],"class_list":["post-964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bbs-history","category-computer-games","category-computer-info-and-history","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-internet-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-retrogaming","category-computers","tag-213","tag-castle-of-the-winds","tag-compuserve","tag-envelope","tag-epic-games","tag-floppy-disk","tag-invoice","tag-jill-of-the-jungle","tag-retro-scan","tag-shareware","tag-tim-sweeney","tag-zzt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}