Lost something? Search through 91.7M files from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s | Hacker News Reader

Lost something? Search through 91.7M files from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s

arstechnica.com

387 pointsdangle1209 comments

"Cookies & Tracking - This site has no cookies and no tracking. CSS & JavaScript - CSS, JavaScript and HTTPS are not required. This site works in text and vintage browsers."

Just love this attitude from a webmaster and the Discmaster site works just as expected - straight forward and eminently effective.

Now I compare this with a similar archive site that appeared on HN about a day ago—one dedicated to the works of the analytical philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. This excruciatingly slow JavaScript-ridden site was so bad that I tried three different browsers before I could get to the archive files and even then I couldn't download anything if I'd wanted to. Frankly, it is horrible site, one wonders why they bother when they make the user experience so utterly bad.

If one ever wants to see the damage bloated JavaScript has done to the web then there's not a much better example that to compare these two sites side by side.

If I were a hacker I could try to MITM this site that serves executables like games and applications and inject something nefarious. I don’t see not having HTTPS as a positive thing.

TLS allows the browser to detect content (like scripts) injected into original web pages by (potentially) malicious third parties. Or at least by third parties who aren't using certificates issued by roots explicitly trusted by the browser software. Before the use of HTTPS in the early 90s, it was not an exceptional condition for third parties to insert content (ISPs inserted ads, libraries inserted cookies, BGP hackers just looked at traffic). One of the reasons SHTTP and HTTPS were invented was to allay fears by banks that entering credit card numbers on non secure links would increase the rare of fraud. But the main reason (I believe) we use HTTPS on sites that don't take CC#s today is because we cannot enumerate every potential risk. Because we cannot forsee the risk, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In other words... "better safe than sorry."

MITM became some sort of miraculous hacker solution.

To MITM you need to be on the way of the traffic, or manipulate the DNS. None is obvious.

Do you recall the days when it was common practice for ISPs to MITM all traffic?

The most obvious and profitable use case were those ISPs who returned 404 pages riddled with advertisements for domains that were unregistered (e.g. if you mistyped a URL)

Certain ISPs even injected JavaScript into every page.

“I” in the OP’s comment probably means “government” or “ISP” rather than a friendly roommate on the same wifi network.

> Do you recall the days when it was common practice for ISPs to MITM all traffic?

This never existed in France. That would have been completely illegal.

There was a time when this existed in France and was not illegal. I believe that's why the OP was saying "Do you recall the days when..."

When was it, and with which ISP?

Not op, but see this

https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/foci11/tech/final_files/...

France isn’t listed, but Germany, Netherlands, United States (obviously) are. This was a thing that used to commonly happen before TLS became standard.

Bold of you to assume lawmakers would be ahead of hackers on the technology front.

Just create an open wifi called „free wifi” in any crowded place…

Too obvious - just give it the same ESSID and password as your local coffee shop's network, and let the "Connect Automatically" setting on Windows do the rest.

Many if not most WiFi clients send a list of SSIDs they would want to connect in cleartext in their directed probe request frames in the active scanning mode. I expect there are attackers automatically advertising these networks to lure in devices.

This is far from being obvious to find out and hardly a scalable MITM.

These are always the same tricks that work in a lab, but then when it comes to do an actual MITM on a web site - there are no solutions.

If my web site is www.example.com, you would need to get very close to the site (network topologically speaking) and insert yourself in the traffic. This is in practice undoable, except if you hack the local network where the web server lives (specifically some equipment) or the server itself.

Or hack the DNS server.

None of these are remotely easy with basic security in place.

My remark was tongue-in-cheek. I'm aware that this would only go as far as appearing as a bridge router, which Windows often designates with a number after the name (e.g. WittyNetworkName 2). It's not very subtle, and you would likely only intercept a fraction of the traffic from a client, as they would default to directly contacting the host where possible.

And how could you do this, Mr. Hacker Man?

Are you compromising my ISP, the server host, or my client?

In any of these situations, I have a bigger problem than TLS, and a lot of vectors I can be attacked from.

HTTPS isn't always needed, and the idea that it is needs to die. Most use cases it does make sense to use HTTPS indeed, but there is a small number of use cases where it doesn't make sense.

You want your website to work on vintage computers where they run super old browsers? Then you probably need a HTTP version of the website without TLS/SSL as it's not gonna be accessible otherwise.

Running a software/package repository/registry where every package is signed and verified locally? No need for TLS/SSL and it would just slow down downloading 1000s of packages as handshaking does add latency to requests.

But again, probably 99% of cases it's better to have HTTPS than not. But sometimes not having HTTPS is indeed a positive thing.

> You want your website to work on vintage computers where they run super old browsers? Then you probably need a HTTP version of the website without TLS/SSL as it's not gonna be accessible otherwise.

That's incredibly niche. I don't think it deserves to be an example of "meme needs to die".

> Running a software/package repository/registry where every package is signed and verified locally? No need for TLS/SSL and it would just slow down downloading 1000s of packages as handshaking does add latency to requests.

Need some secure way to pass around the SHA256 (or whatever) hash you're using for verification.

And thinking of "memes that need to die", https://istlsfastyet.com suggests this isn't as bad as I think you think it is.

> That's incredibly niche

The very website we're talking about in this submission is specifically made for vintage computers! But I agree, relatively niche.

> Need some secure way to pass around the SHA256 (or whatever) hash you're using for verification.

That gets passed out-of-band before actually downloading anything from the registry. In the case of Arch, every package is signed by developer keys that are securely fetched on initial install, and later fetched as a package.

Less niche use cases are doing latency sensitive things over HTTP (which overall I wouldn't recommend, but sometimes you're stuck with 3rd party stuff), then adding the handshake can easily double the time for the connection.

For example, one website I have can have the TCP connection be established in ~40ms, while the SSL/TLS handshake takes ~100ms. So because of SSL/TLS, the request time more than doubled. If I was serving signed packages over this connection, you can easily skip the handshaking part and when you download thousands of packages, save some time. I don't think that use case is as niche as you think.

My website has some minimal cookies and js but nothing in the hot path to content or usage. I serve it over the free tier on Cloudflare’s CDN.

I regularly get astounded feedback about how fast it is.

The web doesn’t need to be slow and shitty, web browsers are extremely fast if you use them correctly. Static pages are your friend.

I agree. I get similar feedback on my site and it's written entirely with React and Next.js

I have fun using that text stack, and with Next every page is just delivered as static HTML.

If anyone is curious:

https://valep.vc.univie.ac.at/virtualarchive/public/Archive/...

(from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33244723)

This site won't even display anything for me, just a blank white page.

It's a file browser implemented in JavaScript, so you'll need to turn JS on to see anything.

The UI is completely jumbled on mobile. I can't even tell what this page is supposed to be

And that’s with 3-5 year development and near to 100k in grants and development.

Parkinson's Law, paraphrased: "work expands so as to fill the time and budget available for its completion."

I see this so many times in my line of work (software development, consultancy); companies throw millions at a solved problem like e-commerce, the over-enthusiastic engineers jump on it but won't just pick something off the shelf, they will re-engineer it in $cool_tech because just solving the problem is boring.

Am I hearing you right? What's that about (I just took the site for what it was as a first-time visitor)?

It’s basically funded by institutions in and around that department of the university. So lots of Austrian grands and stuff so people could create this system. I checked it because it happens to be I am doing research on this type of software for a client, so I was curious if there was an open source version of the software (there didn’t seem to be) and to just see what it was about.

Since there isn’t an open source version, I didn’t dive deeper into the slowness of it or it’s architecture.

Thanks for that. (I suppose I'm a little more curious than usual as I used to live not far from that university some years back.)

Javascript has little to do with the awful design of that site. Also, as of today, the Discmaster site is down, likely due to the design being heavily search focused.

Can you link the other post for the lazy but curious people like me please?

https://valep.vc.univie.ac.at/virtualarchive/public/Archive/...

Sorry, I didn't have it at the time. It should be the same as the one SPBS has posted above.

That sounds a lot more like a back-end issue than a front-end issue

As I said to prox, I took the site at face value (I didn't bother to view the source—couldn't be bothered). However, I'm now mildly curious why sites like this are so slow. Has anyone done a decent objective analysis of load speeds versus actual content versus the other extraneous dross?

Clearly, it'd be easy to compare 'apples' with 'oranges' thus quite a difficult analysis to get real figures.

I posted a direct link to DiscMaster yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33241761

But I think I was hamstrung by the "must use accurate title" rule.

Funny, we are sometimes encouraging blogspam with that rule.

In HN's defense, sometimes entries like that get replaced by the source. But that depends on staff being online, and unless I'm missing something, there's still only one person with the authority to do that, and dang can't work 24 hours a day.

It would be so nice if copyright was 10 or 20 years and this was unquestionably legal.

"...copyright was 10 or 20 years"

Nice thought but unlikely give the copyright bloodhounds about. A better short-term approach would be to change copyright to make access to orphan and neglected works legal so long as one has no pecuniary interest in them. This would free up huge swathes of copyrighted works.

Whilst that makes sense, it is opposed by new/existing copyright holders who see the freeing up of these works as competition—even if the orphaned works bear little resemblance to the new works (which is usually the case)—on the grounds that making these works available 'dilutes' the market for newer works (a spurious argument if ever I've heard of one). Another objection comes from a mob of carpetbaggers who want access to them for commercial purposes, that is if said works ever become available (all sorts of strange arrangements have been proposed). Thus the stalemate continues, nothing is done.

No wonder piracy exists.

BTW a while back I posted a link on YouTube to a 1920s audio recording whose author died about 80 years ago only to get a note from Google that someone still claimed copyright over the work. Seems this lark is done automatically by the mischievous copyright lobby even if there is no such claim by the original author. Incidentally, Google didn't remove the work (presumably on grounds that they were already aware of the 'scam' but were obliged to advise me anyway in case I objected).

Right, the copyright system stinks as presently constituted.

I understand that getting copyright away from the current forever will be difficult, but it would be a shame if we ended up with a complicated system like that where you needed lawyers to argue that something was abandoned. The nice thing about a fixed cutoff from creation, even if it is quite long, is that it is fairly easy to know what is no longer protected because you just need to track how long it has existed.

Orphan works are reasonably easy to determine, they're usually many decades old and have had no royalties paid through the normal/usual channels for years—and they couldn't be paid anyway as the contact has long since been lost (address unknown).

Just to be sure, schemes to protect owners exist and could be implemented. For example, all works in this category would appear in published lists with say a year's grace—if the copyright owner turns up within the grace period with proof of ownership then the work remains in copyright.

There's another type material that we do not normally think of as being in copyright but in fact is. That's things like circuit diagrams, blueprints, plans, etc. from, say, obsolete equipment where the company has long gone bankrupt. Often there was no payment made for this info in the first instance as it came with the equipment (as manuals etc.). Denying it now on a copyright 'technicality' stops maintenance industries, hobbyists etc. from building repair infrastructures and such.

Not really. I think if a young musician or author creates an incredible work at 18 that touches the lives of millions they should be able to own and sell that work at the ages of 28 and 38 when they are trying to make a living and raise a family.

As a society we do this policy selfishly, because we’d like people to be encouraged and incentivized to create original works that touch peoples lives.

If you touched the lives of millions at 18 you probably already made significant profit. Not only that but you can likely publish more work and all of these people will be happy to pay for it.

I agree that the purpose of copyright should be to encourage production of work and culture. I don't think encouraging people to coast on one great artwork for their entire lives does that. At this point you are extracting value from society without adding anything new back.

Of course this starts interacting with other policy decisions in interesting ways. I don't think you should struggle to live because you don't want to become a slave to making more, I think you could pair this with some sort of Universal Basic Income so that you will be assured basic comforts no matter what. However you are still encouraged to work more if you want more luxuries.

It's incredibly common for creative careers to only catch fire after years of slogging away.

What if you created the work at 18 but only after 15 years did anyone notice it? No dice? We'd prefer that all the profits from people reading on their kindles should go Amazon and some publishing service that aggregates out of copyright works instead of the guy who wrote it?

We're better off as a society if the returns to the massive part of the Spotify library that is over 10 years old, that enriches the lives of hundreds of millions of people every day, just goes to Daniel Ek instead?

This is better?

Spotify would have to compete with other websites that can share these works so the price would be driven down so they won't be profiting much if any more. Instead people would have easier access to all of the works created years before.

>What if you created the work at 18 but only after 15 years did anyone notice it? No dice?

What do you mean no dice? In this scenario, you'd still have the last ten years of work still under copyright and a big platform for pushing subsequent works.

Good that not everybody in the internet lives and hosts in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention

It's not just the US unfortunately.

What is the friendliest place for pirate archivists now?

Currently, probably Russia given that they've more or less pulled IP protection for non-Russian works. Well, as long as works on certain "sensitive" topics are avoided.

I dunno, some people's works are only discovered or are rediscovered years later - think Kate Bush and Metallica's recent surge in popularity due to the Stranger Things TV show. Or book authors whose work is picked up decades later as source material for a film or TV show - the first Game of Thrones book is from 1996, yet the TV show earned and is earning the channel (and the author, I presume) millions.

Copyright is about encouraging creation. I don't think that many people will not create because they are worried that they may not get discovered until after their copyright protection expires. In fact in cases like this the expiry of copyright may increase their visibility which may make this re-discovery more likely. Then they will be able to produce more with their newfound audience and profit off of that.

> Or book authors whose work is picked up decades later

This is an interesting one. I think this rings close to the "dilution" argument. Where movie studios will be more likely to wait until copyright expires than pay the author. I think this is a legitimate concern but I don't know how big of a deal it is. There are already many public domain works but studios still choose new stories where they need to pay the other. Obviously shorter copyright periods will shift this equation but IDK how much. Likely it makes sense to move slowly here, start at a high number like 80 years and slowly reduce it to see if this becomes a huge problem.

Because Metallica clearly hasn't made enough money by now. They're practically starving artists

"Your Malwarebytes Premium blocked this website because it may contain a Trojan.". It probably does somewhere, although not sure the Trojan will still work today.

Isn't that part of the experience?

Of course (odds are there'd have to be). The question how does Malwarebytes Premium know it contains a Trojan? Does some seemingly intelligent code say 'lots of strange files thus likely a Trojan here' or does it actually analyze the files (given the quantity of files that seems unrealistic, alternatively, it's previously spotted a Trojan in one of the links and remembered it—this is probably the likely bet).

I wonder how far back their detection algorithms go, whether they still have code checking for iloveyou.exe and the like.

I'm sure some of the stuff on there will contain old malware code, likely innocuous nowadays but still in the definitions.

I miss Bonzi

The site is still alive: https://bonzi.link/

That TLD didn't exist at the time or for another 10-15 years.

Just turn Cortana back on and you're halfway there

What's that

The one thing I'd love to see archived is the full back catalog of Computer Music Magazine and Future Music Magazine. Last I checked the company only has 2008 onwards, but there's so much gold in those early issues I'd love to see.

Wish I could find some old Apple ][ GS game where there was a computer voice right as you booted up. I never understood what it said, but I thought it sounded like "parano guizu tiksa" and it always bothered me that I had no way to figure out what it was saying.

I don't remember anything else about it.

I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Thexder. It would start up and you'd hear a Japanese female voice saying something like that - the last word being Thexder. It was a great game! You can hear it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si_iveNrUPo

Yes, that's it. What on earth are they saying?

EDIT: Maybe "Siera ga ookurisusu Thexder" (Thexder presented by Sierra)? It's practically incomprehensible.

I have no idea! I tried to put it through some voice translators but all it gave me were things like "The tiara will send you" and "dialga oakley sticker"

I showed it to a native Japanese speaker and he thinks it's "Siera ga ookuri suru Thexder" though he said he was only able to make out "ga ookuri suru" part and was inferring the rest from context.

I feel like I can hear "Siera" at the start myself and you seemed sure the last word was Thexder, so that's what I'm going with. It's pretty nearly incomprehensible, though.

Oh wow, that just jogged a really old memory. I'm pretty sure I had that one, but can hardly remember anything else. Could it have been Xenocide?

edit: Oh, or maybe Silpheed? This is the closest thing I found with some searching: https://youtu.be/o98xKZk5FOk?t=182

I don't think those are it at least I didn't hear the voice in those videos and I don't quite remember playing those.

There's a great subreddit for crowdsourcing things like that: http://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue

Another one is https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/game-ident..., but I don't know how popular stackexchange is these days.

They only allow questions with a video or image (not just from memory) which makes it unfriendly and of limited use.

They recommend /r/tipofmyjoystick or a selection of online chat rooms instead.

HN apparently works just as well. It's definitely Thexder and the voice is apparently saying "Thexder presented by Sierra" in Japanese as best we can puzzle out.

The quality is so terrible that even a native speaker had to listen to it several times and infer the rest from context, though.

To add to this, you can use https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmyjoystick/ for video games specifically

> Oct 10 8:04PM EST Sorry, but search is currently DOWN. We are super bummed about it. We are ACTIVELY working on it. No ETA at this time.

"Oct 10 9:24PM EST We identified 2 different issues that caused the search to crash. The search database is being recovered, which will take several hours. We hope to have search back online tomorrow, Oct 11 by 9AM EST. Once again, sorry about the search downtime."

What’s odd is that was eight days ago now and this article was published today. I’m not complaining. I just find it interesting that the author of the article wouldn’t mention that given that it was published today.

Those dates were typos and have been fixed. Discmaster launched on Oct 18th.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks for the clarification!

Little Bobby Tables strikes again.

You're joking, but I for one would be interested in why the search engine went down multiple times in the first two days.

I wish I could find archives of RelayNet [1], also called RIME, a BBS network similar to FidoNet back in the 1990s. I posted a lot back then as a teen, but have absolutely no records of it, and as far as I know, nobody has ever archived much.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RelayNet

http://discmaster.textfiles.com/

Refreshingly no https because why would this site need it?

Requiring HTTPS is one thing, though it's a little disappointing it doesn't offer it at all, even something retro like SSL. I figure this is an unpopular opinion among the target audience, but I prefer keeping traffic SSL/TLS encrypted, even with broken versions or self-signed certs, because anything at all discourages opportunistic packet capture and tomfoolery.

I agree it's good for resources like this to not require it or force redirect, but it'd be nice to have something optional. Sure, there's nothing to hide here, but that's a bad excuse for not encrypting...

Except there is no way to support HTTPs without ending up with people sharing https:// links that won't work for non-HTTPs users.

I really wish SSL/TLS would have used something like starttls. And yes, that means needing HSTS preload (or better yet a DNS-based alternative) to prevent downgrade attacks, but we do need that with https:// anyway.

Like non https users cannot remove the s manually?

To prevent your ISP/public wifi provider/other jokers from inserting ads and malware into the sites your visit.

I’ll accept the risk and not live in fear.

It's not an idle fear. Before https there were ISPs that would literally insert ads and other javascript into returned pages. Beyond security itself, that kind of thing can break the content.

There was also content filtering. Imagine your home internet being scanned and filtered like some locked down corporate network. Ewh.

> It's not an idle fear. Before https there were ISPs that would literally insert ads and other javascript into returned pages.

In some countries known for lacking consumer rights.

Sadly, that's most countries. (or at least, most people live in such a country)

To be fair, a lot of those consumer rights had to be realized and invented first - after the corporations went too far. Think GDPR and co, if companies weren't so thirsty for danger and loading webpages full of trackers, it would never have (needed to) be made.

(France) When I was a kid, 40 years ago, we had a good consumer protection. The warranty period was 1 year.

Now we have the same good protections, the warranty period is 2 years.

So some countries had it for a very long time, it is rather a matter of culture I believe.

In some countries (Australia for example), the horse came _before_ the cart.

This is also what CloudFlare is doing, is it not?

What possible reason could one have to avoid HTTPS whenever possible? I really do not understand this mindset.

Being brave is cool and all but it's a weird adage; I'm not afraid of malware or ads, but I'd still prefer to not get them.

It's an anti-vaxxer statement too; I'm not afraid of the 'rona either, but I'd rather not get it if it's all the same to you.

Without it, your ISP can see what pages you're visiting, files you are downloading, and your searches if they're in the URL. So the same reason any other site would need it?

So they can see me download Oregon Trail from this website. Mine that data, in sure there’s gold there!

What’s the practical cost to having it?

From the horses mouth:

"CSS, JavaScript and HTTPS are not required. This site works in text and vintage browsers."

There's a difference between not requiring HTTPS and not supporting it at all.

Indeed. That difference is the unncessary additional work in supporting it.

Ahhh!!!

I 100% get that. So you can boot up some old computer and grab retro files. Love it.

Practical “cost” is that it raises the bar on clients wanting to access the material, some of which could be very old I suppose.

That cost only exists if you enforce https, which is different from supporting https.

Yeah! And get rid of those pesky switches too, hubs are all we need!

Wish there was some way to describe a title using some really generic words and get a series of probabilities. I've been searching for this PC game from the mid to late 90s but I am having so much trouble describing it. It was some sort of science fiction point and click game that was released around the Windows 95/98 era and was discounted at places like Caldor. I got rid of the CD because it kept crashing randomly under Windows 95/98. Really regret throwing away a lot of CDs back then. Other than posting these vague descriptions here I don't know what else I can do other that waiting for Elon Musk's brain computer and then maybe I can download my brain one day and try to sift through its contents to find some more clues.

I have a distinct memory of there being a BBS client for either the Apple II or maybe the IIGS called something like "Graphical BBS". I'm pretty sure that it used the Apple II hires mode. But I can't find any evidence that it existed for the Apple II series and I've been searching off and on for years.

Wait... I just searched again. I'm not crazy. It was called HBBS and it got added to archive.org last year:

https://archive.org/details/apple2_hbbs

Oh, no, its author (Matthew Dornquast) passed away earlier this year:

https://www.startribune.com/obituaries/detail/0000416768/

Jason Scott (textfiles.com) posted about his passing at the time:

https://nitter.net/textfiles/status/1490157005805395971

Well, now I'm bummed. I found what I was looking for all these years and sadly learned its author died much too young.

:-(

Never heard of this before. Thanks. I was active in the scene then and never came across a graphical Apple 2e BBS.

I have the same problem; I've been trying for over 25 years to find a game I vaguely remember from my childhood. It's unclear if what I'm looking for was ever formally published. To be honest as soon as I saw @textfiles tweet about this new search engine, I got irrationally excited thinking I might be able to find it here, but how do I describe this in a way anyone will understand?

I'll give it a shot. In the late 80s, my dad bought an 8088 XT clone and "somehow" got some games. We had a bunch of the popular Sierra/AGI adventure games, Hugo's House of Horrors, etc. This game was in the same vein, but way way more primitive.

It's a DOS game. I believe it would have been made between 1980 and 1988. I remember it as a text adventure, but with non-interactive full-screen graphics (e.g. appears like Sierra games, but you can't move the player, only issue text commands). I remember it as monochrome (bright white on dark black background) despite my computer supporting at least CGA. I remember the commands you type being entirely in uppercase (LOOK DOOR, PRESS BUTTON). I remember the protagonist waking up on an alien spaceship, and by far the strongest memory I remember is there being an elevator with up and down buttons you could press to go to different floors of the spaceship. I vaguely remember the game being called ALIEN (as in, I could type ALIEN to start it; so, ALIEN.COM maybe??)

I don't expect to ever figure this out, and have mostly gaslit myself about this ever existing. I actually asked /r/tipofmytongue or some similar subreddit about 10 years ago to no avail. If anyone on hacker news has any clues to help with this I would be so grateful and would buy you a beverage.

p.s. @nebula8804, my guess for your holy grail is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_(1997_video_game)

I played a ZX Spectrum game called Alien Research Centre which fits this description : https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/software/text-adventures...

I can’t find any evidence it was a port of an earlier DOS game though.

I have the same problem trying to find a graphics adventure-style video game for 8-bit Apple called "Necromancer" that was not the game of the same title for 8-bit Atari and C64. Rather than a perspective view, graphics gave a bird's eye view. Ridiculously, I remember being impressed with the graphic representation of the necromancer's keep, which was just a little hollow square on the screen. Played it a lot in 1980, or possibly as late as 1982. I've only been looking for it for about 15 years. Seems to have disappeared because not even the expert 8-bit Apple folks can find it. It doesn't help that Google search has gotten a lot worse in the last 15 years. I've looked so hard at various times, just thinking about it now give me a headache.

Possibly it was not called Necromancer, but Wilderness Campaign? Game features a necromancer's castle: https://www.mobygames.com/game/apple2/wilderness-campaign

Or perhaps "The Eternal Dagger", which has a necromancer's cave: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/appleii/577550-the-eternal-dag...

Old computer magazines (many now available at the Internet Archive) might help you here --- look for advertisements or reviews.

Alien? https://oldgamesdownload.com/alien-dos/

https://ifdb.org/search?searchbar=alien

Thank you for the suggestion. This definitely gets closer to the visual design but the operation of the game was more like Myst. Ie. CGI generated pictures in the same style as Blade Runner that you would click to traverse through with occasional FMVs involving real humans (and randomly the game would crash)

This helps narrow it down so much appreciated for the suggestion.

Ask at the Scummvm forums: https://forums.scummvm.org/

OFC they may know it because, doh, they are reimplementing engines since forever.

Alien Fires 2199 AD[0] matches some of your description, however it doesn't seem to have a traditional adventure game text input, nor is it started with "alien". It does have an elevator though.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4jDansDpts

'Strange Odyssey" perhaps?

No more details? Don’t you have at least some blurry images in your mind or particular scenes?

E.g. there are games that I couldn’t remember, one was a quest(?) in a set of pictures and a submarine, dark tones, mysterious. I remember a full outside view of it and then few screens inside.

Another was a dos game that had a fullscreen map of some galaxy and a cursor in a form of a torn hand. Five blobs below the map were unnamed(?) buttons on a strange panel. One button sent you flying through a “canyon” on a selected planet, which was drawn as a set of simple \_/ planes slightly offset from each other, synthwave style-ish but much simpler. I believe it was an early rogue like, but I was too young and knew no english to understand it.

I don’t get how one can remember something but not have any details except a period of release.

I think that would be "Captain Blood"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5ryVEM6Ses

Omg, thank you so much!

Glad you found the game you were looking for. Funny enough the sequel to this game was also purchased by me at the same store around the same time (Caldor)

Commander Blood: https://youtu.be/e9nOYM6nSXo?t=39

With an intro like that I could NEVER forget this one. That and the fact that this game did not crash constantly like my missing game did lol.

Too bad it didn't sell well, those French dev create the most unique stuff but sometimes it is too unique for the mainstream.

Wow.. that soundtrack is distinctive!

Off to listen to Oxygène.

I cannot edit my original post but your comment and others have gotten me to clarify one thing. The graphical style is reminiscent of 90s CGI rendered images. Example: https://i.imgur.com/YknNA31.png

Honestly I cannot remember scenes correctly. It was super unique to me at the time but the constant crashes prevented me from playing it throughly even though it remained in my mind.

Another thing I can add was that there was FMV scenes with humans I think. I also think there were cyberpunk elements but not sure. I specifically chose the above CGI image because it reminds me of the game.

When I say point and click I mean a game like how Myst operates.

My hope is that if I ever find it, with my tech skills that I didn't have as a kid, I can hopefully repair the game so it does not crash(or at least research if someone else has fixed it)

EDIT: Others have kindly gotten me to think of more details of this game. I am collecting them here:

1) The game shipped on a CD, I think the CD had a lot of "Blue" on it. As in the label had a lot of the color Blue. Sorry, I'm trying to dig deep into my head as much as I can.

2) The game was a point and click in the style of Myst. Specifically pre-rendered CGI Images where you would click to progress through the level. Occasional FMVs with real humans would appear.

3) It has a similar setting to Blade Runner (1997): https://youtu.be/9KSqIDxtB4U?t=2427 but again the game didn't operate like Blade Runner, it operated like Myst.

4) This was definitely some sort of Win32 application (ie. runs on Windows 95/98 and not DOS) and so the graphics imitate a game like Myst and not those old VGA DOS games.

The Journeyman Project? http://thejourneymanproject.com/

One of the greatest games of that time and genre. I still have the CD box set. Need to dig it out!

I know you insist that it was a win32 game, but apart from that Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure seems to fit your description really well, even down to the blue disc. https://www.mobygames.com/game/aliens-a-comic-book-adventure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSHTQSc6iGI

For some reason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberia_(video_game) comes to mind, but that's a wild guess.

Reminds me of the Zork games- most of them are fantasy, but the covers were quite blue, and I think Zork: Grand Inquisitor was a bit more cyberpunky? I only played Return to Zork.

Martian Memorandum?

Almost sounds like you could be describing Starflight...?

https://youtu.be/GaYIk3MIFGI

Check out the map around 15:00 and the planet landing around 16:21.

No that seems more like the DOS era. This was definitely some sort of Win32 application (ie. runs on Windows 95/98 and not DOS)

See my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33258294

Thanks for the suggestion though!

I meant the second one, the dos game you mentioned. Glad you found the first one though I'm curious what the second would be..

Haha, I suspect both of you misread usernames/replies itt ;)

Space Quest IV? https://www.mobygames.com/game/space-quest-iv-roger-wilco-an... Or V? https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/space-quest-v-the-next-mu... Or VI? https://www.mobygames.com/game/space-quest-6-roger-wilco-in-...

"Science fiction point and click" is very vague. You don't remember any further detail? You might be surprised at how good people on the Internet are at tracking down obscure information like this given just a few hints.

I am sorry I haven't been able to provide more info. I have collected more info at this comment after other suggested ideas that helped me provide more details.

[1]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33258294

Exactly. /r/tipofmytongue is an incredible community.

Have you browsed through this list?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Point-and-click_adven...

I would suggest finding a forum devoted to either that style of game, or games from that time period, and just do a brain dump. I bet someone will know exactly what game you're talking about.

Some useful information would be: When is the earliest date you remember playing it? Or, when is a date where you are positive the game had been made at that point?

What did the graphics look like? Do you remember anything about any intros or loading screens?

Anything more specific than sci-fi? Space? Aliens? Was it dark/scary, light-hearted, dramatic, etc?

Do you remember any lines, characters, game mechanics, or plot points from it?

Over at archive.org they have quite a large list of old PC games.

https://archive.org/details/classicpcgames

I would try a linear search for the relevant year/system/genre combinations on MobyGames, e.g.: https://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/1995/windows/adventur...

Certainly tedious, but maybe your best bet, with such a vague description.

A few people have mentioned /r/tipofmytongue, but you'll do better at /r/tipofmyjoystick; specifically for games.

Beneath a steel sky? Innocent until caught? I have no mouth yet I must scream? You're really not giving us much to work with.

I have collected more info here after others game me ideas to help narrow it down:

[1]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33258294

While all those games are from the 90s. I must stress that this was definitely a Win32 game: ie. Has to run on Windows 9x and cannot run on DOS.

Maybe ask on https://gaming.stackexchange.com/, I've seen similar questions on some other stack exchange sites though idk if it's allowed on gaming specifically.

My favorite game matching that description is lucasarts "The Dig"

This was my first thought as well! I was weirdly obsessed with that game. It crashed all the time, so that part fits. I originally had the demo on CD, I think it came with X-Wing vs Tie Fighter or one of those other Lucasarts games.

I added more info here after others helped get more out of my head

[1]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33258294

The game was definitely a Win32 application so it wouldn't have the style of "The Dig"

It may be worth trying the /r/tipofmytongue subreddit.

/r/tipofmyjoystick

I saw an article that said, 50% of all fossil fuel emissions has been generated since 1992[1], I wonder what percentage of the whole would be occupied by digital content created up to, say 1995?

Nowadays you go anywhere and dozens of people would be snapping and videoing away. Apropos video, I guess since I wrote "digital content" above, I'm ignoring that there's probably dozens of years' worth of film, video and audio recordings that were made before 1995...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/opinion/india-heat-wave-p...

Looking for a game, think it was under Dos but could’ve been under Windows as well, I don’t remember that part and don’t remeber the game’s name. Vaguely it could be mine something… The game was mouse centric by controlling a spaceship’s velocity and direction. Spaceship had inertia and slowing down would be done in the reverse direction with the mouse. The spaceship was small/white against a dark space backdrop. There were some items to collect but also mines or enemy ships to avoid. The walls were either bouncy or you’d crush your ship into them. I think you’d be able to shoot too. It was pretty well done and quite engaging. I remember I was having lots of fun playing this with my friends back then.

That kinda sounds like a version of XPilot ¹).

¹) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPilot

¹) http://www.xpilot.org

Make sure to check "Home of the Underdogs".

Sounds like "Gravity Force" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXG5Bu_xmQU

Could it have been some variant of Lunar Lander[1]? The gameplay sounds a bit like Solar Jetman[2] which was one of my favorites on the NES.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_(video_game_genre...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Jetman

Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarch aka Virus

Sounds like astroids… almost.

Check out Space Hawk (2000), Gravity Force, AUTS and V-Wing.

Clear memory of this too now. It's right on the tip of my hippocampus...

Your description reminds me of Crystal Quest / Crystal Raider.

Descent? Descent 2?

Sounds like an Omega Race clone/variant

Hover, Windows 95?

Subspace?

I loved that game. I’m still surprised how that was free, genuinely fun, and even unique compared to todays games.

After all these years I'm still looking for my first demo and shareware DOS CD-ROM that I had as a child, circa 1998. It was a weird compilation. Everything from AMIGA-like demo's to playable shareware CGA stuff such as Hugo's House of Horrors, Monster Bash, Keen and 4D Boxing. I have not given up, but I'm aware that the chances of me finding a copy are extremely rare.

You have already checked cdbbsarchive[0]?

[0] https://archive.org/details/cdbbsarchive

No, didn't knew that one! This can be a fun evening. Thanks for this. It's like searching a needle in a haystack, but I'm sure to check it out.

Thanks to that I was able to locate a game[0] I had been searching for for years by investigating likely candidates on a "1000+ Games!"[1] or somesuch CD.

[0] It was Space Exploration Mission Alpha[2]. A lunar lander clone where you play as aliens visiting all of the Sol system planets. I never did find the non-shareware Space Exploration Mission Bravo, so if anyone knows Jeffrey R. Marken please drop me a line, I'll gladly pay the $16.75.

[1] A bald-faced lie

[2] https://archive.org/details/SpaceExplorationMissionAlpha_102...

Tangential, but does anyone know if there are archives of mp3.com or acidplanet? There are a few songs from there that I want to track down.

IA received and posted a dump of MP3.com dated just prior to their takeover by CNET a few months back: https://archive.org/details/mp3-com-rescue-barge

Possibly you could try https://files.scene.org/

Have you tried Soulseeek?

Well if anyone is taking requests, I’ve been looking for something from a 1990s British Mac magazine coverdisc or coverdisk (suspect the latter): it was an advert for a Canon Bubblejet printer - I don’t think it was a video as such, more of an animation. It explained the bubble mechanism of the printer and played a cool song throughout.

Were those the ones in jewel cases?

If I knew the cover art for that issue it wouldn't be hard to look through my parent's stacks of Mac Magazine cds.

Possibly although the more I think about it, I think it was on a floppy disk rather than a CD.

This by any chance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccEpeuqdHGM

No, it was an animation, like an early Flash animation. No voiceover (that would have been too advanced).

Thank you for looking though :)

There is an image of an old friend who passed away in the late 90s that was posted on the web at some point. It has since been lost. Could it be in there? Was some AOL site I think.

These are all from old floppy disc and CD-ROMs so the chances are slim, but not impossible I guess.

Lots of porn. Lots of audio samples. Lots of wacky little image files. 10/10 I would visit again

Fantastic. Is there a breakdown on storage used by year? A long time ago, I was going through the 5.25 & 3/4 floppy collection of someone who use to run a computer shop and kept a copy of everything, and was amused at the idea they could all fit on a few DVDs.

Unfortunately, you have now made it easier for corpo IP and copyright parsing of the collection. They will undoubtedly butcher the archives using this clean tool to find anything still profitable in their eyes.

90s AOL used to have this repository of artwork images, one of them was a ghost in a church. I always wished I could find it again, I've accepted I never will.

Is the source code of Red Alert 2 in here?

Looks like search is down, but browsing still functions.

Wow. This could be a great resource for music samples.

Too bad it's all mostly junk though.

It's bulk archival material, so that's expected. Even with a good search function, it's a huge challenge to properly catalog as many as 91.7M files.

Can I download this and host it locally?

zzt is amazing. i don't think i discovered it until the 2010s. made some fun puzzles that only i played

It was probably my first foray into programming, it must've been the mid 90's. My dad had a subscription on the Dutch version of c't, and for a while they would ship a CD with a Shockwave menu to browse through the contents (shareware). But, on the CD itself they shipped a load of other stuff - including ZZT levels.

Probably the most impressive one of the lot was Code Red, there was so many interactive items and random events just in the starting area.

Slashdotted.

Had no idea the amount of NSFW poker games there were in the 80s/90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry (possibly NSFW)

11 million copies sold since the 80s.

Article is not NSFW, and the titular character looks like Fredo from The Godfather.

Ha, you're right. I never thought about that lol

And I am directly responsible for an uncountable number of them :-)

You created a bunch of them?(!)

Cool website by the way!!

But did you find the space invaders game?

Samantha Fox Strip Poker on C64. ohhh yeah

It stands to reason: sex + gambling.

There's something for everyone!

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