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    Stuck in 1998 Cloud121's Avatar
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    Default PC "Launch Titles"

    Not sure if this should go into Classic or Modern gaming.


    Anyway, I like to collect launch titles for consoles. In fact, after my Resident Evil collection, I'd say collecting the launch titles for all my consoles is my second priority. I've gotten back pretty heavily into PC gaming this last year after taking ten years off. In building my collection, I've noticed that I don't have any "launch titles".


    The closest to launch titles I can think of are Halo 2 and Shadowrun for Vista. Perhaps Doom for Windows 95 (Does that even count? Afterall, Microsoft used it to try to legitimize Windows 95 as a gaming platform)? Why not games that represent launch of new technologies? What was the first game to truly take advantage of DirectX 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10? Same goes for OpenGL.


    My next guess for "launch titles" would be GPU pack-ins. Afterall, they are usually picked to showcase the new card. One example is Arkham City being included with 500 series nVidia GPUs last year, or Borderlands 2 being included with the 660 Ti just launched this week. I remember I got Earthseige 2 as a pack in with a GPU as a kid.


    But at the same time pack-ins and launch titles are two different things in my book.


    What do you all think?
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    Strawberry (Level 2)
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    I wouldn't count Doom because it's a DOS game. The game was popular before Windows 95 came around. Imo, the "launch title" for Windows 95 would be Command & Conquer. Came out shortly after Windows 95 launched and IIRC, it was marketed as a DOS and Windows game out of the box.

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    Red (Level 21) Jorpho's Avatar
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    I think one of the big "launch titles" for Windows 95 was Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, actually.

    The original, pre-DirectX release of Sonic CD was originally intended to show off PC hardware as an OEM release, such as with Packard Bell. See http://info.sonicretro.org/Jim_Treth...tember_2000%29 .

    There were a lot of pack-ins with video cards even before the era of 3D acceleration. I think a lot of sound cards (including Creative) included them too, and so did CD-ROM drives at the dawn of the multimedia fad. The best source for more information would be the magazines and advertisements of the era.
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    Kirby (Level 13) Griking's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jaruff View Post
    I wouldn't count Doom because it's a DOS game. The game was popular before Windows 95 came around. Imo, the "launch title" for Windows 95 would be Command & Conquer. Came out shortly after Windows 95 launched and IIRC, it was marketed as a DOS and Windows game out of the box.
    My first PC was an Apple IIc which came with Lemonade Stand so to me that's my launch game.

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    I wouldn't count Doom either as it came out in 1993. I downloaded it off Prodigy when it became available.

    There was a Mechwarrior 2 that came out around Win 95 launch as it was part if the Direct X demo disk stores were sent ( I worked at Sears at the time)

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    I wouldn't count Doom either as it came out in 1993. I downloaded it off Prodigy when it became available.

    There was a Mechwarrior 2 that came out around Win 95 launch as it was part if the Direct X demo disk stores were sent ( I worked at Sears at the time)

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    Strawberry (Level 2) sheath's Avatar
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    My Matrox Mystique 4MB graphics card came with specially designed versions of Mechwarrior 2, Demolition Derby 2 and a few other games that had enhanced textures and maybe lighting over the standard PC versions. I also own a version of Virtual On that will only run on a Pentium 1 and checks for MMX before it will even install. I would love to get this one running on any system past a Pentium 1 because it seemed to be nearly Model 2 perfect when I could run it.

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    I'm sure I can recall reading about numerous patches for the PC version of Virtual On, but I cannot seem to find them at the moment.
    "There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)

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    It would be awesome if there was one. It seems to just be a manual check for something specific to a Pentium 1 MMX chip. Otherwise later AMD and Intel processors should be more than compatible.

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    Eureka!
    http://web.archive.org/web/200503110.../Downloads.htm

    Download links don't always work on archive.org, but these do.
    "There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)

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