Quote Originally Posted by mrmark0673 View Post
Sounds reasonable, but again, I don't know SHIT about PC stuff.

Could this be "the" gold master? Are there usually multiple masters made? What media are they usually created on?

I'm just looking for as much raw info as possible on this thing so I can confidently say what it is.
Uh, no. Generally, replication facilities use glass masters (usually one per production line with several in reserve if the master becomes damaged) for commercial releases, so anything on a CD-R is typically for internal use, testing or distribution to press, company employees, etc...I went through my inventory and I have 7 Microsoft labeled pre-release CD-Rs for PC games and dozens more from other companies like Interplay, Activision, EA, etc.... A couple blue, one red, several black and one yellow on the Microsoft ones. They are currently in storage, but my recollection is that they looked identical to what you have pictured there with the difference being the printed sticker was in different places and contained version numbers or the name of who it was pressed for and the part that's blue was one of the other colors listed. Not sure if Microsoft had some kind of color scheme for what color the label on the CD-R would be or if it was just random. In any event, I just don't know many people that collect them. All of mine came from the days when I was writing PC game reviews in the 90s or buying lots of PC games from developers.