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  • Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing! And say, can you tell me what Quake 2

  • Diablo, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, and Flight Simulator 98 have in common?

  • Well other than all being awesome examples of awesome games from the late

  • 90s, the answer is: the Hardcore Gamer Resource Kit by Sonoma Multimedia! Which

  • is somebody I'm not really familiar with but you know this just looks like any

  • number of things that you might have seen in the 90s that came from Wizard

  • Works or GT or whoever. This one in particular comes to me from my friend

  • Jonathan who found this I guess while out thrifting or something, and he just

  • saw the cover and was just like "that is the most hideous thing I've ever seen

  • you need to have it." *chuckles* Thank you very much because I would agree. If only because

  • this very much captures the hardcore gamer aesthetic as I am familiar with it.

  • That is the face of the hardcore PC gamer personified. You get items for

  • Quake 2, Diablo, Flight Simulator 98, and Heroes of Might

  • and Magic 2. What a strange selection, I'm not really sure why they picked those

  • four. I mean they were popular but it's kind of an eclectic mix if you ask me.

  • Just all sorts of stuff that was probably downloaded from like, forums and

  • boards, and you know just whatever. AOL games, I don't know. Anywhere that

  • you could find these kind of things that presumably a lot of fans made and then

  • they just packed it onto a CD or two and shipped it out. It's got three CDs in

  • fact! I also like this section of 3Dfx Mania -- has utilities, accelerators, tweaks,

  • add-ons, screen savers, and demos, and apparently much much more, mm.

  • Let's just open this up and see what we find inside!

  • Quite a beefy box and it's got some tape on it. Oh! Okay well this is this is a

  • thing. Here's Sonoma Multimedia from Petaluma, California. Hmm wonder what else

  • they did I have not looked into them at all. Ah there's a special offer here from

  • them "our best selling games available to you at 14.95!" So yeah you can see some of

  • these other sort of packs that I was talking about that other companies were

  • also very infamous for doing. And yeah they just mixed in all these popular-ish

  • games together including some shovelware packs apparently look at that: "Universe

  • of 3,000 Games." It has electronic manuals mmm how advanced. And then yeah there's a

  • whole bunch of legal stuff which is fine. Cool.

  • Apparently we get this guide here which is the "Hottest PC Games" compiled and

  • edited by Michael Knight. I'm quite curious to see what that is but first

  • let's take a look at these. We've got different CDs here. So this one is

  • just the enhanced 3Dfx files. Yeah we're gonna drop this into a Voodoo

  • system of some kind to try it out. We have the game patches here -- it's just

  • just patches! That's awesome. And then we have add-ons, levels, and scenarios for

  • all the games. Now those aren't quite split up how I thought they would be but

  • I don't really know what I was expecting. This is quite intriguing I must say. This

  • is really what was adding a lot of the heft to this box. So it looks like we

  • have -- what are the hottest PC games of 1998... Quake, Quake 2, Diablo 2, Command & Conquer:

  • Red Alert, Flight Simulator 98 Age of Empires,

  • Riven, Hexen, and Ultima Online. I mean you know if these were the games that

  • you were interested in like, all of these in one, that's not bad because I remember

  • buying a lot of individual guides. Or at least going to Barnes & Noble and

  • looking through a lot of individual guides. Rarely bought them unless they

  • were like, Duke Nukem related or something. So it really is just a few

  • pages of tips for UO. Some easter eggs, tips for the recently deceased, ghostly

  • pranks, and get the latest updates by friggin' going online.

  • Well that's what that is. All right let's go move on over to the Windows 98

  • machine and boot these up and see if they work!

  • First up here I'm going to start with this game patches CD which seems like

  • it's probably gonna be the most boring one, so let's just do it. And you can

  • start out by selecting other Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 or NT. And the setup

  • program says it's from somewhere named Walnut Creek. Thought it was Sonoma

  • Multimedia just a minute ago but alright. And yeah when you started up you get

  • this WinView program which is really just a browser with a little bit of

  • extra information. And yeah it's full of exactly what you'd expect: a whole

  • lot of game patches for DOS and Windows games. I admit that I really didn't think

  • about patching my games in the 90s except when something really didn't work.

  • And then you know I would seek it out online or something, but even then

  • getting them could be a pain because of limited and slow internet access. So I

  • could see why this had its uses. Also neat that there's a Gravis Ultrasound

  • game patches mode which adds GUS support to all sorts of things. I'll

  • probably be using some of these in a later video. There's also an MS-DOS

  • version of this program which is the same thing, it just lets you access and

  • look at all the game patches. You could do this in Explorer as well, it really

  • doesn't matter. Most amusing to me though on this CD is this Walnut Creek CD-ROM

  • website backup for cdrom.com. Apparently that was what they owned at

  • the time. Check out this Internet Mega-Pak!

  • 6 CD-ROMs! $70 for all sorts of world-wide-web stuff. Mm utilities. Also listed in here

  • is this 3Dfx Mania pack for $30 which actually is included in this Hardcore

  • Gamer Resource Kit. Which effectively means this kit is a shovelware pack of

  • shovelware packs. Speaking of the 3Dfx stuff let's get to the 3Dfx

  • disc which is full of all sorts of fascinating things with 3Dfx

  • capabilities. And I went straight for the screen savers because I was really

  • curious about these, especially with names like spaghetti,

  • butterflies, chrome, and a couple of them that say "sorry no info." They don't even

  • know what it is they just put it on the CD! Once I got them extracted though

  • they're just executables and it says that they will be converted to a real

  • screensaver soon. So yeah these are pretty much just demos

  • for 3Dfx mode/OpenGL stuff, not actually screen savers. And I don't even know if

  • it's even that because this one wouldn't even run at all. Spaghetti just was

  • spaghetti code apparently, and just shut down my computer. I had to do a hard reset.

  • Next one I tried up was flutterbys with the possessive apostrophe there, hmm.

  • Anyway this one started up with a 3Dfx logo, that's promising. But then *laughs* It just

  • ran way too fast! So whatever it was using to simulate

  • this swarm of butterflies and fog, it was just not timed correctly with this

  • system. And this Impact screensaver which was supposed to be a Starfox-style game...

  • It didn't do anything correct at all, though I could see the Starfox type of

  • ship thing sort of through the corruption there. I'm guessing that these

  • screen savers are made for Voodoo 1s, Voodoo Rushes, and things like that.

  • Not exactly a 2 or 3. I have a 3 in this system, which there's a lot of

  • incompatibilities with certain things like this from like 96, 97, so oh well.

  • Went on to check out the games section though and there's a whole lot of freeware

  • and shareware demo kind of games for 3Dfx stuff in here. Again I'm not

  • entirely sure what's going to work and what won't so I just booted up some of

  • them starting with Banzai Bug. And it didn't actually detect 3D acceleration

  • so again I'm guessing is made for like a Voodoo 1 that's just not seeing it. But

  • anyway here we go. "There's gotta be some crumbs around here somewhere! Look, we're

  • in this together, ace. You and me!" Yeah this is pretty much like a six degrees

  • of freedom shooter. But you're a bug mosquito kind of thing just going around

  • shooting blobs with other blobs and it's not great. But um you know it's kind of

  • appealing in that weird flat-shaded kind of 3D way. Many of the other demos didn't

  • work at all, here's one though that I could get to work.

  • Excalibur 2555 AD, the demo for that. It said it was going to run in 3Dfx mode

  • but it's very much not, it's running so badly and so slowly and no 3Dfx

  • logo at the beginning. So yeah again I'm guessing this is made for like a Voodoo 1

  • so I'm just gonna skip out on the rest of this for now and move on to the

  • next disc. The final disc, the add-ons and levels for Quake and all the other things.

  • Although curiously it started up and it just called this the Q2 Tool CD-ROM and

  • all it showed was stuff for Quake 2. No mention of Flight Sim, Diablo, Heroes of

  • Might and Magic 2 that it was supposed to have. Just none of that's here. Kind of

  • makes me think that the other stuff was an afterthought. Anyway let's look at the

  • Quake stuff because: Quake stuff. And check this out remember Plus! Themes for

  • Windows 9x? I had to try this Quake one out and wow does this bring back memories of

  • themed themes.

  • Silly fonts and weird colors and animated cursors and sound effects everywhere.

  • Somehow this seems like a more authentic

  • Windows 98 experience than even just the basic

  • Windows themes. Also decided to try out these demos and movies, in fact this one

  • here, BOMBER.ZIP, "the historic first ever Quake 2 motion picture." Yeah this is

  • machinima before machinima was a thing. At least in theory because when I try to

  • install it and run it it wouldn't do it. I can play Quake 2 perfectly fine but

  • any time I tried to run one of these demos it said it was trying to look for

  • the CD. I edited a bunch of files, I tried some patches, I tried other mods and

  • downloads, and things that it came with. Not a single one of them would boot up

  • with my version of Quake 2. I don't know what's going on maybe it's a hardware

  • issue, so I just got really annoyed after like an hour and moved on to the next

  • game. Which in this case is Heroes of Might and Magic 2. It includes some

  • utilities, some levels for different Magic games, and some episode sets. I was

  • just gonna try this save game editor for HOMM2 here and give myself a crap load

  • of gold. Booted up my "need money" save game here

  • and as you can see in the bottom right: I have a crap load of gold and was able to

  • recruit a whole bunch of units and gave myself a very unfair advantage at the

  • beginning of this game. And yay, victory by cheating!

  • I feel successful without any moral qualms whatsoever. Okay let's check out

  • the Flight Simulator folder here which has audio, flight sim 5, and flight sim 6,

  • and no mention of Flight Sim 98. In fact, all of these files? Most of them are just

  • like, skins and basic scenery packs, and a couple utilities for flight sim five

  • and six. 98 is version 6.1 and I don't know man, I tried to get this stuff to

  • work in 98. None of it would. None of it showed up at all.

  • I had the scenery go through and look for stuff, I followed the instructions

  • for the mods, none of them worked. It never actually found anything so I don't

  • know why they mentioned Flight 98 being compatible with this because it

  • doesn't seem to be. There wasn't much here anyway so I don't really care.

  • Diablo though, well there was quite a bit in here. I've never actually modded

  • Diablo before but there's a whole lot of files man. I don't know what exactly all

  • of these do. Bunch of items, it looks like some trainers for very specific versions

  • of Diablo which is different than the one I had so I couldn't try it. But I did

  • end up trying out these save games because I don't know, I was curious what

  • kind of characters it gave me. And check out these names: Bane Longshot, Mr. Dabbelhand,

  • Bambi Fastab, Sizzle Finger! Man, these

  • are wonderful names. I had to go with Mr. Dabbelhand though, and it turns out

  • Mr. Dabbelhand is pretty dapper.

  • And dabbles in all sorts of magic and cool things that made him really effective.

  • *laughs* I don't know I just liked his name. And it's

  • Diablo so I ended up playing this for like an hour. Even though I just needed

  • like a minute of footage. Well that's Diablo and that is the Hardcore Gamer

  • Resource Kit! Not really worth seeking out to be honest. It's kind of a stupid

  • pack but at the same time it's cool, I'm glad it exists. It's neat going through

  • and seeing what these sort of compilation/shovelware stuff of

  • downloaded goodies they made available back then. And if nothing else it has

  • some absolutely stupid ugly hideous artwork that is amazing! And awful at the

  • same time. But that's it for this video. I hope you enjoyed this rambling look back

  • at this weird piece of software. Thanks again to Jonathan for picking this up.

  • This was fun. And if you had fun with his video then

  • awesome! Might enjoy some of my others. There's new ones every Monday and Friday

  • here on LGR. And as always thank you very much for watching.

Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing! And say, can you tell me what Quake 2

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