Memories of Downloading Games in 2000

The year was 2000 - or was it 1999? It was in the good old days of the Internet. When it was still somewhat new and special. Special, in the sense that not everyone had access to it. Unlike today, you had to be clever to find the good stuff. 

Being the teenager I was, I'd spend most of my time downloading game demos from various sites that do not exist anymore. They're just distant memories now. I remember how exciting and endlessly compelling it was to open Netscape Navigator or an old ass version of Internet Explorer, then head to weird sites from which you could download game demos and whatnot. Anything could happen!!

I'm going to share a couple of memories I have of those bygone days. 

First, I was able to trace back one of the best sites I'd download stuff from. It was "Electric Games". Here are 2 screenshots: 

Look at that list, man. Doom, Doom95. Duke Nukem. Holy cow the memories. 

I used to go through all the lists, trying to find hidden gems. Sometimes you'd get lucky and download an awesome game you didn't know before. At other times, you'd wait for hours for a shitty game you'd uninstall a minute later. You know, you couldn't go on Youtube or Twitch to watch a quick gameplay video. You couldn't even look for images like you'd do today with Google Images. There was no Google! 

You could probably visit game review sites, but keep in mind that you were using a 56K modem connection. It was super slow. So you'd have to spend 5, 10, or 15 minutes to find a review for the game you're looking for. Most of the time it wasn't even worth it, so it's not something I'd tend to do. 

Some of the games were freeware. You were able to download the full game for free. Others, like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, for example, were limited demos. Demos were often pretty good. In Doom's case, you had the whole 1st episode of the game. Duke 3D had the first 3 levels if I'm not mistaken. 

When you think about it, Doom's 1st episode is made of 9 levels. It's a pretty long demo if you ask me. And all the difficulty levels were available, except Nightmare. So you could play the whole 1st episode on Ultra-Violence with no limit whatsoever. Pretty good deal, dude. 

Here's a screenshot of the Doom95 launcher:

It was a great tool to select which WAD file you wanted to play, as well as select a starting level when needed. It was a nice addition to an already perfect game, what more could you ask? Its interface is burned into my mind forever. *chef's kiss*

Talking of Doom, I also remember downloading a couple of WADs like TNT and Plutonia Experiment on Kazaa Media Desktop or Limewire. You'd rarely find them on download websites, so P2P applications such as these were a pretty good spot to find official WAD files for free. 

I remember downloading the demo for the original Grand Theft Auto on Electric Games. Again, this was in 2000 using a 56K modem. That GTA demo was about 10MB in size, which seems ridiculous now. It took something like 2 or 3 hours to download, at least. A long time. It contained the full 1st city but you had a time limit of 400 seconds. You could play for 6 and a half minutes at a time. Then you'd close the game and try again.  

Oh, remember when you'd run over those little dudes running? GOURAGA! 

I downloaded Carmageddon too. The demo had only the first map, with a pretty short time limit as far as I can remember. You better hurry up, then! It was still a lot of fun as far as I can remember. And the controls were appallingly bad at best. 

I remember when I was in my first or second year of high school, they mentioned Carmageddon on TV, and said it was a super violent and messed up game in which you run over people for points and shit, that kids shouldn't play it, and so on and on. Being a dumb kid, I thought this was cool, so I told my parents that my friend had it and that I played a couple of times. My mom instantly said I'd never get that game and shouldn't play it at all, because it's too violent! Oops. LOL

Oh yeah, Shadow Warrior. That was a pretty gory game, even compared to Doom. My friend introduced me to it and we thought it was so badass. You could literally slash dudes in half with a katana sword. Playing these violent games as a kid felt incredible. It was the coolest thing ever, I kid you not. 

It was pretty dope, but not as good a Duke3D or Doom. Well, at least from my point of view. It didn't have that special little something Doom has. 

The first Warcraft game. It was far from perfect, but it was one of the first real-time strategy games. The grand-daddy of all the RTS games we've played since the 90s. It was pretty primitive back then, but it was awesome. Another relic. 

Just for reference, the right mouse button didn't order your units to move. It centered the map view. To move a unit, you'd have to go click the Move button in the left panel, then left-click your unit's destination. 

Also, I don't think you could scroll with the keyboard arrows. You'd have to either click on the minimap or mouse scroll with a twist: The mouse scroll required you to click on the screen's border, in order to scroll. 

It feels primitive and dumb, but again, this was the first game of its kind. Can you imagine? No one had thought of moving units with the right mouse button yet. Mind blown. 

I remember playing Deer Hunter 2 with my dad. It had crisp 3D graphics for that era. I don't think we downloaded it, though. I think we bought a burned copy from some guy at my dad's workplace. Back in those days, it was a pretty good way to get games without paying the full price... or paying at all. 

There were cheats in that game, one of them being infinite baits. You could basically throw a hundred baits on the ground to attract deers to your spot. 

Another hunting game was Rocky Mountain Trophy Hunter. It was a 2D hunting game. You'd move from one 2D landscape to another, looking for animals. If you spot one, you shoot it! When you're done, you can see your trophies in the trophy room, among other things. 

As you can see in the screenshot below, the landscapes looked pretty good. One of the downsides of that kind of simulation is that the background is always 100% still. So even a tiny, 16-pixels high animal stands out A LOT when it appears on the screen. 

It was still pretty cool, and I remember it being relaxing. You're not constantly gunning down hoards of demons like in Doom. Hunting wild animals require patience, subtlety, and skills. Like Deer Hunter 2, this game was able to capture that part of hunting. 

Okay, one last hunting game. One, in which you'd go bear hunting. Obviously, my dad and I were absolute apex gamers in 2000 so... you guessed it, it's the bear that was hunting us. I remember being scared shitless the first time we missed the bear and it ate us. The game's name is 3D Hunting Grizzly. And yep, it's a good name, because it's the bear that goes hunting! 

I'm not a hunter myself, but my father was back then. That's how I stumbled upon those games. Good memories. 

Another thing I wanted to share memories of, is WinZip and WinRar. Even though they still exist, 7-Zip kind of completely replaced them over time. They're both distant memories now. But man, were they awesome to use and instantly recognizable. Look at it. 

I remember pretty vividly not knowing how to use WinZip back in the day. I'd download the games I mentioned earlier, expecting an EXE setup. But some of them, especially the bigger ones, came in a ZIP file. For some reason, I wasn't able to get past the WinZip splash screen... What a noob. Didn't know how to open WinZip and access the files. Meh!

Little did I know, all I had to do was click "I agree" in order to gain access to the content of the ZIP file. Easy, right... The more you know! You could pay for it, but it was free all along. 

At some point, WinZip released an update or something, that made it pretty slow and sloppy on Windows 98. A friend of mine introduced me to WinRar, the golden standard of the years to come. The app everyone used but no one bought. What an absolute legend, a true classic right there. Take a look at that shit, man. 

The WinRar company still exists. I've heard over the years, that a tiny handful of very large companies around the world use paid versions of WinRar for some reason, and that's what allowed them to survive from the 90s up to now. It's pretty rad when you think about it. 

I was doing remote support for a client last week and we needed to unzip a file we downloaded. It opened with WinRar. Yep, it's still around! 

Have you seen the movie Encino man? Ever wondered about how you'd feel if you unearthed a caveman in your backyard? Well, download and run WinRar in 2022 and you'll feel exactly the same. You'll encounter a genuine relic from a bygone era. You're welcome! 

Okay, 7-Zip is the best equivalent nowadays, for sure, but I don't think I'll ever get all nostalgic about it. Unlike WinRar and old versions of WinZip, 7-Zip doesn't feel like it's literally from the dawn of time. 

Alright, that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane. Feel free to share your own memories! 

See ya! 

--Num7