Anyone interested/collect those 90s shovelware addon discs for PC games?

romeroman · Post by **romeroman** » Tue May 23, 2023 8:12 pm

Context:
Popular 90s FPS games like Doom, Doom II, Heretic, Hexen, ROTT, Duke 3D, Quake, etc had a lot of user made levels and other content even within years of their release. A lot of it was put up online, except internet use/access wasn't quite "there" for the general population. So a whole bunch of companies would sell these unlicensed products where they downloaded tons of this fan-made content and burned them to CDs. They're generally looked down upon due to their mostly really poor quality. Recent times, though, it kind of became a thing to digitally archive these. A lot of these contain really old/early user-made contact that has long been wiped from the internet, so they're the only way to access that part of the history. You can see the doomwiki (doomwiki.org, not the wikia/fandom) pages for List of Commercial compilations and also Shovelware Cover Art) to get more of an idea.

Anyway, from all that, I was wondering if anyone in this community has a niche interest with these...

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Thu May 25, 2023 5:12 am

Not really collecting them, but I have a few such releases for various games (not for DOOM as I don't have that game, but for Unreal and others). Not exactly shovelwares, but community-produced addons released on CD.

darkone777 · Post by **darkone777** » Fri Apr 11, 2025 11:50 am

I've got a small collection of those old shovelware discs! They're definitely a mixed bag, but it's cool to see some of the old-school mods and levels that would've been lost without these compilations. The quality is hit or miss, but I think that's part of the charm. It's kind of like a time capsule for early modding culture. If you're into the history of gaming, they're worth having around, even if it's just for the novelty.

butterburp1 · Post by **butterburp1** » Mon May 12, 2025 10:46 am

Kris Asick has a 300 (!) video series on the Softkey 2000 collection. Just look up "Shovelware Diggers" on Youtube. He finds a few gems here and there, but of course most of it is garbage, which makes for some entertaining moments. A neat feature of this collection: it has both DOS and Windows 3.x games.

In general I really like these collections, as well as searching for DOS/Win3 junk on BBS's (yes, those still exist) and archives like Simtel (although that one specializes in non-games). If you're easily amused like I am, you hardly need to play anything else. Plus they run on even old potato computers like mine.

What free/shareware titles do you like to play? I mostly look for casual stuff like word and card games, but also have a soft spot for the demo versions of Doom, Descent, Jill of the Jungle (full game now available free on GOG). Elevators From Hell also comes to mind...it's rather stressful to play, but fun to watch people stumble through.