/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10990001
So like it was meant to look like the full retail product and sold as such? Through and through fraud. Small amount in the grand scheme of things, but I bet that the motherfucker who did that ripped off a number of people that way and made himself a nice penny.

Strictly selling the shareware of Wolfenstein 3D or Doom by itself wasn't that unusual though, iD even said it was fine to do that because they wanted to incentivize people to stock it and get it into people's hands, because they had strong confidence in the demo and expected fortunes in mail orders (and they were right).
This generally was for a really low price though, $10 or less, and was expected to be advertised as being just the demo. You could charge more, but since virtually anyone could get in on this (all you needed was a stack of floppies and a sharpy, really), you wouldn't want to price yourself out of it either. Plus, once you had your own shareware copy of the game you could share it freely with all your friends and family, no copy protection because sharing was the point.

I believe that iD actually didn't want people to use their official artwork for the cover or stuff, and this is why there was a lot of imitation and substitute artwork used as cover and sleeves for these discs and floppies, which John Romero actually collects, because he thinks they're neat and funny. Pic related was one for Wolfenstein 3D.

>>8496780
I still love this track to this day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh4mkb0r9T4