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    Early Alpha/Beta/demo versions

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    original machines material
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    • L
      lew
      last edited by lew

      Hi,

      I came here looking for a game from my childhood

      I believe that:
      a) It was an early demo I was playing as a child
      b) I still have that disc at my parent's house

      I'm not really sure why the f- it was even a thing but I came into possession of it sometime around 2003 by buing a brand-new copy of a niche Polish gaming magazine, or so I thought...

      After I removed the foil I noticed some things:

      1. The thick "magazine" was two-pages long with a cardboard inside
      2. Inside of the cardboard there were 8 (!) CDs
      3. All of them were from some german gaming magazine dated back to '97-'99
      4. None of them, including those metioned on the cover were full versions

      Other than the Machines i remember playing Half Life 1 (also a demo of a beta version, I think).

      I'm worried that ~20-year old disc can be hard if not impossible to read but even if so - I'm gonna keep you updated.
      And of course I won't be able to - I can send it by post to anyone willing to perform data recovery on their own.

      EDIT: I've just found the post Pisarz was talking about:
      https://www.gry-online.pl/S043.asp?ID=11665448
      Yeah, it is the same demo, the person who wrote it also had it from this shady "gaming magazine". :'D

      BTW. I think this topic should be renamed to "Early Alpha/Beta/demo versions" ^^

      PisarzP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • PisarzP
        Pisarz @lew
        last edited by

        @lew

        BTW. I think this topic should be renamed to "Early Alpha/Beta/demo versions" ^^

        Done!

        We currently have no information about this material, except @Aquarillis who said that still has some promotional material that was scanned a long time ago. The rest is scattered in this forum.

        The forum is not dead, but its activity is irregular.

        I don`t have the knowledge to manipulate the data from your disk, but some of us might be able to (@Judas @bilal @M123 @Hayden).

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • L
          lew
          last edited by lew

          A quick update.

          The good news is I haven't forgot about this thing. ;)
          The bad news is - I haven't found (yed) the disc I was talking about.

          Buuut, I stumbled upon other disc from the same issue of this gaming "magaine":
          wfw_cds.jpg
          I think (and hope!) that the disc with the demo is still somewhere at my parent's house. I'm gonna keep looking. :)

          According to the PCGames website Machines demo was present on the disc of the 05/1999 issue:
          http://www.pcgamesdatabase.de/pcgames.php?mag=pcgames&vol=05/1999#pcgames

          http://www.kultcds.com/index.php?id=pcgames&lang=en
          PCG0599.jpg

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • L
            lew
            last edited by lew

            Another update.

            I asked Moritz, the administrator of the Kult Cover Disks and he not only answered, but to my amazment - attached not one but three (!) versions of the demo! :D

            "I happen to have a few copies of PC Games 05/99 on my shelf. I quickly checked and found that is particular demo is also featured on PC Player 06/99 B and GameStar 06/99 Bonus CD. Its cab file is dated to 1999-02-23. A more common demo dated to 1999-01-14 can be found on the following CDs:
            PC Fun CD 49_2
            PC Action 04/99
            CDA (35) 04/99
            Gambler (28) 04/99A
            Generation 4 CD 121
            Generation 4 CD 139_1
            The Games Machine #060
            Reset #24 04/99
            Excalibur 69
            GameStar CZ 04/99 CD1
            Level 03/99
            Online Today 07/99
            Computer Games Strategy Plus #102

            Additionally, there's a very rare version from 1999-02-19 that can be found on PC Gamer (Italian) CD #041 B.

            Moritz"

            For download go to Demo versions (contains early / beta stuff) topic.

            :D

            M123M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • PisarzP
              Pisarz
              last edited by

              @lew This is excellent! Great news indeed! As soon as I can I'll see if it works. Thank you :)

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • M123M
                M123 @lew
                last edited by

                @lew Nice, thanks lew (and Moritz!).

                If the demo installers behave similarly to the one for the released game, they might only work reliably on Windows XP / earlier.

                L 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • L
                  lew @M123
                  last edited by

                  @M123 They are but you can always use UniExtract unpack the archives without using the installer. :)
                  https://www.legroom.net/software/uniextract (older version - 1.6.1) or https://github.com/Bioruebe/UniExtract2 (new version 2.0)

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • PisarzP
                    Pisarz
                    last edited by

                    Not lucky :(
                    My PC had to be repaired, so I probably have to start from zero installing certain things that I had installed for the final game.

                    L 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • L
                      lew @Pisarz
                      last edited by

                      @Pisarz any luck? :)

                      PisarzP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • PisarzP
                        Pisarz @lew
                        last edited by

                        @lew Hi!
                        I recently had many issues to handle (moved to another apartment, etc.). Yet, I managed to recover all the files from my PC, and the game (final product, not the demos) works OK :)

                        I'll see what I can do. Sorry for the delay.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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