pre-redux latest Apogee game versions?

[leilei]

Most of the latest versions of Apogee shareware games on the site are packed with a installer that's black and blue. Even though the FILEDATES are old like '1994', they're still not the real releases as they pack newer order forms dated from 1998 and such.

Just a note. Your quest is not complete

[ThreeHeadedMonkey]

Noticed this a while ago. Seems that, for some reason, Joe replaced the installers with new ones sometime around 1998. This also applies with the registered versions of the games.

[DOSGuy]

Indeed. A lot of companies did this around 1998, when the World Wide Web allowed them to distribute their own games rather than rely on BBSes. The changes, beyond the new installer, often were just a reference to the publisher's website.

When I first created this website, the Apogee games were the first games I uploaded, both because I loved them and because Apogee was one of the few companies that still had downloads for most of their old games on their site. Because I was concerned with having original, unaltered archives, a copy directly from the publisher seemed to be ideal. When I became aware that these were "re-releases" of the latest version, I made the decision to have only one version of each version (i.e. only one copy of v1.0, 1.1, 1.2, etc.), and gave preference to the newest copy of each version, especially if it had an installer. I like installers because you can know for sure that no files have been added or removed from the archive.

Anyway, I don't like the fact that the registered versions in the freeware releases have often been patched, which makes them not the original version. Getting "pre-redux" copies has been on my mind for a while, but there were always higher priorities. It's definitely closer to the top of the list now.

[Qbix]

For apogee games; I only know of alien carnage, which was patched by me to remove a long standing bug.

[Calvero]

The Bio Menace freeware release has the cheats re-enabled.

[MrFlibble]

I'd say I prefer the old installers for several reasons. First off, they're historically more authentic. Secondly, many of them have those awesome ASCII art logos of the respective games, which can be also seen in Apogee's electronic catalogues. Thirdly, the old installers also include said electronic catalogues. Also, some games had extra stuff that was later removed, like Terminal Velocity shareware v1.1 had 5 pre-release screenshots from Duke Nukem 3D, and upgrading it to v1.2 added 5 more (both the new v1.1 to v1.2 patch and the v1.2 shareware from Apogee's website lack those screenshots). And finally, that blue installer is just plain boring.

There's one good thing about the new installers though, you can open the *.SHR package with WinRAR and extract the files directly, bypassing the need to use the DOS installer altogether (which is sometimes useful). The old installers' files are usually split into 1.44 Mb chunks and cannot be opened with WinRAR or other archivers.

[Litude]

I've personally been collecting pretty much every official distribution of every Apogee game out there. The installers have changed a few times over the years; here are the dates:

1991-??-??: First "installers" for registered games only (SFX archives)
1991-11-22: First true installer, released with Commander Keen: Goodbye, Galaxy! (all games were updated to use it on 1991-11-25)
1992-06-28: First use of DeICE installer with the release of Wolfenstein 3D version 1.2 shareware (all games were updated to use it on 1993-08-03)
1994-07-15: First use of Crane installer with the release of Mystic Towers allowing nicer installation screens (all games were updated to use it on 1994-08-01)
1998-07-24: All games updated to use PC-Install installers because the old installer wouldn't work on newer computers due to runtime error 200.

The installers were also sometimes updated to include newer catalog files. Also since the inception of the DeICE installer to around the time Terminal Velocity was released there were separate installers for BBS (and online) distribution and distribution by offline (meant for floppies and cd-rom) with the difference being that the catalog files were easier to update in the offline installers since they were separate from the actual installer files.

[MrFlibble]

Thanks for sharing that Litude! Am I right that the DeICE installer is that rather generic one that is used with most id Software and Raven games?

[leilei]

Yeah, De-Ice is something Romero wrote. At id he usually handled the distribution of id games including the ones from Raven he did production work on. De-Ice was last used in the id Anthology collections (October 1996). Since his departure at id, id Software started to use InstallShield ever since, with the only exception for that install program once used for Mechwarrior 2 being used for the DOS installers of the Quake Missonpacks

[MrFlibble]

BTW, this FTP has distributives of Apogee and 3D Realms games before the update to the generic blue installer. The archives appear to be unmodified (no BBS/CD comments or stuff).

Speaking of the online/offline installer differences, am I right that these Wolfenstein 3-D installers are of the offline variety?
http://cd.textfiles.com/ibmgopher/GAMES/%231WOLF14.ZIP
http://cd.textfiles.com/ibmgopher/GAMES/%231WOLF3D.ZIP

[Edit] Here's another neat site with old "clean" Apogee files:
http://www.ftp.funet.fi/index/msdos/games/apogee/

[Edit 2] And here's its neighbour with old versions of files:
ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/msdos/games/apogee/

[MrFlibble]

Just in case, here are some clean downloads of Apogee/3D Realms' shareware patches with old style installers:

RISE OF THE TRIAD v1.1 S/W PATCH
RISE OF THE TRIAD v1.2 S/W PATCH
RISE OF THE TRIAD v1.2a S/W PATCH
Rise of the Triad v1.2 - v1.3 Patch
DUKE NUKEM 3D v1.1 Patch
Duke Nukem 3D v1.1 to v1.3d Patch
Shadow Warrior v1.0 to v1.1 Patch
Shadow Warrior v1.1 to v1.2 Shareware Patch
TERMINAL VELOCITY Shareware v1.0 to v1.1 patch
TERMINAL VELOCITY Shareware Episode v1.1 - v1.2 Patch

[Litude]

Speaking of the online/offline installer differences, am I right that these Wolfenstein 3-D installers are of the offline variety?
http://cd.textfiles.com/ibmgopher/GAMES/%231WOLF14.ZIP
http://cd.textfiles.com/ibmgopher/GAMES/%231WOLF3D.ZIP

Those are not offline installers, they are from before the time there became a distinction between offline and online installers. The first link you posted is actually just the original release of Wolfenstein 3D v1.4 and the second is the original distribution of Wolfenstein 3D v1.0.

Here's an example online and offline installer for Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold shareware v1.0. You'll notice that the online version says "BBS & Online Edition" edition during installation while the offline distribution lacks that text. Also the catalog files are separate from the installer files and therefore easy to update. If you check most of the Apogee installers available on this website, you'll notice that they say "BBS & Online Edition" somewhere on the installation screen. (IIRC DOSGuy provides the offline installer for some Boppin' version though.)

[MrFlibble]

Regarding the patch thing, there are also 3dfx patches for the shareware version of Shadow Warrior:
ftp://archives.gamers.org/pub/games/sw/ ... sw3dfx.exe
ftp://archives.gamers.org/pub/games/sw/ ... sw3d11.zip

The time stamps seem to be original, and there are also patches for the registered version in the same folder.

[MrFlibble]

I would like to bring this subject up once again, and for the following reasons. The modern Apogee/3D Realms shareware and patch installers, are available both from 3D Realms FTP, its mirrors (e.g. here, here or here), and from other places where the files were uploaded more or less recently.

The old installers, on the other hand, are less common, and they also have the merit of being the original thing. Additionally, at least some of them have ANSI art logos of respective games. And in cases like with Terminal Velocity, there are some extras that are of historical interest which were removed from the new installers because they were regarded "obsolete".

Here are some of the old installers for the latest shareware releases of Apogee/3D Realms titles:

• Alien Carnage v1.0: 1ac.zip
• Arctic Adventure v2.0: 1arctic.zip
• Bio Menace v1.1: 1bio11.zip
• Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold v3.0: 1bs30.zip
• Boppin' v1.1: 1bop11.zip
• Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons v1.31: 1keen.zip
• Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy v1.4: 4keen.zip
• Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy CGA v1.4: 4keenc.zip
• Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure v1.2: 1cosmo.zip
• Dark Ages v1.0: 1dark.zip
• Death Rally v1.1: 1ral11.zip
• Duke Nukum v2.0: 1duke.zip
• Duke Nukem II: 4duke.zip
• Duke Nukem 3D v1.3d: 3dduke13.zip
• Hocus Pocus v1.1: 1hp11.zip
• Kingdom of Kroz II v2.0: 1kroz.zip
• Major Stryker v1.4: 1majr14.zip
• Math Rescue v2.0: 1math.zip
• Monster Bash v2.1: 1bash21.zip
• Monuments of Mars v1.0: 1mars.zip
• Mystic Towers v1.11: 1mystic.zip
• Paganitzu v1.02: 1paga.zip
• Pharaoh's Tomb v3.0: 1ptomb.zip
• Raptor: Call of the Shadows v1.2: 1rap12.zip
• Realms of Chaos v1.0: 1roc.zip
• Rise of the Triad: The HUNT Begins v1.3: 1rott13.zip
• Terminal Velocity v1.2: 3dtv12.zip
• Wacky Wheels v1.1: 1wacky.zip
• Wolfenstein 3-D v1.4: 1wolf14.zip

TERMINAL VELOCITY Shareware v1.0 to v1.1 patch

That site is, unfortunately, no longer online, so I uploaded the patch here.

[DOSGuy]

Thank you! I agree that the original installers are more desirable for preservation than the newer ones.