Your favourite classic 90s Windows software
I thought it would be interesting to try and compile a list of software that strongly associates with that Windows 90s style - lots of standard Windows UI elements, big emphasis on multimedia, and really comprehensive detailed UIs that you just don't see today.
I'll start off with a few:
1) Midisoft Studio - Pretty sure it was the Studio version I used, on Windows 95. This software was such a cool Midi editing program for Windows that was a nice novelty at the time.
2) The Incredible Machine 3 - Technically a game (one of my all time favourites in fact), but it runs on the desktop and captures that charm with a nice mouse driven windows-style interface.
3) Microsoft Plus! Packs - The games and themes were just so cool. Hover! It seems a lot of Microsoft's own software really captured this style well.
4) Paint Shop Pro 4 - Can't forget this old piece of shareware.
5) Microsoft Office 97 -The old version of word was just so organized, efficient, fast and had cool clipart and wordart too, and built off of the standard windows style.
I remember using lots of older software which was also in this style, but can't remember the names, would love to hear some of people's favourite old software like this.
I'll start off with a few:
1) Midisoft Studio - Pretty sure it was the Studio version I used, on Windows 95. This software was such a cool Midi editing program for Windows that was a nice novelty at the time.
2) The Incredible Machine 3 - Technically a game (one of my all time favourites in fact), but it runs on the desktop and captures that charm with a nice mouse driven windows-style interface.
3) Microsoft Plus! Packs - The games and themes were just so cool. Hover! It seems a lot of Microsoft's own software really captured this style well.
4) Paint Shop Pro 4 - Can't forget this old piece of shareware.
5) Microsoft Office 97 -The old version of word was just so organized, efficient, fast and had cool clipart and wordart too, and built off of the standard windows style.
I remember using lots of older software which was also in this style, but can't remember the names, would love to hear some of people's favourite old software like this.
Comments
I know, that is a huge difference from today where everything is a UI fuckfest and people just put up with it.
Anyway, there are many programs that deserve recognition on technical merits, and some games that probably still stick out as "classic".
I'd vote for Adobe Photoshop. Just today I was talking to somebody who was talking about how great it was and how they don't actually sell that as a product any more. (Apparently they moved entirely to some retarded web based subscription service BS)
Really, there were a lot. I vaguely recall one, something mapping related I think, that was a port of an X-Windowing application to Win32. It drew all of the widgets and even window borders itself. It was also designed for Windows 3.1/NT 3.51, so it looked EXACTLY like Windows 3.1 (2-d, white background), even when running under Windows 95! Of course, it ignored the user's color scheme and accessibility settings.
More subtly, there were many ports of Mac applications that kept various Mac-isims.
Microsoft made a big deal about their Windows Logo program back then and venodrs were clamoring to get their product certified. As I recall, this mandated things like using standard Win9x UI widgets, always having a "File" menu, etc. The idea was that this logo would show customers the application was a "good citizen" in the Windows 9x world.
Mac-isms include: excessive MDI and palettes, off the top of my head. Again, SimCity 2000 is something I know that only can have one file open at a time, yet does MDI anyways.
Also, Logo certification as a big deal. Look at the Office Compatible stuff on the Office 95 CD, there's a lot of things like that.
Valid points. For me I just remember applications from this time didn't treat users like a complete idiot, unlike the mobile-app simplified style and UI disasters you mentioned. Photoshop is a great example, the CS2 version was released completely free recently as well and thats comprehensive enough for most people.
I just remember lots of powerful utilities and goofy apps from this time as well, things like "Winstar 95" and stuff like that, developers clearly excited about the Windows platform, thats the sort of thing I want to see more examples of.
Yeah exactly. A lot of the classic microsoft multimedia cd-roms all ran on the desktop as well, making them more inclusive of the rest of the OS.
I'll also check out that logo certification you mentioned!
Actually, SC2K is an interesting example because it was ported to so many different platforms. Just for example, you know they would have loved to use the DOS version's custom button appearance. But those pesky Windows UI guidelines kept them simple beveled gray (or, more importantly, whatever your color scheme was).
Same here, I loved playing SimCity 2000 on DOS or dosbox for that matter. Yes it is very interesting to see how many ports there were for SimCity 2000. A friend of mine had SimCity 2000 on his Mac OS 9. Oddly enough they even made a port to the SNES; I have the original simcity for the SNES.
But as far as ports go Doom made a few ports to SNES, Atari Jaguar, and Sega Saturn. (I think they made more ports than that but I'm not sure...)
Doom has been released on almost everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_versions_of_Doom
I never found the high score table in MS-DOS 6.2 although i looked through the files.
+1 - I agree on this for Mac and Win 95.
I remember buying 3000 when it came out and was so excited seeing the updated graphics. I preferred 4 when it came out though and SimCity has gone downhill since.
I spent many hours playing Transport Tycoon, from Microprose. It was indirectly like SimCity as you had some control with the towns in it and you'd see them get bigger over time. A few years ago I was surprised OpenTTD was around based on it.
Wacky Wheels had also been popular.
On the Macintosh back in the System 7.x days I remember playing a game called Crossing the Mountains, and I haven't found it since.
Another fun game was Warcraft II Tides of Darkness. Use to do a direct dial-up connection with a few friends and played each other until the Battle.net edition came out.
The normal windows file/save dialog lives in commctrl.dll. It's pretty easy for a program to jag this control, and redirect it to another, supposedly better version (eg make directories etc).
If your program uses Windows UI, then its file-open dialog will be jagged too. Something like AmiPro does work under this: Winword doesn't. This is in part because Microsoft Office had access to the source, and Lotus didn't.
Win3x was written in a time when memory was sorely limited. It's not meant to be run in gigabyte environments, like windows 2000. Instead, you could doctor the max memory available, usually 4× installed ram. It relied on real-mode memory for DOS-like structures, which meant that you had to watch the resources a lot.
Still, it's better to look at non-microsoft stuff for 'real windows' applications.
- MS Office 95
- Internet Explorer 4 (Not the browser but the Active Shell it came with.)
- Netscape 3 and 4
- MS Plus (both 95 and 98)
- Easy CD Creator 4
- Monster Truck Madness 2
- Disney's Interactive Play: A Bug's Life
Something to change those DOOM related fingers