AOL Dial Up Internet, And Video Game Demos

[Snorlaxbelly]

I remember downloading demos on my PC back in the day when I had dial up internet. Would takes hours, and sometimes, more than a day. I would have to use download managers (lmao, remember those?) because if someone called you would get kicked off, and would have to restart the download all over again.

I would treasure these demos like they were the holy grail, and play them over, and over again.

Halo, Unreal Tournament 2004, Postal 2, Soldier of Fortune, Thief The Dark Project, just to name a few.

Played the hell out of them, especially the Halo demo, Blood Gulch deathmatch was where it was at.

 

[bjork]

I used AOL dialup for a good while, but the main thing I downloaded from AOL itself were photos and wav files, themed desktop icons, that sort of thing. I did download mame roms via dialup through and I do remember X-Men vs Street Fighter taking over 24 hours.

 

[nobitakun]

Never had AOL because I am from Europe, but we had our own dial up connections. And, as stupid as it may sound, it was one of my happiest times on internet. I used to download tons of MP3 through Napster, talk with people around the world with Odigo and playing Ragnarok Online with it.

On 2005, I moved to ADSL and everything changed dramatically. But during my ADSL life, many things were changing and closing and after a while I started to think internet was being downgraded, getting worse and worse every year. The cheerful and happy internet became grey.

Nowadays, it barely keeps anything of its essence, thanks to overprotective and controlling laws that tell people to avoid other people because of being potential criminals. And the worst thing is that human beings like that are all over internet, so it's true. Even if 1/10000 people on internet are criminals of any kind, they potentially affect the rest 9999 people and their thinking.

 

[Snorlaxbelly]

Never had AOL because I am from Europe, but we had our own dial up connections. And, as stupid as it may sound, it was one of my happiest times on internet. I used to download tons of MP3 through Napster, talk with people around the world with Odigo and playing Ragnarok Online with it.

On 2005, I moved to ADSL and everything changed dramatically. But during my ADSL life, many things were changing and closing and after a while I started to think internet was being downgraded, getting worse and worse every year. The cheerful and happy internet became grey.

Nowadays, it barely keeps anything of its essence, thanks to overprotective and controlling laws that tell people to avoid other people because of being potential criminals. And the worst thing is that human beings like that are all over internet, so it's true. Even if 1/10000 people on internet are criminals of any kind, they potentially affect the rest 9999 people and their thinking.

Yo, I get you, those were the golden days of the internet, everything was so simple. I used to download MP3's like crazy too, from random anime sites and stuff, would take 20-30 minutes for one song, I treasured each track I downloaded lol

 

[nobitakun]

Yo, I get you, those were the golden days of the internet, everything was so simple. I used to download MP3's like crazy too, from random anime sites and stuff, would take 20-30 minutes for one song, I treasured each track I downloaded lol

Exactly! we valued more the content we downloaded, because it was not so easy to find like now and it took so much time to download. Everything counted, every download was a joy we were waiting for.

 

[qw90700]

Well I was glad we had video game magazines that gave tons of demos on discs, it was a torture to even download a picture and music files lol.

 

[nyka]

I remember those AOL internet sent out these 30 days of internet cd's that we never used...except as frisbees for some reason ^^;

 

[Cardboardtubeknight Cardboardtubeknight]

An image you can hear

 

[MegaDrive1987]

We started off with AOL dialup, I remember downloading Vietcong Multiplayer demo from FilePlanet and it took hours!!

 

[qw90700]

I remember those AOL internet sent out these 30 days of internet cd's that we never used...except as frisbees for some reason ^^;

The first time I saw a CD it was when I found one on the ground without any label whatsoever. I thought they are "weapons of spies" to hit people who are very far away from me like a boomerang!!! Then I found lots of CDs around which no one knew where is the source of these shit. The streets were dangerous so I needed good weapons that's not banned yet. That's why I came up with "pants with disc pocket" idea!!!:

I was like high tech ninja and shit!! And then I found a better weapon:

It was a two-handed high tech saw weapon thingy!!! I was hanging it on my back like a witcher!!! Soon after people started to call me "Disc-Man" who is a superhero or some shit but I was actually walking around like that and for joke I was throwing discs to my buddies lol, had no intention with crime-fighting at all!! But then they had to ban discs because it reflects sunlight a lot and thus it causes traffic accidents, so we reverted back to cassette and cartridge technology and skipped to the internet!!! True story. lolol

 

[PhrawzT]

I remember the days of dial up internet and trying to play Starcraft with my friend which was a laggy nightmare.

 

[Livekraft]

I remember the Halo demo; it featured one multiplayer map, Blood Gulch, and one campaign mission, The Silent Cartographer. If you finished it, Johnson would praise how great Halo was and encourage you to get the full version.

When I was younger, I was never online without my dad supervising me. I used to post silly things on a Pokémon forum.

In México, we had Aol, but it wasn’t very popular. Telmex launched its own ISP called Infinitum, offering PCs at no profit with payments included in the monthly service fee. I remember it clearly because we had an iMac G3 (back then, Apple computers were actually more affordable than Windows PCs, can you believe that?). My dad switched to Infinitum just to get an IBM NetVista with a powerful Pentium 3, a 10GB IDE HDD, running Windows 98 SE. I remember it vividly because years later, it became my personal PC. I spent hours playing Quake 3, StarCraft, and Halo online on that machine. I remember someone from a forum that recommended me a GeForce 4. God bless him.

Back in the day, the Internet felt like a better place. People used it to share knowledge and create virtual social gatherings. Nowadays, it's the opposite; we're more connected, yet we often share the worst aspects of ourselves as a society. The early days of social media seemed like a revival of those times, but it quickly took a turn for the worse.

 

[thetwaz]

I remember AOL in the late 90s on dialup in the UK, and my main forays into the online world were through AOL's 'portals' on the main page. All of my gaming information that wasn't through PC Zone came through AOL's 'Antagonist' portal - and yes, I downloaded a few demos! I think, if I recall the first one was possibly the Quake Shareware episode, but because it was dial up, I had to get permission from my dad because we paid by the minute!

 

[qw90700]

Back in the day, the Internet felt like a better place. People used it to share knowledge and create virtual social gatherings. Nowadays, it's the opposite; we're more connected, yet we often share the worst aspects of ourselves as a society. The early days of social media seemed like a revival of those times, but it quickly took a turn for the worse.

The early state of the internet was like finding an ocean for the first time that you know at another side of the ocean "there are people" so you would create your own webpage and such that was like throwing a glass bottle that contains your message to whoever may find it and then you would wait for a reply. It was so because there was no social media whatsoever. People had good intentions to connect with people in meaningful ways. Otherwise there were few websites in existence that didn't really justify using internet at all.

Now everyone is easily connect therefore it's meaningless to them, all they care about is sending nudes and advertize their Onlyfans, spamming "deez nuts" or in general trolling... Back then the internet was a form of contributing to society, now it's a ground for greedy people asking money for everything. "Here it is I developed a mod and its the price, if you don't wanna pay then fuck you". Even Youtubers started to lock their content behind paywall SMH.

 

[Xeno]

Now everyone is easily connect therefore it's meaningless to them, all they care about is sending nudes and advertize their Onlyfans, spamming "deez nuts" or in general trolling... Back then the internet was a form of contributing to society, now it's a ground for greedy people asking money for everything. "Here it is I developed a mod and it’s the price, if you don't wanna pay then fuck you". Even Youtubers started to lock their content behind paywall SMH.

Once people realized that they could make money from the internet, there was no going back. A lot of Gen Z grew up wanting to become YouTubers and streamers.
You also have all the bots now that are click farming. A lot of profiles on Facebook, Reddit and YouTube are generating posts with AI. These places are becoming unbearable.

 

[Cu1tur3D_Gam3R]

Only thing I remember about AOL is the crazy startup sound. It was when my family upgraded to DSL is where I downloaded some demos. One of the more notable demos is a game I'm playing now, Dirt Track Racing 2. But it wasn't a traditional demo, it was of those demos where you can play the full game for an hour. And I had the time of my life for that one hour.

 

[Snorlaxbelly]

I remember those AOL internet sent out these 30 days of internet cd's that we never used...except as frisbees for some reason ^^;

I lived off those cd's lmao, Don't think our family payed for internet, for like 3 years straight

Post automatically merged: Tuesday at 6:49 PM

We started off with AOL dialup, I remember downloading Vietcong Multiplayer demo from FilePlanet and it took hours!!

FilePlanet! Hot damn I remember that, I always used that and GamersHell, good times.

 

[Rocket2049]

had AOL of course, but damn it was a nightmare to lose internet whenever a phone call came in, or someone needed to make a call had to get off!
couldn't afford another "line" so it was just used sparingly
later on i had free dial up internet by methods, much as AOL was around, i really didn't like using AOL itself.
also back then the internet was kinda creepy and so much stuff you "shouldn't" find.
but also limewire, the worst thing a kid can have access to and i've had quite a few virus issues and such

on demos, I had a stupid amount of PC games, DOS games, demo discs of various sources, i'm sure some weren't legit (i had a 1000 in 1 game disc hugely all DOS games, this made my childhood crazy for real) idk where i got all these discs, or where the PC i had came from for that matter, but i had a LOT of games back then.
many games around that time but the ones i remember are:
Settlers 2, it's basically RTS but way more focused on building the towns, making path lines, and keeping stock, and cutting trees and such.
sadly (IMO)
every settlers after this got annoying and or not fun, or buggy as hell (thanks ubisoft)
settlers 7 i got stuck on the tutorial... TWICE

much FPS games mainly dos ones, for example, Hexen, FPS fantasy RPG type game, 3 classes basically different weapons, they got a remaster recently for hexen+heretic and its very nice (if you like that kinda DOS FPS stuff, like old DOOM game)
and Star Wars Dark Forces, FPS star wars, what more can i say, it's fun, it's mostly original story, chock full of cheats, also has a remaster more recently with a missing level included.
redneck rampage, well, it's certainly a game, FPS redneck shooting and aliens mixed in somehow. moonshine was the invincibilty powerup
course i never actually had Doom, quake, or any well known FPS games back then

then there's one of my FAVORITE shoot em up games of all time (it REALLY needs a REMAKE)
Tyrian...

man if a picture was worth a thousand words, it's such a fun game, you can play it on recent hardware, look up opentyrian2000
it's Free on GOG store https://www.gog.com/en/game/tyrian_2000

also had various games i really didn't have the hardware for with my windows 5 PC, half life 1, interstate 76, they "ran" but so badly

sorry that got wordy but i still have ALL those discs, sad thing is i don't have a PC with a disc drive now LOL.

 

[breremarer]

Whoooaaa I had forgotten 'download managers', tbh! Haha! Completely agree about it being a better internet before laws and corporatization caught up. It felt boundless then, somehow.

I also remember using Napster and other music pirating software, getting dubious songs that actually had nothing to do with what you were looking for, like the "System of a Down Zelda song". I also remember how BitTorrent felt like such a cosmic leap forward, because you could just leave it running, as opposed to chewing up the connection for hours.