[TeMPOraL]

In Poland, we had[0] a CD-ROM videogame magazine called CD-Action. For kids like me, it was a great deal - it sold for 1/5 to 1/10 the price of a new, boxed videogame, and it always had one or two full game releases in it, as well as a dozen or more demo versions, plus some zines and random stuff you mention. Sure, the games we got were a while past their release date, but in those times it didn't matter - with Internet barely becoming a thing, gamers weren't in sync with the global release schedules. In fact, we were all in sync with CD-Action release schedules! So e.g., maybe we got Jagged Alliance 2 in 2001, two years after its 1999 release, but before 2001 nobody would hear of this game over here, while in 2001 every other kid with a computer would have played it, and we could enjoy talking about it together. And because the CDs were also full of demos of other games, we never had a shortage of things to play.

(And if some demo piqued your interest, there were places you could go where you could get CDs with games and other software à la carte, for cheap. :).)

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[0] - Technically still have, but it's been over a decade since I last paid attention to them.

[fishtacos]

If you're wanting to revisit some of those memories, The Internet Archive has ISOs of some of those from CD-Action[0], and for anyone one else who cares to look through CD and DVD magazine cover disks[1]. Going through PC Gamer and Boot magazine cover disks was a trip.

[0] - https://archive.org/search.php?query=cd-action

[1] - https://archive.org/details/coverdiscs