GoodGame
Red, White, & Blue, baby!
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2004
- Messages
- 13,725
Most PC games when I was young came in "episodes", where there were, say, 8 episodes in a game, and each episode would cost a certain amount to purchase. E.g. Doom, Quake. So that picture isn't too far off what PC games were like 15-20 years ago.
Actually back then the Shareware concept was pretty popular, so you were actually playing a "demo" of the game. If you liked the demo, you bought the actual game which unlocked the actual game (the other levels). With the Shareware, the demo tended to be pretty generous (usually at least an hour of gameplay, or unlimited gameplay with several features disabled).
Demos are another thing which is somewhat rare these days.