I think it's time we read through some old computer magazines! how about Compute magazine, January 1994?

https://archive.org/details/1994-01-compute-magazine/mode/2up

One of the main articles is about improving windows and tip #1 is "fewer fonts", and to that I can only say NO

ahh, the Logitech CyberMan! For when you want a 6-DOF Mouse Joystick (Mousestick?)

One thing I really liked about Windows 3.x was how many programs had no sense of "professionalism" in their color schemes.

purple and yellow? WHY NOT?

I've never heard of the "Arts and Letters Graphics Editor" but it's a vector drawing program and it apparently comes with some great SHARK ART

remember the good ol' days when you could buy VHS tapes to explain how to use Microsoft Excel or WordPerfect?
for 50$? (about 90$ today)
fun fact: I want every single one of these tapes.

Dino Park Tycoon!
(what year did Jurassic Park come out? oh, yeah)

Here's a fun CAD program: Davidson's Kid CAD.
I like how it looks very much like they based it on Lego but didn't want to get sued so they had to change some stuff.

Nothing really shows off the classiness of your game like the subtitle "The Battle of the Robo Babes"

oh hey, The Journeyman Project!

OK so here they're gonna list off the best games, in all 9 canonical game genres:
Arcade
Simulation
Sports
Strategy
Adventure
RPG
Wargame
CD-ROM
Europe

So, best arcade games:
Lemmings 2, Wing Commander, D/Generation, Stunts, Prince of Persia 2, Wolfenstein 3D, Lost Vikings?
Some good choices. You might wonder "DOOM!?" because 1994, but JANUARY 1994. Doom came out mid-December 1993, they hadn't played it yet.

Here's the simulation games.
Flight Simulator is on there, of course.

Sports.
Hey, Links 386 Pro!
Did you know Microsoft bought Access, who made the Links series, and then ended up laying off most of the employees and then selling the name off to Take Two?
Sleep tight, Bethesda.

Strategy Games!
Some classics here: Civilization, the Incredible Machine series, SimCity, Syndicate.. oh hey, LexiCross, I was hacking on that recently.
And fuck Railroad Tycoon Deluxe. It's Railroad Tycoon but with worse "better" graphics.

Adventure games!
Kings Quest 6 (good choice), Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island 2, Alone in the Dark, Out of this World? Some good choices here.

RPGs: Betrayal at Krondor & Star Control II! Some great ones there.
Ultimas 7 and Underworld, and Eye of the Beholder III, I think @DavidXNewton is playing through that one right now.

War games
Civilization again, and then Dune II? Interesting that they try to explain the new RTS genre with "classic board game strategies with SimCity-like construction". Huh.

Ahh yes, my favorite genre, CD-ROM.
Some good ones here, at least.

and finally Europe games.
Only 5, because apparently they're half as good?
and two of these have been mentioned before. COME ON GUYS

a Christmas-themed Lemmings ad!
weird, because this is JANUARY, but oh yeah, magazines are silly and number themselves as month+1.

Alone in the Dark 2!

And Ultime VIII: Pagan!
That's the one everyone hates, right? I mean, the one that's not "What's a Paladin?"

Microsoft Dinosaurs!
What year did Jurassic Park come out again? Ahh, yes.

Gear Works. It's a puzzle game about gears.
I should try this, it looks fun. I remember liking the gear mini-game in Super Solvers Gizmos & Gadgets.

Rules of Engagement 2, a star command simulation.
I like how you can tell from the tiny screenshot that they really liked the LCARS interface of Star Trek: The Next Generation

oh yeah, that's some Star Trek.

They have the "building a gaming machine" section which isn't as interesting as it sounds, but they do list some ESSENTIAL games, most of these are ones they've mentioned before.

And VistaPro. VistaPro is not a game.

Huh, that's a weird ad, I wonder what it's for?

AWW YEAH, SimCity 2000!
The best, most SimCity game.

Have you ever wanted to make your computer at least 400% more annoying by having your child scream karaoke songs at it? Sure, we all do!

Math Blaster! a classic.
Annoyingly this is like the... 4th? game under that name. It wouldn't be the last.

you can tell we're getting to the back of the magazine because now they're like "what about using that fancy new CD-ROM drive... fOR PORN?!"

SimCity 2000 got two full-page ads, one of which was just a teaser.
SimHealth gets a 6th-panel two pages after the Penthouse ad.

Adventure Game Player's Handbook.
These were always weird: it's not a guide for one game, it's a guide for a bunch of games. Not even per-series or anything, just "here's some games you might be playing, so here's some hints"

ahh, the back-of-the-magazine mail order CD-ROM resellers.

I really don't like their name because I can't pronounce it properly in my head.
Clearly they're supposed to be "Discount Software" but my brain keeps reading that as "Dick-Count"

And they've got PORNCDS!
I suspect "Animation Fantasy" means "anime/pc88 screencaps we got off usenet"

... Porkware? is this a David Cameron joke I'm too american to understand?

hey look, another ad for that Penthouse thing.
I like how they say it's got "full-motion" videos, and that's... 15 FPS.

Switch your long-distance carrier and get free Sierra Adventure Games!
Why yes, that is the most mid-90s thing ever.

The official guide to "Roger Wilco Space Adventures"? Were you not allowed to call it Space Quest?

They also have on the same page, a guide to Bubsy Bobcat.
huh.
Did anyone want this?

RAGING GAMES
they're not pointing out that these are kinda older, shareware games, that's why they're so cheap, but hey. Some good games there anyway.

Have you ever wanted a Mouse Gallows?

Want to make music on your PC?
Why not get a bunch of 8bit WAV files on a floppy disk?

The Amish Outlaw is a weird name for a shareware company.
But at least they have some fun games here.

LACE, an adult "magazine" (AKA BBS)
HIGH SPEED, meaning 14.4kbps.

I don't like that they called this CD-ROM porn set "BIG BANG THEORY". Bazinga?

Also, look at those prices: 3 CDs for only ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT DOLLARS. that's only 300$ today.

SeXXy Software™
the SeXXy FLIX ones are interesting: full length digital movies that don't require hard drisk space or windows...
are these basically DVDs? well, VCDs... without MPEG. What are these?

ahh, cable TV descramblers. we're in good company here

finally, News Bits.
we've got President Clinton going to get email soon, the first computer network for women, and Nike is using Apex modems. Huh.

Anyway, that was Compute! from January 1994.
Here's that link again, if you want to read some of the stuff I skipped over:
https://archive.org/details/1994-01-compute-magazine/

also, @la_polpino has alerted me to something I have mixed feelings about:
Porkware is on the internet archive. https://archive.org/details/PorkWare_1_Premium_Quality_Sexy_CD

OH HEY NOTHING SAYS SEXY LIKE SOME MS-DOS BATCH MENUS

it doesn't like my VM, probably because it's too fast.
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LOOK AT MY 1993 PORN NOW?

but yeah, the way it works is weird:
it runs a program to figure out what video card you have, then you're supposed to just remember that and then the next screen configures the VPIC image viewer.
couldn't combine those two, could ya?
also, I'm gonna pick EGA, for 16 sexy colors

btw they didn't register VPIC. it's shareware and they're just giving it to you to try out. You have to pay for it separately.

ahh, yes, C:\\DOS, the best place to put my VIEWPORK menu

so the way it works is the disk just has a bunch of numbered (not named!) directories on it, and when you select something from that PORKMENU it loads up VPIC to that directory.
(This one is "saucy")

they also... don't open.
huh. what?

my favorite bit of laziness is that they didn't even make specific batch menus for both their CDs, so you have to select which porkware disc you have

ahh, it seems the ISO is incomplete. the X22 directory in particular is missing a lot of data

so, now that I have access to the pictures (DOS can't view them, but extracting the ISO with 7zip worked), How do you think they got the images?

did they commission porn stars to make them?
did they steal them from magazines?
did they steal them from people who stole them from magazines and put them on usenet?
did they steal them from BBSes who stole them from usenet who stole them from magazines?

the latter, apparently.
They still have the BBS tags.

Remember the good ol' days when every porn picture was a non-animated GIF that had a BBS's phone number on it?

ElectroPorn's Dick Tingler Collection?
that certainly is a name.
and these are screencaps from some VHS porn.

I love the look of these BBS tags.
and they're at different placement for each image, so they were manually edited on! for each picture!

also, the background you're seeing here is a couch. get your mind out of the gutter.

for some of these, the BBS logo is almost half the picture!
but hey, they've got PCP via FLTAM! that's... good?

look how much work they had to put in for every image.
look at all this text!

Also, hey, the Farmer's Daughter BBS. I've heard of that one before. That's sad, right? I recognized an adult BBS that hasn't existed in, uh, 23 years.

Jason Scott's BBS list says it was run by John Hicks (on PCBoard) out of Delevan, Wisconsin.

also the second hit on google for the BBS is from "wetsnet", the adult baby forums.
Apparently Mr. Fogel back in 1999 was trying to get to the Farmer's Daughter BBS to get to the Diapered Women.

is this inter-BBS trash talking?

"Custom Scans". Yep, scanning is the hard part in making porn, you know?
Nice logo, though.

another lovely BBS logo