| 1992 - Wolfenstein 3D |
| I was aged 5 years old. My grandfather had a copy of Wolfenstein 3-D and we played the game a lot when I used to visit him. It was the best play time ever for a kid like me, my grandfather did move around and I may shoot the bad-guys in the game. The first time we played my head turned wild and since I just didn’t want anything else, I wanted to have this game myself but I couldn’t as we didn’t had a personal computer. |
| 1994 - "Hardcore 3D Games" |
| After 2 years of looking forward to play with my grandfather again and again we finally got a PC, yes with a real 486 CPU. I was 7 years old now and when I saw a floppy disk in a toy store of ‘The Catacomb Abyss’, due searching for Wolfenstein 3-D. I bought it and played it for hours at home. This game was almost the same but it didn’t have something Wolfenstein 3-D did. Maybe it were the EGA graphics, but it felt not the same. Due Christmas time I found a shareware demo compilation CD-ROM called ‘Hardcore 3D Games’, it had Wolfenstein 3-D and even Spear of Destiny as well as others. I owned Wolfenstein 3-D and my life was complete, the game enjoyed me for hours, days, weeks or even more… |
| 1995 - Shareware Gaming: Rise of the Triad |
| Al those months playing Wolfenstein 3-D was a nice time, but the feelings were lost, completing the first episode again and again wasn’t like the first time. So I looked further on the CD-ROM and found DOOM as well as Heretic, Ken’s Labyrinth and more. I played all of them, until I played Rise of the Triad. That game changed my life, it was the bomb and in my opinion it still is. It was like no other games, it gave me a feeling which isn’t to describe. Therefore the whole year long I looked for more and more shareware compilation CD-ROM’s, looking for a game that could gave me a feeling ROTT did. I played Dark Forces, Hexen and all the great FPS released. |
| 1996 - Collecting or playing? |
| Due this year I collected all shareware demos of 3DShooters ever released, many historical games came out this year like Duke Nukem 3D & Quake. But still I returned playing ROTT all the time, it was my favorite. Our local computer store gave me a print of all 3DShooters commercially released and so I continued my hunt on them. |
| 1997 - Long live WWW |
| The list was complete, I had them all, so what’s next? Back returning playing ROTT again with level packs given on a compilation CD-ROM. Staring for minutes to the ‘Ordering Info’ option at the ROTT menu. I wanted the full version, but how? I was 10 years old and the computer store could order it for 40 USD for me. I didn’t had that kind of money. After months feeling myself empty we gained a Dial-up modem for internet. My life become whole again, with a limit of 30 minutes a day in the evening I searched for more info and found many other 3DShooters. |
| 1998 - Was it illegal? |
| After months the list was complete again so I sit back and staring at the ‘Ordering Info’ option in ROTT’s menu (again). So I searched for the internet if I could get it for free anywhere, again my life had changed. There were several message boards and news groups offering the registered version for download. I downloaded and played it with all my love and passion. |
| 1999 - Hehe, HELL NOT! |
| Due 1999 I was completing my list of games to collect the full versions from message boards and news groups. Posting my requests and noticed many the same persons were replying and uploading the games I didn’t had. But also in the other way, they were requesting other 3DShooters I had. So we did get a very close relation. |
| 2000 - Birth to 3DSL & 3DSM |
| After completing my lists I had a collection of over 30 CD-R’s featuring my
collection of registered version of 3DShooters (FPS). I rewarded a nickname “3DShootMaster” as many
people called me “the master of 3d shooters” because of my huge knowledge of the FPS games, still
called “3D Shoot’em ups” often that time. I reduced the nickname to 3DSM.
Yahoo’s Briefcases were full with our uploads and the same persons who I met on message boards wanted to have the addresses ordered so other people didn’t had to request them. They started ‘3DShooterLegends’ featuring links to the briefcases and information about the games. It was in German so I couldn’t help out much but we stayed in contact when needed. |
| 2001 - 3DSM Collection |
| Still there were some games I didn’t own due they were rare to find. So the only
option for me to collect them was to buy them in retail stores, mostly I ordered them at German stores,
games like Angst, SKOUT and The Hidden Below. Again I could complete my list. I started with the 3DSM
Collection at this time to have a better organized collector’s list database.
Late 2001, I liked to have the original CD-ROM’s of the games I bought that could not be found on the internet. And again I was dreaming about having the registered version of ROTT, this time in ISO format. So I searched the internet and downloaded it, but it was followed by the others I wanted to have in ISO. So I started to collect the ISO’s from the game list. |
| 2002 - ISO Hunt, and... Hello eBay? |
| During the hunt for ISO’s I returned often to 3DSL, requesting the community for some ISO’s and also contributing to do something back. So this year I went closer with the 3DSL crew as they also had many members from other countries joined, more often English was spoken at the message boards. But there still weren’t some ISO’s found from games which I also had to buy but it didn’t matter to me, I started to like it. As they were very rare I had to search far away, so I met eBay. Buying many games overseas to my country and sending the sellers money in envelops. |
| 2003 - Poor Lufo (RIP) |
| I had almost all of the ISO’s collected on my game list, the 3DSM Collection. After
finishing my work I released the list to public and many other collectors enjoyed the list. Also Lufo from
3DSL used the 3DSM Collection to have a good view and support for updating 3DSL. He died that year and I
took some distance with 3DSL. He is not forgotten and many new contributors supported the community and
they decided to go make the site in English and also a English new forum. With much effort from ScaryFun
who became in the administration and changed 3DSL as it is currently with support from many other members.
Late that year I passed by some times to contribute a little.
My collection of original releases became very huge and I was thinking of buying the original boxed release of Rise of the Triad as I liked the artwork very much, and yes the feeling to own the original version made me buy it off eBay. It felt good, really good so it made me buy also the original versions of some other favorites. |
| 2004 - Just... Give me all! |
| As I collected the original version of some of my favorites I wanted to buy one from a huge eBay store/seller. Looking around in his list I noticed he had many FPS for sale, my head turned wild and I just bought them all at once. Previous times I used to transfer the money by airmail, shipped maybe over 1000 USD in this way. But I didn’t want to risk 200 USD at once for this time and I noticed PayPal, it’s like a buyers-heaven-payment-method. It worked very fast and I started just buying every game original because it made it very easy for me. The collect-madness started, buying every game from my list, but I did it smart, mostly buying over more than 10 games from a seller at once. I joined the 3DSL community again as an active member and contributing some stuff time by time. |
| 2005 - Ok my brain has gone... Somewere |
| Still spying eBay every week for Rise of the Triad, I don’t know why exactly, probably
because I didn’t want to miss anything and I was lucky to do as I found a ROTT release from the UK which was
different from the US release. So I bought it and after having collected almost my list complete again, I
thought to myself why not buying all the different releases from every game. So I also collected those either
except from the sold out and other budget releases, I still don’t as they are not distributed by the original
publisher. But I do collect any other official release like limited editions and compilations etc.
This year I started to have a close relation with ScaryFun as I did some uploads of rare releases I owned. He planned to add an AdventureLegends section to 3DSL and preferred to have someone other to update 3DSL. He asked me to do and I did, becoming a moderator at the forum also. LegendsWorld was born; I quitted updating after a couple of months as school became harder. |
| 2006 - 3DSM Collection II !! |
| The collection became bigger with a lot different releases, so I needed a new database; I started to work on 3DSM Collection II. My collection is almost complete, there are a few very rare ones which I still don’t have but they just need some time. I also returned to support LegendsWorld after a while and noticed there were many requests of hard to find games which I had so I upped them and the first 3DSM / 3DSL releases saw the light, dedicating to be the most rare and hard to find FPS. I don’t support warez anymore and don’t see them as warez, most of them are freeware now. 3DSM Collection I & II both support HTML exporting, so I’m currently also busy converting the 3DSM Collection II online, 3DShootMaster.com is born. |
