Happy Easter, here’s some screenshots taken from the Egghead Software 1993 Annual Report which you can read right here. Apologies for the lack of activity lately. Burnout, school, and getting sick for a bit (nothing serious) means that I just haven’t had the time to post anything here or have any time for indie game roundups. Anyway, enjoy some old pictures
Windows 95 came out 30 years ago today, which means it’s an excuse to post this photo
Here’s a video of folks buying Windows 95 on launch day
Here’s some other people being excited for Windows 95
I continue my efforts to put every photo from the CompStoreVisuals account from Cohost (and then eventually the Twitter archive and Mastodon) on my site so there will be a longer lasting home for them. For whatever reason, this one will have more of a Christmas theme to theme. It must have been that time of year when I started posting these pics but I guess it kinda fits in now too.
Not sure where I originally grabbed this one. It has appeared in a few places on the internet and now there’s one more place!
Sierra On-Line’s Christmas cards, designed to play on computers in stores
1992 CompUSA Christmas commercial
The Internet Archive has a few pages from a Christmas catalog for Egghead Software from 1990, however my Cohost account says 1991 so maybe someone corrected me based on the games featured? Or I’m just wrong there.
Here’s an article from a news report from the video game department of a Sears in 1982. Includes shots of Atari computers.
https://retroist.com/a-1982-video-visit-to-the-video-game-department-of-sears/
But you know what’s no longer here? The actual footage! Something that’s been incredibly frustrating and sad about maintaining these accounts and posting photos is that I’ve only been doing it for a couple of years and so much disappears! Not just actual stores closing, since it’s a dying form of commerce, but all the sites and videos that will suddenly disappear overnight. Sometimes my goofy accounts are the only places that have preserved photos, which is why I keep reposting them since Cohost and Twitter have both basically died in the last couple years as well. People like to say that things last forever on the internet but they really don’t! I’ve saved a few videos from my time doing this but not this one. If you can find it, please let me know so I can link to it here.
Scans of an article about a computer auction, taken from the July 7, 1990 issue of New Computer Express on the Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/NH2021_New_Computer_Express_Issue087.pdf/mode/2up
The Used Computer Store Berkeley, California
I’m running out of time before Cohost completely shuts down, so here’s another big batch of pictures from the CompStoreVisuals. I guess I do have the archive of the account so they aren’t gone gone even after the site shuts down, but it’s still a good excuse to repost them to somewhere more permanent.
These aren’t really sorted in any order and I’d like to resume posting photos of computer stores at some point, I just have to make time to find more. Some of it is nostalgia but I’m also just fascinated by forms of retail that don’t exist anymore. I walked through a mall last weekend and while it was very busy (there’s another nearby that’s struggling), it was still weird to walk through Macy’s and think about how department stores like that and Sears were just things people went to all the time for everything instead of online. The unfortunate thing about being into a thing that barely exists is that it just gets harder to find stuff, especially with search engines getting worse. The big reason why I’m doing these reposts is because a lot of it just doesn’t seem to exist on the web anymore outside of the account, or it does and I just can’t find it.
Photo of a Compaq Works store in Houston from the book Retail and Restaurant Spaces: An International Portfolio of 41 Designers (1999). I believe I got this one from checking out a book on the Internet Archive. Even if you aren’t into this extremely specific subject, it’s fascinating to look at old books covering retail and restaurants in general and seeing the trends in design.
CompUSA
Honolulu, Hawaii
2006
Forgot where I found this but I believe it was from a Black Friday sale
1988 Egghead Software Catalog.
Originally posted by Foone on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1010067430096269314
Here’s more photos from the CompStoreVisuals account on Cohost before the site goes down for good.
Mac Daddy Repairs
Sebastopol, California
Photo credit: @/dumb_billie on Twitter
Photo of an Egghead Software by Russell Yip. The parent is holding Prince of Persia
In 2004 CompUSA was experimenting with SoftwareToGo kiosks, where customers would choose what software they wanted, place an order, and then pick it up at the front desk. You can read more about it here: https://www.deseret.com/2004/4/12/19822350/new-in-store-device-dispenses-software
Smart Kids Software
Houston, Texas
1992
Looks like they still exist as an online store and you can buy 90s big box educational PC games from them https://www.smartkidssoftware.com/home3.htm
Sign for a closed store called Computer Nation
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Photo credit: Hypnocoin on Twitter (which got deleted and a crypto thing took over)
Funky Monkey
Tomah, Wisconsin
http://funkymonkeytomah.com
Photo credit: aamitii on Twitter
CompUSA technical services team
Rockville
1996
The dumping of images I originally posted on the CompStoreVisuals accounts on Twitter and Cohost continues. I’ve been looking through both accounts since the Cohost one is shutting down soon and it looks like even the Twitter account is starting to get screwy, probably from the site decaying. All of these are also on the Mastodon account but I would feel better having them somewhere else too.
This one was found somewhere on Flickr
These were submitted by Martijn of DOS Game Club
This is Software Dschungel (Software Jungle) in Vienna, Austria.
Photo found by @/Kloennes on Twitter who said “Great store that sadly closed down about 10 years ago.”
Still going through Twitter and Cohost posts for my CompStoreVisuals account and reposting them here since that’s more permanent. I saw that the site for The Computer Store in Mobile, Alabama is down (tcs360.com) and there hasn’t been a facebook post in a few years, so I’m assuming the store is gone now. So I suppose enjoy these pictures of the dog and as a record of a place that’s no longer around.
The process of copying over all my posts from Cohost before the shutdown continues, here’s some more things you might like to look at. You can find more of these posts here.
This blog contains a few photos of a CompUSA store.
Here is a short YouTube video of people buying Windows 95 on launch day at CompUSA and Egghead Software.
And here is a random photo of the kids section at a CompUSA. I think I just grabbed this from a google image search
Since Cohost has now been confirmed to be winding down and will be read only until the end of the year before shutting down, I will start posting here (hopefully almost daily) with all the stuff that I posted on the CompStoreVisuals account there. I think most, if not all, of this should already be on the Mastodon account but I wanted to have something more permanent for the photos and videos I’m posting. Apologies for what will feel like computer store spam for a while. The “Thoughts on Cohost” post will arrive eventually (TLDR: Not a perfect site but I’m sad) but until then, enjoy?
This photo is one I actually took a long time ago on my phone. The place is now gone.
Sign for Scrubbin Bubbles
Westland, Michigan, United States
Not sure where I originally got these photos. I’m going to be reposting some computer store photos from my computer store visuals account since the one I have on Cohost probably isn’t going to last much longer and I should have all this stuff on somewhere more permanent anyway.
