Post #2005269

2026-05-04 16:03 UTC

when i was a kid with my first 2x cd-rom drive, buying a cd-rom in a retail box was a $100+ CAD affair. so at my house that never happened. all of my software on CD were either pack-ins that came with the computer, or from cheap multi-disc compilation packs like Sirius Software&#39;s 5ft10 pak. one of those pack-ins was a copy of Encarta &#39;94. it had a nondescript jewel case without cover art - just a green MS certificate of authenticity. i never knew what the retail box looked like, until today. holy cow is it beautiful. the box is a hardcover flip-open activity book, designed for kidhands to pull open and rifle through. visually, it models the Dorling Kindersley UK educational books - I assume they did the graphic design. the user manual is a thick kid friendly comic book. there&#39;s even a separate manual that teaches kids how to write a book report and *then* an entire section of proper citations and giving research credit. MS was a big, big place in those days. its educational division was more or less walled off from the rest of the murderous beast, and it shows. this program is thoughtful, beautiful, and suffused with craftsmanship. i&#39;m right in the middle of retooling the Multimedia HyperGuide podcast, and now i have to do an episode on Encarta. it&#39;s so damned well made. in the mean time, feel free to listen to previous episodes here: https://podcast.vga256.com #multimedia #cdrom #win31 #win95 #retrocomputing #podcast

Replies (6)

@amoroso@oldbytes.space 2026-05-04 16:12

@vga256 You may also be interested in Utopian Scholastic, the visual style of Encarta and other late 1990s and early 2000s products. https://wol.fm/blog/utopian-scholastic.html

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@arcadia@mindly.social 2026-05-04 16:16

@vga256 Yep, got this bundled with the family PC too. Those bundles didn't have many games included, so I played a ton of Mind Maze!

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@likesoldmacs@bitbang.social 2026-05-04 16:16

@vga256 can't believe I'm about to say this, but it is legit heartwarming to think of a time when Microsoft seemed slightly less evil 😊

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@GamesMissed@mastodon.social 2026-05-04 17:14

@vga256 We didn't have Encarta, but my parents sent me and my siblings off to university with Microsoft Bookshelf on CD. That was genuinely useful software, I think I still have my disc somewhere.

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@keen456@infosec.exchange 2026-05-04 20:41

@vga256 That is gorgeous! Thanks for sharing.

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@toolbear@tech.lgbt 2026-05-04 22:57

@vga256 Encarta was an intermediate step of traditional encyclopedias going out of favor, and I love Wikipedia, but we lost a bit of culture when wikipedia effectively became the only show in town.

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