Softdisk | Code Like It's 198x

Softdisk sold software the way a magazine sells articles. Every month a subscriber received a disk from Shreveport, Louisiana, with a cover picture, a contents page, readers’ letters, columns and a handful of new programs, all read and run on the computer itself. By 1989 the company said it was reaching “over 75,000 customers each month” with four such magazines, one for each of the popular home computers.

It is remembered now for a small department in the same building. In 1990 Softdisk’s PC games subscription, Gamer’s Edge, was being written by John Romero, John Carmack, Tom Hall and the artist Adrian Carmack. They made Commander Keen at night on the company’s computers, and in February 1991 they left to found id Software.

Fast facts

Founded: 1981, by the company’s own account; the earliest independent listing found is from March 1984.
Based: Shreveport, Louisiana: 3811 Saint Vincent in 1984, P.O. Box 30008 through the late 1980s and 1990s, and 606 Common Street in the early 1990s.
Run by: Al Vekovius, its owner when the id founders left.
Disk magazines: Softdisk (Apple II), Loadstar (Commodore 64 and 128), Big Blue Disk (IBM PC, later Softdisk PC), Diskworld (Macintosh), Softdisk G-S (Apple IIGS) and On Disk Monthly (IBM PC).
Games: Gamer’s Edge, a monthly subscription of PC games, whose programmers founded id Software on 1 February 1991.

A magazine on a disk

The first disk carried the company’s name. Softdisk was an Apple II magazine, and in September 1984 Electronic Games reported that “the monthly publication-on-disk for Apple pickers” was moving into shops. Each issue, the magazine said, had “programming techniques, hints, tips, a variety of useful programs, games, novelties, plus a great deal of interaction between subscribers in an almost club-like atmosphere”.

Computist, an Apple II magazine, reviewed it in 1990, when Softdisk was on issue 106. It “reads much like a ‘real magazine’, even down to pages you can turn with a click on a screen corner”. Most of the disk went to two or three programs and extras. Issue 106 had a text adventure called “Amusement Park” that the reviewer rated “near Infocom-grade”, two crossword puzzles, 28 Print Shop graphics, a version of Mastermind and a checkbook balancer. A year’s subscription cost $69.95. A separate magazine for the Apple IIGS, Softdisk G-S, had reached issue 11 and came on a 3½-inch disk.

Four monthly disks

Loadstar did the same for the Commodore 64 from 1984, and by 1988 Softdisk was selling three magazines side by side, each at $19.95 for a three-month trial: Softdisk for the Apple II, Loadstar for the Commodore 64 and 128, and Big Blue Disk for the IBM PC, Tandy and MS-DOS clones. The Disk magazines entry describes what a Loadstar subscription bought.

In 1989 Softdisk went looking for contributors in Amazing Computing with an advertisement built on The Wizard of Oz: “We’re off to seek a wizard… a computer wizard, that is.” It called the company “publishers of the largest and most successful family of monthly software collections, reaching over 75,000 customers each month, including some in Kansas”. It listed four monthly disks, Softdisk, Diskworld for the Macintosh, Big Blue Disk and Loadstar, and promised versions for the Apple IIGS and the Amiga. “We do not pay in emeralds or rubies,” it added, “but we do pay… the highest rates in the industry!” Compute! reported in December 1989 that Diskworld had “recently started”.

The PC range grew in the 1990s. On Disk Monthly was advertised in November 1991 at “less than $7 a month”, and by June 1994 Softdisk was offering a free issue of Softdisk PC, “the #1 choice for home computing software! Not shareware!”, with “8-10 new programs” a month for DOS and Windows.

Gamer’s Edge

Gamer’s Edge was, in Softdisk’s own advertising, “the first software subscription devoted to game enthusiasts”: a new game for the IBM PC every month, for “LESS THAN $10 A MONTH”. Wireframe credits John Romero with the idea. Romero had written Apple II games for magazines, including the disk magazine Uptime, and he arrived in 1989. “We were all at Softdisk in 1989 when I met Tom Hall,” he told Edge. “I came to Softdisk because Jay [Wilbur] was going there.” Wilbur later ran id’s business side. According to Retro Gamer, Hall had joined as a games programmer in 1987. John Carmack came from freelance programming, and Adrian Carmack was already working at Softdisk as an artist.

In 1990 Carmack found a way to make a PC scroll a screen of scenery smoothly, which he called adaptive tile refresh. Carmack and Hall used it to rebuild the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3 overnight, and the team spent a weekend with Softdisk’s computers, taken home in their cars, turning it into a demonstration for Nintendo. Nintendo wanted Mario kept on its own machines. Softdisk, Hall recalled, “didn’t want to use the smooth scrolling trick Carmack had discovered, so we thought, ‘Well, if they don’t want it, we could do something ourselves.’”

That something was Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons, written at night and at weekends on Softdisk’s computers and published as shareware by Scott Miller’s Apogee on 14 December 1990. Miller had reached Romero through the fan mail that Softdisk screened, by writing under several names from one address. After the first royalty cheque arrived, Carmack, Romero, Hall and Adrian Carmack left Softdisk and founded id Software on 1 February 1991.

Softdisk was not pleased that the game had been made with its equipment, and the four agreed to go on writing games for Gamer’s Edge, one every two months until 31 January 1992, at $5,000 a game. “As part of leaving, we agreed to do games so the Gamer’s Edge product could continue,” Hall told Retro Gamer. Those contract games were where id tried out its ideas: Commander Keen in Keen Dreams, which Softdisk offered free to new Gamer’s Edge subscribers in December 1991 as “a $14.95 value”; Hovertank One, with the player in a tank among flat-coloured walls; and Catacomb 3-D, which put textures on the walls. The last two contract games were made by other programmers so that id could start Wolfenstein 3D. Softdisk later issued a follow-up, The Catacomb Abyss, as shareware; Computer Gaming World still called Softdisk “best known for their Gamer’s Edge monthly disk subscription service” in May 1993.

After the disks

Loadstar was the longest-lived of the magazines. By 1999 it came from J & F Publishing at the same Shreveport post-office box, and it lasted into the 2000s. According to Wikipedia, Softdisk published a Windows disk magazine from 1994 to 1999 and became an internet service provider and web developer from 1995. By 2013 Softdisk and its games were in the hands of Flat Rock Software, which licensed Keen Dreams for a new release in 2013 and published the source code of Hovertank in 2014.

Released source code

Several games that id made for Softdisk have had their source code published under the GNU General Public License version 2. In June 2014 Flat Rock Software released Hovertank 3-D on GitHub, and the Catacomb series, from Catacomb 3-D to The Catacomb Abyss and its sequels Armageddon and Apocalypse, appeared there the same month. In September 2014 Commander Keen in Keen Dreams followed, under the GPL version 2 or later, after a crowdfunding campaign to pay Flat Rock for the right to release it; the release credits Javier M. Chavez and Chuck Naaden.

Sources

Computer Gaming World issue 15, March 1984: directory listing for Softdisk, 3811 Saint Vincent, Shreveport.
Electronic Games vol. 2 no. 14, September 1984, news: Softdisk for the Apple II and its move into retail.
Family Computing, March 1988, p. 7: Softdisk, Inc. advertisement for Big Blue Disk, Loadstar and Softdisk ($19.95 for three months each).
Commodore Magazine vol. 9 no. 10, October 1988: Loadstar advertisement (“software publishers since 1981”).
Amazing Computing vol. 4 no. 7, July 1989, p. 53: Softdisk Publishing advertisement for contributors (“over 75,000 customers each month”; four monthly disks; planned IIGS and Amiga versions). The same advertisement ran from April to August 1989.
Compute! issue 115, December 1989: Diskworld “recently started”; Loadstar and Big Blue Disk.
Computist issue 75, 1990, p. 4: review of Softdisk (issue 106) and Softdisk G-S (issue 11); prices; “in publication since 1981”.
Compute! issue 135, November 1991: On Disk Monthly advertisement (Softdisk Publishing).
Computer Gaming World issue 89, December 1991: Gamer’s Edge advertisement (monthly, IBM PC, Keen Dreams as a bonus).
Computer Gaming World issue 106, May 1993: “Best of the Rest”, The Catacomb Abyss (Softdisk Publishing, 606 Common Street).
Compute! issue 165, June 1994: Softdisk PC advertisement.
Edge issue 45, May 1997: interview with John Romero (Softdisk in 1989, Tom Hall, Jay Wilbur; Keen on 14 December 1990; id on 1 February 1991).
“id Software”, Retro Gamer issue 40, 2007, pp. 80–81: Tom Hall joining Softdisk in 1987 and Romero in 1989; Hall on Softdisk and the scrolling trick, and on the Gamer’s Edge agreement; the fan mail.
Fabien Sanglard, Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D (2017), chapter 3 and appendix A: Softdisk and Gamer’s Edge in 1990, the Super Mario Bros. 3 demonstration, the founding of id on 1 February 1991, the contract from February 1991 to 31 January 1992 and the last two games made by contractors, Hovertank One and Catacomb 3-D.
Bas Smits, Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen (v1.0), chapter 3, chapter 4 and appendices C and D: the weekend demonstration and the borrowed computers, Apogee, Al Vekovius as Softdisk’s owner, the Gamer’s Edge games, the retail Keen Dreams, Flat Rock Software and the Keen Dreams source release.
“Developer Profile: id Software”, Wireframe issue 16, June 2019, pp. 50–53: Gamer’s Edge as Romero’s idea; Softdisk unhappy with the moonlighting; $5,000 a game.
Commodore World issue 25, March 1999: Loadstar advertisement (J & F Publishing).
“Softdisk”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the Windows disk magazine (1994–99) and the internet business from 1995. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softdisk
Flat Rock Software, Hovertank3D repository, GitHub, June 2014, and Catacomb Games, Catacomb3D, CatacombAbyss and related repositories, GitHub, June 2014 (GPL-2.0). https://github.com/FlatRockSoft/Hovertank3D and https://github.com/CatacombGames
Keen Dreams source repository, GitHub, September 2014 (GPL version 2 or later; Javier M. Chavez and Chuck Naaden). https://github.com/keendreams/keen