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[puke]

There are probably better places to ask this question, but what the hell.  B12 /is/ the Internet.

So, ah, I sort of miss the old installer screens... art, sometimes animation, often little bits of back story or flavor text for the setting of a game... and as far as I can tell that is completely absent for any Steam versions of games.

Is there any way to get them back?  Or make them display?  I did a basic web search on the topic, but nothing useful came up.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Installations are now ridiculously quick since they don't stream from the CD anymore and hardware in general is much faster. They're just another thing that went to the gaming graveyard like binded manuals and code wheels.

[Mech#4]

For which games in particular? Red Alert 2? I believe Steam doesn't so much install games as download the already unpacked files and places them in the appropriate folder so, unfortunately, I don't think the installer file or images would be located in the game directory.

Unless you mean the auto-run menus. Some games still use those if you run the game from its directory in the Steam folder. Steam itself sometimes runs the game without going through that. These games, if I remember right, will tend to have two executables in their folder; one to launch the game and another called something like "auto-run" or similar. I cannot give an example though, sorry.

[puke]

wow, I didn't realized it streamed them already unpacked.  I thought maybe I could just download packages from steam and find a way to manually install them, but I guess not.

Oh well, such is the price of progress.

[Mech#4]

wow, I didn't realized it streamed them already unpacked.  I thought maybe I could just download packages from steam and find a way to manually install them, but I guess not.

Oh well, such is the price of progress.

I could be wrong on Steam downloading the unpacked game, I haven't actually checked. Though I'm pretty sure there is no installer files in the game folders. You may be able to find the image files as .png in the game folder but those tended to be stored only on the CD from my experience.

[Bouchart]

I miss the old installers that asked if you wanted a trial version of AOL or CompuServe.

[puke]

lol.  I miss the ones that let you play games during the install process (tic-tac-toe, and such) but you'd have to dig pretty deep to find one of those these days.

[Djohaal]

Best installer IMO was pharaoh's. It loaded up and WHAM artwork of the pharaoh statues and.. this theme!

Also in the list is Emperor, Rise of the Middle kingdom, for an equally memorable installer theme.

Breakaway/Impressions sure knew how to set the mood starting with the installer.

Another memorable installer was simcity 4's. It showcased several awesome cities built on it, what was quite handy considering it was one of the first two-CD games to come out and its install time was fucking long

[Elfeater]

I enjoyed Freelancers installer screen, it gave you a decent bit of backstory

[Moogie]

I was always fond of the FF7 installer that showed you those cool background images of each character and the overworld theme playing in the background (actually it was pretty loud).

[Shadowlord]

Back in DOS, not only did you have install screens, you also had the separate setup program for specifying what sound card you had, possibly changing key configurations, etc.

These were all generally fairly similar, although Warcraft II's sound test was amusing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_A1GNx0M9M

[Reelya]

Another memorable installer was simcity 4's. It showcased several awesome cities built on it, what was quite handy considering it was one of the first two-CD games to come out and its install time was fucking long

You might be out by a long shot. I had a stack of multi-CD games in the 1990's, years before SC4 came out.

I can think of two triple-CD 90's games I had/have off the top of my head, Diablo 2 was one and this point and click game called Redjack was another.

[Scripten]

Another memorable installer was simcity 4's. It showcased several awesome cities built on it, what was quite handy considering it was one of the first two-CD games to come out and its install time was fucking long

You might be out by a long shot. I had a stack of multi-CD games in the 1990's, years before SC4 came out.

I can think of two triple-CD 90's games I had/have off the top of my head, Diablo 2 was one and this point and click game called Redjack was another.

Dude. Don't even get me started on Blade Runner. That monster was 4 CDs of adventure.

I need to reinstall that game. Good times.

[Robsoie]

I liked the install process of Operation Flashpoint, during the install you had the soviet anthem with voices from radio and tv broadcast that were building the cold war atmosphere very nicely, ending with a music from the game that everyone that has played it or even the old demo will always remember
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K4AX1ZpwRk

[Itnetlolor]

The installation of Crimson Skies had you overhear a battle going on, while there's combat chatter between villains and the Fortune Hunters shooting down a zepplin. Most the time, the installation took about as long as the entire audio clip.

Here's the sound clip that plays.