Last year, I had a stupid idea. Take several of the major collaborations from a Sonic the Hedgehog / SEGA animation community I have been a part of since 2008, Sonic Paradox, and encode them into an extremely-outdated video format from 1992, known as:
Microsoft Video 1 / MS-CRAM
Furthermore, I reduced the video resolution down to 240p, cut the frame rate down to 12 or 15 fps and the color pallet from 24-bit color [Millions of colors] down to a mere 256 colors. The intent was to make versions of these animated collabs that would, in theory, play back on 25+ year old computer hardware and on a 2X CD-ROM.
The plan was to just release these video files as a download as a joke. However, after talking with an experience programmer, Kwasior, he told me making my dream come of true of creating video discs for Windows 95, as a silly April Fools joke, was doable! TheWax and Piggybank were soon on board, as well, to create artwork for this project.
Additionally, TheWax animated a short cartoon to help promote this project, with Time8th on board to handle the voice work, which you can view here!
To get the disc ISOs for this project, you can download the lot of them for free from MediaFire!
Sonic Paradox for Windows 95 Disc Images [WinRAR Archive - 532.78 MB]
Recommended Minimum System Requirements:
166 MHz Pentium CPU
16 MB RAM
16-Bit Compatible Sound Card
640 x 480 pixel 256 Color / 8-bit Color Compatible Display
2X CD-ROM
Microsoft Windows 95* or Later
*Updates may be needed to get this project to run on Windows 95 / 98, but it should work on Windows 98 SE, ME and beyond natively!
Options on how to use these disc images;
A. Break down the ISO files using WinRAR, 7Zip, etc. into usable data, then launch the included SPlayer application.
B. Use a program, such as WinCDEmu to play the ISO files directly.
C. Burn each disc image to its own compact disc using ImgBurn or other similar programs.
D. Break down the ISOs into usable data via programs like WinRAR, 7Zip, etc. then play back the included video files in any version of Windows Media Player to behold the majesty of top-of-the-line video compression from 1992!
Enjoy! ^_^
Sakhdev
Appreciate the system requirements, wasn't sure if my computer was up to date, but seems fine. Thanks again ♪(´▽｀)
DrMackFoxx
Oddly enough, the system requirements are not a joke. :) Kwasior, the programmer on this project, and I did a lot of careful work to make sure the video discs in this project would actually work on Windows 95-era computers. While no one on this collab owned a computer old enough to properly test the video discs, Kwasior was able to get a rough idea of what would be needed due to some careful hardware emulation. Thanks to him, the video discs literally can work on any version of Microsoft Windows from 95 and onward. ^_^