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Greetings and welcome to LGR Oddware, where we're taking a look at stuff that is odd, forgotten, and obsolete
in relation to hardware and software... and vaporware? Yeah.
So I've covered some strange things on Oddware before, I mean obviously,
but this one takes the cake perhaps as being one of the most unusual
and as such it's going to be one of the shorter Oddware episodes too, because there's really not a lot to show
but it's super-fascinating none the less.
This is Nerd Perfect Nerd Processing Vaporware, Version 9.1
Revision 3.14159, ha ha, nerdy references with Pi there.
And this is actually the very first and only release as far as I can tell
It's actually a parody on Word Perfect, in case you did not get that.
Although, with the Superman nerd here, yeah I don't know. You might be confused that's parodying something else.
It's not called Super-nerd.
It's just—I don't know. (laugh)
I think he just slapped whatever he wanted to on here.
This is something made by a guy named David Moss,
going by the name of Vaporsoft Inc.
He released this in 1987 and he was a former database software engineer who was just really fed up with a lot of industry stuff
and he was based in Fallbrook, California and decided to put together this Vaporsoft Inc. company—
Software Before Its Time™ (laugh)
In case you're not aware, Vaporware is a term that is used to describe
Usually stuff that is in the technology and computer industries and whatnot
or Hardware and Software that is promised, it's talked about, it's maybe even shown of but it never actually comes out.
That's the basic gist of it and this is sort of a parody of that,
as well as just computer and nerd culture in general, circa 1987.
But yeah, this was actualyl covered by a whole bunch of media outlets back then.
Surprisingly, because it did pretty well. In fact, it sold around 50'000 copies by the end of 1988
from what I gather, maybe more than that later on,
some reporters were calling it the 'Pet Rock of the Computer World', sort of a gag gift kind of thing; it doesn't really do anything
but it's there to get a laugh, I guess.
Mr. Moss did actually plan to turn this Vaporsoft company into something more substantial, he was planning to parody programs like Lotus 1-2-3 with something called 'Lootus',
and Crosstalk with something called 'Talk Cross'; I mean, you know, it's basic, really basic parody stuff.
In fact the torch was pretty much picked up by the company Parotty Interactive, which did games like 'Pyst', 'Star Warped', and 'Winblows 98'
and if you've seen my video on Winblows, you know that I'm not necessarily a fan of that style of humour,
but let's go ahead and take a look at this because, yeah, it does come with a floppy disk and it's got some user agreements—
I mean it looks like a legitimate piece of software from back then but when you start looking closer, that's when the joke starts to come together. Supposedly.
Let's go ahead and open this thing up.
I almost feel bad for opening this because this is the only copy I've seen, and I've been looking for years and years and years and years.
I don't even remember where I heard about it first but the only other copy I've ever seen even a picture of is at a museum somewhere. (laugh)
So, you know, but I wanted to take a look at this. Because, check this out. It does have a floppy disk (5¼") but (laugh)
it doesn't actually have the floppy DISK that is inside, or is supposed to be inside. There's nothing in there, it's literally just a shell with no media. At all.
So that's the joke. This is literal vaporware, so— It came out, sure, but— there's nothing here.
So, obviously, there is no software to actually look at. Interestingly, this does say 1988 on here, I've seen some other releases that say 1988 as well, or, well,
some news stories that say '88 so maybe there were a couple releases? Either way, this is the only one I've actually seen, so if anyone has seen any other copies, let me know.
There are 50'000 of them out there, I would assume somebody kept one? But, yeah, let's just go ahead and take a look at the rest of this, because
I like this thing. I've only ever seen the back of this here, where it says:
(reading agreement)
Blah blah blah, all this kind of stuff. I love this coverage though, right here. (laugh)
(reading coverage)
This is just—it's absolutely lampooning the type of stuff that you would see in user agreements back then and today
I mean, honestly, this kind of parody still holds up as far as I'm concerned. A little more so than the crap in 'Winblows 98'.
All right, so inside of it, I've actually never seen this at all.
All right so we've got a concept by David C. Moss, Robert A. Rini did the illustration, the Brilliance that is Vaporsoft is like three people.
So that's awesome (laugh). It's a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is their problem.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah, see, I'm already liking this better than some of the Parotty Interactive things.
You know what? Right there, Second Edition, May 1998. So there were at least—
Well, there's not necessarily. That could be part of the parody, too. Which I think is great. Honestly, I have no idea if any of this is, like, real. (laugh)
There's a little warning there that it might damage your drive if you put that non-existent floppy disk inside of your disk drive,
Oh my goodness. Yeah—it's—this is really the content of it. It's not Software, right? But hopefully you can maybe pause the video here and there and read some this,
because, yeah I think this pretty great. I haven't read any of it but I think that the IDEA of it's great.
The fact that somebody would come out with literal vaporware (laugh) It does bring up some interesting questions, right, because vaporware is something that is—
I mean, the whole idea of it is that it was never released. And so the fact that this is a physical thing that was actually released and sold.
In stores. It kind of makes it no longer vaporware. Right? So is it actually? I don't know.
It is some kind of neat illustrations though, I like them. Heh, Peter Norton, or Peter Nerdon.
All right, this is getting into some of the ground of like the Parotty Interactive's Winblows 98 stuff where they just make fun of nerds for being nerds, which I'm not on board with.
Just because I think it's weak, it's just a very cheap, low kind of humour.
You know, making jokes about Star Trek and whatnot I guess, I don't know.
Oh, here we go. These are at least kind of interesting.
Heh, ASCII. Acronym for 'Automated System Corrupted (by) Incoming Information'.
Backspace. The part of your back you can't scratch by yourself. (laugh) Aaah, nice.
BAUD. Short for baudy. We at VaporSoft, Inc. frown on the use of our product for writing pornography, and the spelling checker doesn't know any of those words anyway.
Yep.
What You Got Is What You Get? Instead of WYSIWYG?
And there's a questionnaire. Oh, great.
Banana Inspector, Protozoa, all these possible occupations here that you canapply yourself to be.
Please indicate sex: male, female, yes, no. Why, that's quite pertinent. And, wow. How did I hear about NerdPerfect? I wouldn't even be able to answer that. I really don't remember, I think...
I might have seen it on like 'Computer Chronicles' or something. I just don't recall.
And wow! Full 18" x 24" poster suitable for framing of the front cover of Nerd Perfect. If anybody actually bought that, they would be heroes forever in my mind.
Well, that's Nerd Perfect. I mean, really, there's not a lot to see here. This is what got me the most interested in it, though,
not even necessarily the humour in there, which a lot of that seems to be pretty amusing, but I mean, it's a floppy disk without the disk inside. That's great.
I don't know why I think it's great, but it is. For me, so there we go.
That's this quick episode of Oddware. I hope you all enjoyed seeing this bit of oddness from my collection.