In the early 1990s, Microsoft was becoming a huge company thanks to the success of its MS-DOS and Windows PC operating systems, and also the growing audience for its Office lineup of productive apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. So, perhaps naturally, Microsoft decided it wanted to extend that software success to other areas.
In 1993, the company launched Microsoft Encarta. This CD-ROM encyclopedia was the first product in the company"s Microsoft Home software lineup, dedicated to offering educational and entertainment PC software products for regular consumers.
It soon flooded the growing PC software market with tons of similar products. They were made for all sorts of topics, like a database of movies (Microsoft Cinemania), a look at various wines (Microsoft Wine Guide), and an encyclopedia devoted to music (Microsoft Music Central).
Most of these products were released between 1993 and 1997 and most cost a whopping $59.95 when they first launched. A majority of these releases didn"t get a second edition, and the Microsoft Home brand started to disappear by 1998.
That was mainly to do with the rise of the internet and the World Wide Web, where a lot of the info on Microsoft"s CD-ROM and DVD encyclopedias could be found for the price of an ISP connection.
Microsoft Home did have more than a few interesting software releases during its short tenure. Here are just a few of them:
Microsoft Dogs
Microsoft Dogs is exactly what you think it is. It"s an encyclopedia about dogs. The CD-ROM, released in 1995 for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 contained info on hundreds of dog breeds. It also had videos and info on the origins of dogs, lots of tips to take care of your canine companion, and more.
Our favorite part of this software program is the Dog Piano. You can tap on the virtual keys to hear dogs barking and you can even make it play certain songs, again just with the sound of barking dogs. You can download a copy of the program for free on the Internet Archive.
Microsoft Dinosaurs
Like Microsoft Dogs, this 1993 software product aimed at being a one-stop place to learn everything about dinosaurs (oddly enough, it came out the same year as the movie Jurassic Park). It used some content, under license, from the well-known reference book publisher Dorling Kindersley (better known as DK).
Microsoft Dinosaurs included info on, well, dinosaurs, which include the types of families each species were in, along with the geographical areas they were located. You got guided tours of a number of species narrated by Dinosaur Society founder Don Lessem. There were even a few animated short films, including a stop-motion clip made in 1984 by a man named Phil Tippett, who would later go on to create the dinosaur CGI effects for Jurassic Park.
Microsoft Isaac Asimov"s The Ultimate Robot
This may be one of the coolest, if not the coolest, software product released in the Microsoft Home lineup. Launched in 1993, it offered a look at sci-fi robots through the eyes and words of the person who helped to bring the modern idea of a robot to life, the late sci-fi author Isaac Asimov.
The CD-ROM includes video interviews with Asimov and info about him and his robot stories. You can also read many of his robot short stories via this CD-ROM. You can get info on how robots have been portrayed in films. There"s also some real robot science in there as well, including a timeline on the development of robots in our world.
Perhaps the coolest thing about this product is the Robotoid Assembly Toolkit. It allowed people to create a custom robot from a variety of parts and designs, which you then see animated when you are done. The designs for these robot parts were created by famed Star Wars designer Ralph McQuarrie, who first designed two of the most famous fictional robots of all time, C-3PO and R2D2.
It could be interesting to see if Microsoft could recreate and even improve on some of these older Microsoft Home software products and release them as digital versions, Even with the internet, some of these features, like the Dog Piano and the Robotoid Assembly Toolkit, could get a new life if they get some love.