HuguesJohnson.com - Electronics Boutique Spring 1996 CD

The images on this page are from the "Electronics Boutique 1996 Spring CD". This was a promotional CD catalog given out at Electronics Boutique & Waldensoftware stores in early 1996. The images are only 256 color because that was the depth of the source files (keep in mind this was 1996). Click on the thumbnails to see or download the full-size images (~488x480).

This site is in no way affiliated with Electronics Boutique/Waldensoftware (now EBGames/GameStop) or the publishers of these items. These images are simply up for nostalgic value. If you take video games way too seriously then I guess they even serve a historical purpose by documenting the state of gaming in early 1996.

This page has items 22-45 from the catalog, a fairly eclectic assortment of titles.

Just in time for the upcoming housing boom it's Planix Exterior Designer 3D.

Programs like WinWay Resume were eventually rendered useless by the plethora of job sites that offer similar services.

myHouse advertised you could "print your plans or hand a disk to your contractor" which probably worked better in theory than reality.

BodyWorks also fits into the category of software that was rendered obsolete by the internet..

..Microsoft Gardening too. With the Windows 95 launch Microsoft decided they needed to crank-out a bunch of crappy "multimedia" software to showcase their new OS.

Along those same lines is Microsoft's Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide.

Home & Small Business Value Pack: Word, Excel, Publisher, Bookshelf 95, $264.99.

Or just the Word & Publisher Value Pack for $134.99.

The 4.0 versions of the Microsoft tools were the first Windows programming set I used. I was more of a VB guy in the late 90s so I didn't use Visual C++ 4.0 too much. From what little I've seen of the 3.0 version this was a major upgrade.

Bookshelf came with my copy of Word 95 and yet I don't think I've ever used it.

I still contend that Windows 95 was the biggest leap forward for Windows, even bigger than Vista. Heck, if it somehow supported an NTFS file system and 1gb of memory I would literally still be using it today.

OK, now for a mini-flood of accounting programs. I don't have much to add on them. The personal versions sold decently but the business ones usually collected dust. First up is QuickBooks for $111.99.

Quicken Financial Suite for $79.99.

Quicken Deluxe for $59.99.

At $39.99 Quicken was the best-selling financial application we had.

By the time this CD catalog came out, TurboTax 95 was basically useless.

Peachtree Accounting for $129.99.

And finally, One-Write Plus for $69.99.

The Timex Data Link Plus was one of the lamest items I recall. Clocking-in at $109.99 this gizmo was a watch that synced with your computer. USB hadn't been invented yet (or wasn't mainstream) so it worked by scanning a barcode on your monitor. No joke.

VirusScan, $54.99. Not much else to say.

Wow, $100 for QmodemPro. To call it useless today would be a major understatement. OK, I guess a few people still use dial-up but they probably aren't reading this image-heavy page so I don't care if I offend them.

It's a MIDI cable for $54.99.

I don't think PC-cililin was available for sale at our store, maybe it was just our location or something.

I totally forgot that there used to be a standalone WebScan that was separate from VirusScan.