The Forgotten Realm of PC DVD-ROM Extras on DVD Movies
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Date: 2026-09-04
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Comments and reviews: 20
CptFitzgerald
It was an era before the PS2 was commonplace where to have a DVD player typically meant it was a PC with a DVD player and typically owned by slightly tech savvy young parents. My friend's parents had this exact setup and I was blown away as later our household only had a dedicated DVD player in 2000. I remember The Matrix DVD extras on my Dell that was my first PC that was my own in 2002, and I want to thank you for shedding light on a lost media watch along event that is now common place (or was) on stream sites like twitch and iOS options during the dark years lockdown. So interesting that we got the scribe archivist roles now. TechMoan is about to have a field day.
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It was an era before the PS2 was commonplace where to have a DVD player typically meant it was a PC with a DVD player and typically owned by slightly tech savvy young parents. My friend's parents had this exact setup and I was blown away as later our household only had a dedicated DVD player in 2000. I remember The Matrix DVD extras on my Dell that was my first PC that was my own in 2002, and I want to thank you for shedding light on a lost media watch along event that is now common place (or was) on stream sites like twitch and iOS options during the dark years lockdown. So interesting that we got the scribe archivist roles now. TechMoan is about to have a field day.
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RhiannonSmudge
I could be wrong but I swear the 101 Dalmatians DVD had a ROM feature that was basically a virtual pet game where you had to take care of a dalmatian puppy. I think it was just a demo since gameplay was pretty limited but I remember having fun as a kid
One of the most interesting things about it though was when I played it on newer hardware (I think a Windows XP laptop) there was a glitch with the window sizing that caused a large white boarder to show that had a bunch of number values for hunger, cleanliness, boredom, etc that you wouldn't be able to see normally. The game was infinitely easier because of that lol
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I could be wrong but I swear the 101 Dalmatians DVD had a ROM feature that was basically a virtual pet game where you had to take care of a dalmatian puppy. I think it was just a demo since gameplay was pretty limited but I remember having fun as a kid
One of the most interesting things about it though was when I played it on newer hardware (I think a Windows XP laptop) there was a glitch with the window sizing that caused a large white boarder to show that had a bunch of number values for hunger, cleanliness, boredom, etc that you wouldn't be able to see normally. The game was infinitely easier because of that lol
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lazygamereviews
Man, I totally forgot about those old PC DVD-ROM extras. I remember being stoked when I first found out about them on discs like 'Mortal Kombat: Annihilation' and 'Enter the Game' (which was like a weird, 3D, interactive experience. Those were the days of InterActual Player and Cyberlink's PowerDVD - it was like having your own little gaming PC included with the movie. I've been digging through old DVD collections and it's fun to rediscover these gems. It's crazy how easily we forget about these bonus features, but they're a blast from the past. Anybody else have fond memories of these PC extras
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Man, I totally forgot about those old PC DVD-ROM extras. I remember being stoked when I first found out about them on discs like 'Mortal Kombat: Annihilation' and 'Enter the Game' (which was like a weird, 3D, interactive experience. Those were the days of InterActual Player and Cyberlink's PowerDVD - it was like having your own little gaming PC included with the movie. I've been digging through old DVD collections and it's fun to rediscover these gems. It's crazy how easily we forget about these bonus features, but they're a blast from the past. Anybody else have fond memories of these PC extras
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MantleMVEVO
Think the only one of these I had was Jimmy Neutron (anything else was either too adult for elementary aged me or had been rereleased without said features by the time I got the DVD. Flash games still worked on Windows 10 believe it or not!
Would be neat to see a follow up on some of the DVDs that had video game console exclusive extras! A few mid-2000s Fox titles like Robots and Star Wars had Xbox demos whereas Phineas and Ferb on the PS3 had a few episodes included on the Blu-Ray
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Think the only one of these I had was Jimmy Neutron (anything else was either too adult for elementary aged me or had been rereleased without said features by the time I got the DVD. Flash games still worked on Windows 10 believe it or not!
Would be neat to see a follow up on some of the DVDs that had video game console exclusive extras! A few mid-2000s Fox titles like Robots and Star Wars had Xbox demos whereas Phineas and Ferb on the PS3 had a few episodes included on the Blu-Ray
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JallenMeodia
Man I remember early DVDs, they put in so much effort it's unreal. Then slowly everything got drawn out to having language selection as a feature. I don't think blu rays have ever managed to match the ambition of early DVDs, nobody is custom building a UI, making games and then hiding extras you wouldn't find without the correct keystrokes anymore.
Edit: Not to say they're better movies or anything. Just companies did seem to try harder at the turn of the millennium.
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Man I remember early DVDs, they put in so much effort it's unreal. Then slowly everything got drawn out to having language selection as a feature. I don't think blu rays have ever managed to match the ambition of early DVDs, nobody is custom building a UI, making games and then hiding extras you wouldn't find without the correct keystrokes anymore.
Edit: Not to say they're better movies or anything. Just companies did seem to try harder at the turn of the millennium.
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StoneCresent
The concept looks to have had a brief revival in Japan. I recently came across an anime Blu-ray at a specialty store that had bonus features if you popped it in a Playstation (with a Blu-ray drive of course. I couldn't read the name, but one of the Playstation accessible features was an art gallery. With Sony almost dead set ceasing physical game disc production and going diskless for the PS6, this kind of bonus feature looks to be dead in the water.
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The concept looks to have had a brief revival in Japan. I recently came across an anime Blu-ray at a specialty store that had bonus features if you popped it in a Playstation (with a Blu-ray drive of course. I couldn't read the name, but one of the Playstation accessible features was an art gallery. With Sony almost dead set ceasing physical game disc production and going diskless for the PS6, this kind of bonus feature looks to be dead in the water.
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georgehill8285
I never really explored any of these, but I did have two Star Trek audio CDs back in the day that had PC content on them. One was the First Contact soundtrack, the other was the 30th anniversary best of soundtrack.
Weirdly, the Best of soundtrack had the First Contact trailer on it, and the First Contact soundtrack had a mini game where you could walk around the Enterprise-D. It confused me why they didn’t switch those two around.
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I never really explored any of these, but I did have two Star Trek audio CDs back in the day that had PC content on them. One was the First Contact soundtrack, the other was the 30th anniversary best of soundtrack.
Weirdly, the Best of soundtrack had the First Contact trailer on it, and the First Contact soundtrack had a mini game where you could walk around the Enterprise-D. It confused me why they didn’t switch those two around.
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reedlarson302
The first dvd rom special feature I found was around 1998. I had just bought Weird Al's latest album, Running With Scissors and couldn't wait to listen to it at home. I didn't have a cd player yet and the only one in the house was the cd rom in the computer. So I put the cd in expecting it to auto play, but it didn't. So I had to go into the file explorer to try to open it and that's where I found the hidden file on the cd.
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The first dvd rom special feature I found was around 1998. I had just bought Weird Al's latest album, Running With Scissors and couldn't wait to listen to it at home. I didn't have a cd player yet and the only one in the house was the cd rom in the computer. So I put the cd in expecting it to auto play, but it didn't. So I had to go into the file explorer to try to open it and that's where I found the hidden file on the cd.
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TimGaukerToons
16: 24 - It's funny you mention this cuz The Mummy Returns had a similar interactive DVD Rom suite and it claimed the demo was SOMEWHERE on the disc but i could not find it ANYWHERE. I do have the original Mummy film on DVD so i might take a look and get it there
Like man, finding the demos for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Spider-Man 1 didnt require an excursion to recover a demo.
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16: 24 - It's funny you mention this cuz The Mummy Returns had a similar interactive DVD Rom suite and it claimed the demo was SOMEWHERE on the disc but i could not find it ANYWHERE. I do have the original Mummy film on DVD so i might take a look and get it there
Like man, finding the demos for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Spider-Man 1 didnt require an excursion to recover a demo.
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patrickwagner6247
Do you remember a website from years ago called DVD Easter Eggs Some DVDs used to hide extras and goodies on them for people who took the time to look. Things like accessing a trailer, menu, backstage reel, bloopers, etc. I don't remember which movie it was, but one I had you could highlight something in the artwork if you pressed left instead of up or down on the text menu of options.
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Do you remember a website from years ago called DVD Easter Eggs Some DVDs used to hide extras and goodies on them for people who took the time to look. Things like accessing a trailer, menu, backstage reel, bloopers, etc. I don't remember which movie it was, but one I had you could highlight something in the artwork if you pressed left instead of up or down on the text menu of options.
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spitfire184
This made me realise that the first music video that I ever watched on a PC must have been Thank You by Dido because my mum bought the album on CD and it had the music video on the disc. It was such a novelty, it felt futuristic. Now I can access tens of thousands of music videos in an instant at much higher quality, and from my phone, too. I guess we really are living in the future.
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This made me realise that the first music video that I ever watched on a PC must have been Thank You by Dido because my mum bought the album on CD and it had the music video on the disc. It was such a novelty, it felt futuristic. Now I can access tens of thousands of music videos in an instant at much higher quality, and from my phone, too. I guess we really are living in the future.
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ElNeroDiablo
I want to say that the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone movie came on 2 DVD's - the first one with the movie and some basic Extra, the second disc having deleted scenes (that later got used in the Extended Cut) and some minigames such as tapping the bricks to open to Diagon Alley, and solving Snape's Potion Puzzle (cut from the movie, in the book.
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I want to say that the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone movie came on 2 DVD's - the first one with the movie and some basic Extra, the second disc having deleted scenes (that later got used in the Extended Cut) and some minigames such as tapping the bricks to open to Diagon Alley, and solving Snape's Potion Puzzle (cut from the movie, in the book.
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mrKozmoz
This made me realize when I saw The Matrix in theaters, that was over 27 years ago now, holy crap. There was something about experiencing that movie with the sound of a heavy duty projector whirring away during the quiet scenes. And I remember whenever we got DVD's in the house, I always looked if there were features, always a cool thing when they did that.
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This made me realize when I saw The Matrix in theaters, that was over 27 years ago now, holy crap. There was something about experiencing that movie with the sound of a heavy duty projector whirring away during the quiet scenes. And I remember whenever we got DVD's in the house, I always looked if there were features, always a cool thing when they did that.
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sorenpx
Man, I miss the days when studios still actually TRIED. Not only are these sorts of extras on discs a thing of the past, extras in general are becoming more and more sparse.
And what's up with movie websites Movies often used to have cool websites with features that were actually interesting. Now if a movie even has a website, it's barebones and useless.
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Man, I miss the days when studios still actually TRIED. Not only are these sorts of extras on discs a thing of the past, extras in general are becoming more and more sparse.
And what's up with movie websites Movies often used to have cool websites with features that were actually interesting. Now if a movie even has a website, it's barebones and useless.
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acbelka
I discovered these probably just under a year ago when I bought a box-set of the Johnny English films awhile back. The first one has a bunch of DVD-ROM extras that I looked through on a machine entirely too new for it. I don't remember it being exactly noteworthy but it was interesting, might start looking for these specifically when I'm buying DVDs
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I discovered these probably just under a year ago when I bought a box-set of the Johnny English films awhile back. The first one has a bunch of DVD-ROM extras that I looked through on a machine entirely too new for it. I don't remember it being exactly noteworthy but it was interesting, might start looking for these specifically when I'm buying DVDs
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scaper8
I always loved commentary tracks and behind the scenes featurettes and deleted scenes and all that.
I never checked most of them on a computer (now, thinking back, I can't for the life of me think of why, and would have loved this stuff even more.
Now physical releases tend to be barebones if we get one at all. It's really sad.
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I always loved commentary tracks and behind the scenes featurettes and deleted scenes and all that.
I never checked most of them on a computer (now, thinking back, I can't for the life of me think of why, and would have loved this stuff even more.
Now physical releases tend to be barebones if we get one at all. It's really sad.
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jrm23ify
Enhanced CD too.
I've been over physical media for a decade but I remember this stuff. If I'm not actually using it and it just sticks on a self somewhere. Goodbye to paperweight and I'm completely out on physical media. I will still buy digital music albums though, especially ones that provide DRM free downloads.
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Enhanced CD too.
I've been over physical media for a decade but I remember this stuff. If I'm not actually using it and it just sticks on a self somewhere. Goodbye to paperweight and I'm completely out on physical media. I will still buy digital music albums though, especially ones that provide DRM free downloads.
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supersharpgamer
I have one DVD in my collection that specifically states it's compatible with the PlayStation 2! What's that about I really need to find out, I guess. If it just means it works and you can watch the movie on your PS2 is bit weird because it's obviously compatible with every DVD movie.
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I have one DVD in my collection that specifically states it's compatible with the PlayStation 2! What's that about I really need to find out, I guess. If it just means it works and you can watch the movie on your PS2 is bit weird because it's obviously compatible with every DVD movie.
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ellaed7034
I remember getting What’s New Scooby Doo’ DVDs free in Kellogg’s boxes as a kid and playing them on my XP machine, including one that had an ace skateboarding demo game. For someone who had an old inherited PC but no dial up connection, these interactive DVDs were a lifeline!
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I remember getting What’s New Scooby Doo’ DVDs free in Kellogg’s boxes as a kid and playing them on my XP machine, including one that had an ace skateboarding demo game. For someone who had an old inherited PC but no dial up connection, these interactive DVDs were a lifeline!
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lazygamereviews
Long time viewer, 1st comment. Can you help Cameta glasses: you inspired me with your thrift journeys. I'm looking for basic camera glasses, but they now all only seem to be cloud based now. Do you have any leads on a model to look for, or plavesvto look. Many thanks good sir
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Long time viewer, 1st comment. Can you help Cameta glasses: you inspired me with your thrift journeys. I'm looking for basic camera glasses, but they now all only seem to be cloud based now. Do you have any leads on a model to look for, or plavesvto look. Many thanks good sir
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