Before cd-rs, it felt like magic. Like a floppy but 100 times bigger!

It was magical for about 2 years, then USB drives came along and made it look quaint.

I was the kid with the backpack Zip drive and Zip disks, like a weird Santa Claus of game piracy. Duke3d, Descent, Quake, you name it. All of it was in service of modem dueling each other. Wild times!