CD-Rom Discoveries ~ Powerdeck

Among the cards I bought recently from Russ, was a Powerdeck CD-Rom card. I've already blogged a Powerdeck cardboard card (100 cards ago!), and when I did I said I was going to keep an eye out for the CD-Rom, which was actually the "base" card in the set. 

Card Number 531: Upper Deck Powerdeck, 1999; #9

The CD-Rom is trading card sized and comes in a plastic sleeve.

The 'back' is printed on the plastic sleeve and is the system requirements for running the CD-Rom.

I happen to have an old PC, which is relatively reliable and so I haven't replaced it since I bought it in 2010. It has a CD drive so I thought I would see if this would play. Unfortunately the CD tray is mounted vertically. That's not a problem with an ordinary sized CD, however when the tray went in with the Powerdeck disc on, there was a rattling sound and the disc dropped into the machine. 

Fortunately I was able to retrieve it with a pair of tweezers. Even more fortunately I had an external CD/DVD drive that I could plug into the computer that was flat so the disc couldn't fall anywhere.

I loaded the disc into the tray and it worked!

For people who are into this sort of thing, these are the files on the disc.

Considering there is less than 12mb of information on the disc, the whole thing works really well. There's an animated title screen, leading to a mini home-page.

The menu across the bottom reads Upper Deck Profiles, Highlight Reel, Stat Zone, Powerdeck Gallery, and Web Links. The disc loads with the Highlight Reel, erm, highlighted (as shown), and a small film clip kicks in after a few seconds. 

The Highlights start with Tony's 3000th hit and then segues into a sequence of more hits, accompanied by some punchy music. I didn't time it, but the film clip probably lasts about 30 seconds or so. 

The Upper Deck Profile is quite detailed and runs over two screens.

There are 10 photos in the Gallery. Each one illustrates an aspect of Tony's career. I screenshot this one because it contains the kind of ludicrous hitting statistic that I know Fuji loves as much as I do!

There's a challenge - name another player who missed less than 6 per cent of the time he swung at a pitch!

The Stat Zone has a short animation that dissolves into a fairly standard-looking stats box. I didn't bother doing a screengrab. 

And finally there is the screen of web links. The three linked sites are the MLB website, the now defunct players' website, and the Upper Deck website. 

I was particularly taken by this instruction on the screen!

Ah, remember the days when you would turn on the computer and then turn on the modem and hear it's weird burbling scream and clicking as it tried to engage the world wide web. I know it was the last century, but this just reminded me of how 1999 was a technological epoch ago.

Overall, I was impressed by this little CD-Rom. There was certainly enough content on there to make it worth the hassle of trying to make it work. Back when it was released it must have felt very futuristic and novel. So it's kind of funny that the main thing it's triggered in me is nostalgia.

Total: 531 cards

 

Five DonRuss cards from 1997

The mid-90s were the "overproduction" era for baseball cards, with card companies releasing several sets each season. Today's blog post contains five cards from four sets released by the same company in 1997. Some have shiny foil on them and don't scan particularly well. 

Card Number 432: DonRuss, 1997; #3

This isn't a bad scan - it's just a very dark card design!

Tony's calling out to claim a high flyball on the back. There's also a huge stats box.

Card Number 433: DonRuss, 1997; #407

This was another card for Tony in the base set, as part of a subset called the Hit List.

There are 25 players on the Hit List on the back, and they all had a card in the subset. However, DonRuss didn't release the cards in the same numerical order as the list. There were 8 cards in the set before Tony's Hit List card even though he was batting champion in 1996 - as shown on the list!

I'm going to do the next four cards in alphabetical order of their set names...

Card Number 434: DonRuss Elite, 1997; #15

A premium card range with foilboard card fronts that are horrible to scan!

The back looks better. The way the stats are laid out is quite fetching. 

Card Number 435: DonRuss Signature, 1997; #3

As it's name suggests, this small 100-card set was mainly a vehicle for carrying autographed cards.

The photo on the front has Tony swinging, with a great view of the Swinging Friar sleeve patch!

On the back we have a picture of Tony's follow through, taken from the other side of the plate.

There's an unusual design choice on the back, using his name as a watermark and printing the headers for the (incomplete) stats box over it. 

Card Number 436: DonRuss VXP 1.0, 1997; #20

This was another card set where the cards were basically pack filler around CD-Roms. They predate the Upper Deck PowerDeck cards that I mentioned yesterday by two years! VXP stood for Visual eXPerience, as in watching the content of a CD-Rom. Unlike PowerDeck, which was an entire set of CD-Roms, there were only six CD-Rom inserts in VXP. Tony didn't feature on a CD-Rom, so I won't be keeping an eye out for them.

It's a nice card though.

The back manages to combine full bleed and a frame in the design. The stats box only goes back 5 years.

This isn't an exhaustive list of the DonRuss cards Tony appeared on in 1997. It's a nice mix of designs and scanning challenges!

Total: 436 cards

Consistent stance and obsolescence

Sometimes I look at cards and think I've got them, only to realise that it's a completely different set from a completely different year. The thing that confuses me is the picture of Tony looks the same. 

Tony's total consistency in hitting could be explained by a number of reasons - his focus, his preparation, his ability to see the release point of the ball. But also his stance was incredibly consistent, as shown by these two cards.

Card Number 430: Upper Deck PowerDeck, 1999; #AUX-9

Card Number 431: Upper Deck Hologrfx, 2000; #55

These cards are weirdly similar in other ways too, as they both re-use a front cover picture on the back, but in a different colour scheme. They are both oriented landscape front and back. They both give truncated stats boxes. And they both feature the number 19 on the back as part of the design on the cardback.

But just to compare those two front photos again:

There is a very slight difference at the angle the photographer is shooting from. But it's quite clear that Tony's positioning of the legs is the same, the angle the bat is held at behind the helmet is the same, and even the height of his shoulder is the same. That shoulder coming across is why the word 'Padres' on the front of the shirt is missing the D on both pictures. 

The main base set of PowerDeck cards were actually CD-Roms, with one sold per packet as a 'digital card' along with two paper cards like the small Auxiliary insert series, which is the set Card Number 430 is from. There were only 25 CD-Rom cards dedicated to players in the set, but there were other CD-Roms of "Powerful Moments" and "Time Capsules".

I would like to acquire one of the Tony Gwynn "base cards" from this set, but I think I need to do it before I upgrade my PC as CD drives are a thing of the past on new computers now. That is one problem with innovative use of media -  within a generation the format used will be obsolete!

Total: 431 cards