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Villman’s Shady Past

I’ve known Villman (the computer chain store) way back in college and several of my lavish PC peripheral acquisitions were from their Katipunan branch. There was a young couple who owned the first franchise there in front of AdMU’s Gate 3. Anyway, this story was shared to me by Joseph of Batang Baler.

Villman

I was rummaging through my trash bins when i saw 2 5-1/4 inch floppy disks that reminded me of Villman’s early years. They are copies of F-117A computer game that I purchased at Villman for 20 or 25 pesos way back in 2002 or 2003.

Back then, Villman was just a small computer and software store at a place called People’s Park in front of SM City north EDSA. The place was demolished to give way to the MRT terminal. They already sell computers with the option of loading it full of software. Any software that would fit in a 512MB hard disk. All value-added services. If you want extra software like games (Quake, Wolfenstein, Jeopardy) or Wordstar or Lotus123, you can purchase copies at 20 or 25 pesos per disk. The F-117A game is a 2-disk game so its 50 pesos.

Of course Villman is different now. Back then there’s no such issue as software piracy since the local IT industry is still in its infancy. I have no grudge about Villman. I just find the thing funny and interesting. A relic of RP’s IT past.

Villman

Some parts of the email were omitted since those were not part of the Villman story. Of course, in the late 1990’s, this was really widespread and no computer shop in GreenHills Virramall would offer rock-bottom prices without these so-called obligatory bundled freebies of MS Windows and Office. Otherwise, no one would buy from them.

See how time flies? :D

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

16 Responses

  1. Avatar for Dennis Dennis says:

    If I’m not mistaken was Villman based next to Ateneo? Just to correct you. By 2002 or 2003 software piracy was already rampant all over the metro. During that time floppy disks were already extinct. The last time I bought software placed on a floppy disk was way back in 1994. By 1995 CD’s was the preferred media sold by these vendors.

    In 1986, I believe I went to their store to buy some games from them. I used to have an apple II+ compatible pc. That was my first pc. I used it only for games. I usually buy games at Brochierre Greenhills and later on JAARD and Dataventure.

  2. Avatar for stryker stryker says:

    5 1/4 floppy disks? i remember gettimg games for them at A+ in Cubao. that was about 1986. i had ab apple II+ then. the “clone” war was just beginning between ibm and compaq. good days! hehehe

  3. Avatar for CGmaN CGmaN says:

    I remember that shop was on a small 2 X 3 meter space with only one employee. Back then thats the only place you could buy games like strip poker and prince of persia on a floppy disk.

  4. Avatar for kidlat kidlat says:

    correction on my info: i bought those diskettes back in 1993 or 1994, not 2004 or 2004.

  5. Avatar for Abe Olandres Abe Olandres says:

    Ahhh, those were the days. Sometimes, I’d think that it was piracy that helped the common Filipino to be adept in computers and programming. Otherwise, only the rich kids can afford to play with them.

  6. Avatar for noel noel says:

    I also got (c) Brain from Virra Mall..hahaha. Mga pirates of silicon valley.

    I remember back then, there’s still single sided floppy disks. Tapos you will cut a notch sa side to make it double sided :-)

  7. Avatar for elmer elmer says:

    Yes Virra Mall, that’s where I got my first computer virus (c) Brain

  8. Avatar for Miguel Miguel says:

    Another copy and xerox shop was Dataventure.

    Ah yes, the days of the dingy Virra Mall.

    My favorite shop was this one that sold photocopies or mimeographs of programming books, and had a good stock of programming tools on diskette. Yup, I started serious programming in high school.

  9. Avatar for Heathen Dan Heathen Dan says:

    I remember Brochiere too. They were really one of the big game pirates back in the day. I never bought any game from them myself, I just copied from my friends that do! :-D

  10. Avatar for Kiven Kiven says:

    @Mike – yeah we (dormmates sa pisay) used to spend our weekends just playing the new street fighter or the new neo geo arcade titles sa people’s park. pagkatapos lugaw/bulalo/lomi/goto tapos uwi sa dorm hehe.

  11. Avatar for Carlo Carlo says:

    Oh! Turbo Pascal! Hehe… The good old days :) Pascal is the first Programming Language I really loved. That was way back in highschool. I remember our computer teacher who only know Writeln and Readln *hehehe but he’s teaching Pascal :P Don’t ask what school I won’t say it starts with the letter S.

    Anyway, my first floppy encounter was with my first PC, an IBM 386 with 2 5.25″floppy drives, one for the OS and one for your data/application. The days of the Good old DOS

    It’s nice to revisit the past sometimes.

  12. Avatar for Bloodred Bloodred says:

    Ah yes.. the days of 5 1/4 disks… I remember making games using QBASIC, TURBO BASIC, and TURBO PASCAL. Unfortunately my 286 was too low tech to run either WOLF3D or DOOM.

  13. Avatar for Dusty Dusty says:

    Hehehe … reminds me of my younger days way back in the early 80’s when my dad would drive me to Brochiere to get games for our old Apple computer.

  14. Avatar for Mike Abundo Mike Abundo says:

    People’s Park was also a haven for Philippine Science High School gamers. They always had the latest arcade titles, often before the malls did.

  15. Avatar for Ronnie Ronnie says:

    I remember Silicon Valley used to have these kind of services as well (circa 1992)… They even have the manuals of the games in case it asks for a word somewhere (copy protection schemes in earlier games).

  16. Avatar for Kiven Kiven says:

    pc games and snes games were stored on floppies and sold/rented off. villman at people’s park used to run wolfenstein on one of their screens all the time. i know kse tambay ako people’s park (finished ff3 and lots of other rpgs at the and the jeep terminal to pisay is almost right in front of villman then.

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