Big Blue Disk

Big Blue Disk was a monthly disk magazine that was published by Softdisk Publishing starting in 1986, getting its name from the nickname for IBM, "Big Blue". It carried various games and applications for DOS as well as reviews and various extras. Some of them were freeware or shareware, or demo versions of commercial programs, but other material was original to the disk magazine. When it began, it was published on 5¼" floppy diskettes, but it was later published on 3½" disks and CD-ROMs. Sometimes, but not always, the disks were actually blue as the title implied. Notably, it carried some games from Apogee, including Kingdom of Kroz and its sequels. In 1991, on issue #57 it was later changed to On Disk Monthly and then again renamed to Softdisk PC on issue #91. The series ceased publication in 1998. Softdisk for Windows was a spinoff publication for the Microsoft Windows operating system which outlasted it by a year. Other short-lived spinoff publications included the business-oriented PC BusinessDisk and the recreational Gamer's Edge, the latter of which had on its original staff the people who soon founded id Software. There was also briefly a separate version for users with CGA and EGA graphics adapters, when the main publication (formerly compatible with CGA and even text-only MDA monochrome systems) moved to a graphical interface that required VGA graphics.

Publishing rights in some countries were licensed by Softdisk to other companies, which released adapted versions including PC Disk Downunder in Australia and New Zealand, and El Usuario in Latin America.