Far Future Enterprises has just released the first TNE CD-rom. It is packed with 700MB of scanned documents from the TNE canon. Every book released under the TNE umbrella is listed with additional material as play aid cards and so on.

After browsing through the material, which is pretty comprehensive I am actually satisfied with the content. The scans are of okay to good quality. Some of the rasterized sidebars could have been better. But then again on the other hand all this material takes up 700MB which is about as much as you can get on any CD unless you go for a DVD.

The play aid cards could have been better as the green background color is fading in and out and got a very light hue compared to the original. I would have gone for a gray-scale scan instead. It would likely have produced a more uniform background. But this is only nitpicking from me.

On a more serious note, I found that some of the menu items on the CD when viewing it through the web pages wouldn't work properly. maybe it is the setup on my computer, but then again I don't know. But do not worry about this, the files are present if you experience this. You just have to browse the CD rather than browsing the CDs web pages.

The good  parts  is that the PDFs are searchable and there is no limit to printing or copying. Thumbs up for this. For those who are crafty may manage to make bookmarks to easy looking up certain subjects as the PDFs comes without bookmarks.

Both FF&S and the main rulebook are scanned from the second printing edition with upgrades from the original first printing. FF&S are also present in its first version for some reason. In addition to this DonM from CotI has collected Erratas for most of the books for TNE, making it easy to keep the documents updated. Some of the erratas has never been published as GDW closed their door before they went to print in either Challenge or other TNE planned TNE products.

For those who likes board games, both Brilliant Lances and Battle Rider is present with rules and counters. Counters (and cards) are in the file for Brilliant Lances and Battle Rider respectfully.

I would recommend every TNE fan to get this product regardless of they got all books or not. If your books are as worn as mine, it is time to get new books before you have a bunch of loose worn pages floating all round.

For the perceptive, you may have noticed that the tittle of this CD-rom contains the number one. Second CD is in the plans which will contain challenge articles, the TNE novel trilogy and more. Check FFE for details.