This is indeed the good stuff, and right where I really began hardcore gaming. If you recall, there was a mailorder catalog by The Software Labs from which these nifty little shareware titles could be purchased (the more disks you bought, the less it was.. something like that.) I spent *hours* inspecting every detail of those things in an effort to pick up only the best games. Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Jill of the Jungle, Crystal Caves, Sango Fighter, Kiloblaster, Hugo's House of Horrors, Captain Comic, etc etc etc. When I was younger, Christmas morning was never about new console games, but rather what would be in the "giant box of disks." One year, I got 12 different game disks from Software Labs and was absolutely floored. That's probably one of my favorite Christmas morning moments, as sad as it may sound today.
I was so concerned with protecting these games that I'd immediately make backups once they arrived, and subsequently installed/played from the copies. Two of my friends were into it too, and we'd trade copied disks all recess long. Much like the C64 underworld, the old PC shareware scene flourished that way.
Today, I have a dedicated "class DOS box" that I put together - an old Pentium 75 MHz running nothing but DOS 6.0 and pre-1996 PC games. I have stacks of the original disks, both 3.5 and 5.25. The only things I'm missing are all the catalogs I collected as a kid that have since been lost. *Those* were my glory days of gaming... give me a floppy with Commander Keen on it anyday over the latest and greatest polygonal garbage