I have been using 3DS Max since release 1.0 and 3D Studio for DOS before that where we had the Shaper, the Lofter, and that other mode I always forget when animation was really hard and rendering frames took hours and hours to only find out you messed up and need to start over especially since your viewports didn't have materials applied real-time like todays 3ds max.
Today I had a great flashback of all the releases by Ian Failes and think you would appreciate how far 3ds max has come over the years.
”Autodesk’s 3ds Max is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. The 3D modeling, animation and VFX tool has been through a number of incarnations – you might also know it as 3D Studio or 3D Studio MAX.”
A visual history of 3ds Max
I still have the big original 3D Studio R1 DOS package complete with a handle on the cover of the package. Now that I have my retrocad 8087 deskop system, I will get everything including 3D Studio up and running natively in DOS. I am getting most AutoCAD and Autosketch releases so stay tuned for some fun future Throwback Thursday posts. 
Cheers,
Shaan
