Gaming Abandonware: The Ethics and Essentials

Thousands of people, including me, download newly released and not yet released big budget titles everyday and don't get sued. Given that fact, I think it is highly unlikely that you will get sued for downloading a game made 10, 15 years ago.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Ignition!

Great game, received virtually no recognition at the time. Only reason I got to play at it was because my friend got it from Virgin Megastores as it was marked down and looked severely mispriced for a new game at the time. He got me hooked on it, but I forgot about it because I didn't have my own copy and couldn't remember the title! Lets hope its as good as I remember when I eventually get round to playing it.

 

"Look at you, hacker... "

System Shock 1 and 2 have to be my all time favourite games eclipsing even the Half-Life series. Even though the game graphics are incredibly dated for both games they both have some of the best story-driven game play ever created. Actually, I prefer SS1 to SS2 because it's just that bit more spooky than SS2.

SS2 runs perfectly well on current hardware, by the way. A friend of mine and myself played the game in co-op mode not long ago. Haven't been able to run my CD version of SS1 for quite a while, although I haven't tried with DOSBox yet. Incidentally SS1 was the first PC game I bought, coinciding with the purchase of my first CD ROM drive.

I'm sure most people know this already, but for those few that don't: BioShock is considered to be a sort of spiritual prequel to the System Shock series as many of the BioShock developers originally worked at Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games (and possibly Origin).

 

syndicate was brilliant! i never actually finished the game, though.

 

That still freaks me the hell out. I must get back into that game sometime...it was just so damn buggy, and then I reformatted...

 

Ignition was such a great game! I so want to se a release of Micro Machines sequal and Ignition for PS3! Give me! Give us back the joy of playing! Pure fun!

 

I tried downloading Cannon Fodder from abandonia, and Avast detected a virus 'PS/MPC-gen3' ... probably a false positive...?

 

Except that Bioshock was awful in comparison, and I point my finger directly at the U3 engine. Why? CONSOLES.

EVERY game I have played using that POS engine has felt like a console game. UT3, I hit the MENU screen and it felt like a console game. The only game I have played in the engine and enjoyed a little was vegas. even then, it was like... eh. the engine feels like it was designed for the 360. IIRC, first use of it was for GoW?

Basically, the ZP review of Bioshock summed up my feelings exactly. I would LOVE to make SS2 in the source engine (I actually experimented with the hack game to open locks while I was working on another mod), but obviously due to those monkeys at EA and 2k's love of the U3 engine, it would never happen. Even IF SS3 sees the light of day, I'd happily put money on it'll be released on 1 or 2 of the consoles (most likey 360) and the PC version will be a port, dumbed down. with poor widescreen support. or just poor support in general.

I WANT über difficulty.
I WANT limited character progression (ie cant do everything to the max).
I WANT research/skills/inventory screens.
I WANT that feaky voice.

I WANT SYSTEM SHOCK 2 IN SOURCE! NOT SYSTEM SHOCK: CONSOLE EDITION.

[/rant]

 

one of them was re-released on X-Box Live around the time Halo 3 came out.

 

Would you kindly play the console version. (damn didn't work)

 

IIRC, the Mac version is freeware now.

 

A bunch of people were part way through making a remake of SS2 in the Doom 3 engine, which frankly would have been truely awesome, but EA kicked off about it and they had to cancel. Which on the one hand sucks, but on the other hand may (just may) mean that EA is going to revitalise the series.

 

And not a soul mentioned Warzone, which is one of the best RTSs out there, even today. Picked up by the Warzone resurrection project www.wz2100.net. Works on machines up to Vista x64, but has this annoying flickering on Windows 7.

 

OMFG <3 amacieli

I LOVED that game on my PS1, just couldnt get the PC version to work stable.

 

I'm kind of suprised no one mentioned Transport Tycoon or Transport Tycoon Deluxe (TTD). I loved that game on Win 3.1 up to Win 98 (where it finally stopped working). They did come out (to quiet the constant requests, I think) with the "remake" called Chris Sawyer's Locomotion, but it was generally felt (at least in the circles I run in) that Chris just hacked it togeather and although a number of problems were fixed (being able to have more the 256 vehicals and such), from the original, allot more was left out or changed to the point most were disapointed with it.

There is such a following for TTD (and people were so disapointed with Locomotion) that an Open Source version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe was created called OpenTTD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenTTD...Home page: http://www.openttd.org/en/). It's very well made (and is continuing to still being developed) and does capure the feel and the fun of the old classic.

 

but you still need the original data files