Facebook Plunges Again
Tumblr 101: Tips And Tricks To Get Started
Good Old Games - a place to buy classic games legitimately
Have you ever had the urge to play some old favorite game? Unfortunately, finding older games has for a long time been an exercise in futility digging through the discount bins at your local electronics retailer. Some users in utter frustration turn to BitTorrent and simply download cracked versions of these old games.
If you'd rather not steal your games, but don't want to spend your time scouring your neighborhood garage sales, check out Good Old Games, a repository and marketplace for the best games of years gone by. The concept is simple - create an account, make your purchase, install and start playing.
The prices seem to vary from about $6US to $10US, with games like Battle Chess and Duke Nukem at the lower $6US end of the scale, and recent additions like Beyond Good & Evil and Prince of Persia at the higher $10US end.
Comments
7
Subscribe to commentsMikeMar 30th 2009 11:58AM
I think this is the coup de grace:
(from the gog website)
"All games are Vista and XP compatible. Thanks to our handsome programming team, the classics are now Windows Vista and Windows XP compatible."
DMar 30th 2009 12:38PM
all titles are drm free too.
bambooMar 30th 2009 1:06PM
A word of warning about this.
I was really excited about the service, and a couple weeks ago they had the old Odd World/Abe's Exodus games on sale, so I picked them up for about $16 or so.
After installing I found out the max rez is like 640x480 or something, and there is no option to run in windows mode. On my 22" widescreen, it is completly unplayable, as everything is very distorted. I look in their forums, and turns out all their games are direct ports, many of them from the console version it looks like (so the res is set for TV).
So I try and contact them and explain things and ask for my money back or some credit to get another game. They respond back that all sales are final. I write them back and ask again and point out some of the game forums I posted about their service in when it was first announce last summer, which is good free advertising for them (I'm actually suprised DLS is just now getting around to posting about them), but they never even replied to my 2nd email. So that's it, I'm out $16 and they have horrible costomer service.
Won't be buying again, and I suggest you all think hard before picking up any of their games.
JamesMar 30th 2009 1:43PM
"Follows stated policies" != "horrible customer service". It says right in the game's description what resolution it runs at. If you can't figure out how to run your monitor letterboxed (or otherwise in a "playable" mode), that's really not their fault. AFAIK exactly *zero* of the GoG games are "console ports" -- every single one of them is a classic PC game, and the only changes made to the original code are to allow it to work on XP / Vista. Each game's page also clearly displays any issues it might have under a new OS -- some lack multiplayer, usually due to Vista's complete abandonment of IPX -- so you can't exaclty say you weren't warned.
Specific to Oddworld, the game was made back in the day when people just didn't have to horsepower to display fluid animations at XGA and above, so they made the in-game resources (art, animation, etc.) down to the specs they needed. The detail just *isn't there* to give you, so if you don't like "bad" (read: old-school) graphics, GoG is not the place to shop. I'm sorry you didn't have a good experience, but I and a lot of others did.
reiMar 30th 2009 7:18PM
Sorry, this is not GOG's fault but yours.
You should find out whether or not your 22" monitor has a video mode that doesn't stretch old non-widescreen games. If it's not built-into the OSD controls of the monitor modern ATI or NVIDIA drivers allow you to control whether or not something is:
1) stretched out to fill your 22" widescreen
2) stretched but the aspect ratio preserved (so you have black bars on the side)
3) original 1:1 pixels so a 640x480 game will be its original # of pixels and occupy a small square in the middle of your display
This only applies if you connect to a relatively modern (2006+) still-supported ATI/NVIDIA card using DVI.
bambooMar 30th 2009 7:44PM
I have an 8800GTS and did try tons of different options in the Nvidia control panel and none of them made it look right. Just to try it, I dug my old 17" CRT out of the closet and turned the rez all the way down as far as it would go, but it still looks worse than my Playstation 1 version on my TV does (I have the game on PS).
Point is, having to make detailed adjustments to get a game to play, or it not working playable unless you have an old monitor (I did try it on my 2nd 15" LCD side monitor, and it still looks awful) should be mentioned on the buy page, or it should have an option included to run in windowed mode. That is how you make it easy for people to enjoy good old games, not just offer it for download.
Denster2uMar 31st 2009 8:11AM
In the Nvidia control panel, there is a setting called " change flat panel scaling.", then you select "do not scale". Your game should now run in the native resolution, which is centered in the screen with no stretching.