[Kraetos]

If you have a gaming PC, or you have Boot Camp installed, or you're just a PC-using heathen whose name rhymes with bazooka, something interesting rolled across Reddit the other day...

Good Old Games!

Basically, these guys have sought out all the major publishers and are redistributing the oldies for cheap! The rules:

- DRM free! Yes, thats right, no DRM, no CDs!
- Cheap as hell. Games are either $6 or $10
- All the games have been re-optimized for WinXP and Vista, which is fantastic because most of these wouldn't run on XP otherwise
- Did I mention DRM FREE?

They're in open beta but they claim they'll be launched by Tuesday. Go sign up and maybe we can toss around some recommendations! The catalog is pretty small right but they definitely plan on growing it. The two games that caught my eye are Fallout and Freespace 2. I'd download Freespace 2 right now, but I don't have a joystick and that kind of game just has to be played with a joystick.

[nikstar101]

Wow they have Freespace 2 (and hopefully 1). That was the best game ever. The story was one of only a few that i have found that had depth. Plus the graphics for the time were amazing (especially on Freespace 2). It was a shame they never managed to complete the series with Freespace 3.

In fact those two games are the thing that make me want to buy an Intel Mac so i can play them again.

[rampancy]

Originally Posted by nikstar101 Wow they have Freespace 2 (and hopefully 1). That was the best game ever. The story was one of only a few that i have found that had depth. Plus the graphics for the time were amazing (especially on Freespace 2). It was a shame they never managed to complete the series with Freespace 3. In fact those two games are the thing that make me want to buy an Intel Mac so i can play them again.

Yeah, they have Freespace 1 - I was thinking of picking it up but if you use the FS2_Open installer from Hard Light Productions you can get free of charge the FS1 -> FS2 port. Speaking of which, the OS X UB port of FS2_Open works really well, though some of the graphical bugs I encountered when I tried it before are still there - I think it's an issue with Apple's OpenGL implementation.

FYI: The 3.6.9 version of FS2_Open doesn't seem to work under 10.5.5 - I used the recent stable build of 3.6.10, available here. What's also really cool is that unlike other game download services (such as the one run by EA) you can redownload your games as many times as you wish. Additionally, they toss in some nice little extras like PDF versions of the manual, a reference card, some pretty nice desktops, and the soundtrack in MP3 form.

They also have Descent 1 and Descent 2, both for $5.99...I haven't bought those yet but from what I've seen on the GOG forums it should work just fine with D2X-XL and DXX-Reborn, both open source enhancements to Descent which have OS X UB ports.

I *think* they might still be accepting beta testers - I signed up pretty late and they still took me on. If anyone's interested I have an invite code I can give away.

[Kraetos]

Originally Posted by nikstar101 Wow they have Freespace 2 (and hopefully 1).

I loved Freespace. One of my favorite games of all time. And yes they have it. I'm thinking about picking up a cheap-ish joystick on NewEgg so I can play FS2.

[Swox]

Descent Freespace was awesome. I'm totally getting both games .

I hope they get the Privateer games too - especially the second one. That game was awesome !

[Kraetos]

I caved and bought both Fallouts an both Freespaces. I have to say I'm very impressed with GOG. It uses a custom, lightweight installer to get around the fact that these games weren't written with XP in mind and the fact that, obviously, there's no CD.

I also zipped over to Best Buy and dropped $30 on a joystick. I had to!

Does anyone else think that GOG has a decidedly Apple style? Unless my eyes deceive me, that's Myriad they're using as a font. Their top nav looks just like Apple.com's, they're using the Safari-specific "search" form field, and I've seen them use their logo on a Leopard-esque space-scape for a splash screen, and they are advertising beta-codes on a yellow sticky note with the Marker Felt font. The entire operation feels Apple-ey.

These guys are definitely Mac users, which is fascinating given they are in the business of selling old PC games.

[tomoe]

Anyone know whether Fallout is an old enough game that it would run fine using Parallels instead of BootCamp? Its requirements appear low enough that my guess is yes.

[Kraetos]

Originally Posted by tomoe Anyone know whether Fallout is an old enough game that it would run fine using Parallels instead of BootCamp? Its requirements appear low enough that my guess is yes.

It can theoretically run, but (I tried this in Fusion, not Parallels) there's a video driver problem that prevents it from even launching.

[tomoe]

Shit balls. Looks like I'll have to make a BootCamp partition.

[tomoe]

Originally Posted by Kraetos It can theoretically run, but (I tried this in Fusion, not Parallels) there's a video driver problem that prevents it from even launching.

So I bought Fallout last night and there is indeed a video driver problem in Parallels too. The error read: "Error initializing video mode 640x480"

I emailed GOG tech support about it, and they got back to me this morning with a solution.

Please delete ddraw.dll from installation directory and change compatibility mode on falloutw.exe to Windows 95.

I did both of these things and now Fallout launches perfectly from within Parallels. I haven't been able to play it yet, as I'm at school and I'm of the opinion that perhaps it's bad form to play video games when I should be working on my research.

At any rate, I'm really excited to play Fallout for the first time. Hopefully I can finish this and Fallout 2 in time for the upcoming release of 3.

[rampancy]

Bump. They just scored pretty much all of the Unreal/Unreal Tournament series (minus UT2K3, which pretty much everyone seemed to hate); Unreal Gold and UT: GOTY are available now, and Unreal II and UT2K4 are coming soon. For anyone who picked up a free copy of CrossOver earlier, apparently both Unreal and UT work perfectly with it.

[artesc]

whoa!
can't wait to get unreal tourney!