Anyone follow Good Old Game's releases?

[Bateluer]

Might and Magic Limited Edition 6 Pack

10 dollars, Might and Magic 1 through 6.

They've also got a number of other titles in their catalog now since last I looked.

They have some good titles, but I'm not sure I can see paying 6 dollars for a title that was released in 1996, even if it is a classic. At least they are DRM free and functional under XP and Vista though.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Hehe might and magic is how I gauge when graphics cease to matter to me. 1 and 2 just look horrible to me and I can't play them just because of that. 3 onward is good enough to play if the game is good.

 

[shortylickens]

Did they fix them to play in Windows XP?
I had 6 and loved it, but 7 was nice because of the 3D acceleration.

BUT, I only finished 8, cuz the monster character classes were sweet.

 

[Gunslinger08]

I wish they'd release Heroes of Might and Magic 3 or 4. I loved those games.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: joshsquall
I wish they'd release Heroes of Might and Magic 3 or 4. I loved those games.

The whole heroes 3 ppackage is $10. (Heroes 2 also).

 

[DaveSimmons]

I own Heroes of MM 1-3 but having them play without using the CD would be great.

I remember HoMM 2 had a really annoying bug where it was coded for the original always-spinning 1x - 2x CD drives. If you didn't use a utility to force your CD drive to always spin at (say) 4x you could win a map then have the game crash as it failed to read from CD while it was spinning up again :| :| :|

 

[ZzZGuy]

I'm wishing they'd add MechWarrior 1 through to 3 with expansions and the two MechCommander games.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Interesting, these games heavy in the plot and character development department or basically dungeon hacks?

 

[Atreus21]

Every now and then I take a look. I've been meaning to get Lionheart from them. That was a fun game, and only $5.

It was a buggy game tho. Hope they fixed 'em.

I WISH SOMEONE WOULD SELL TIE FIGHTER THO!

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Atreus21
Every now and then I take a look. I've been meaning to get Lionheart from them. That was a fun game, and only $5.

It was a buggy game tho. Hope they fixed 'em.

I WISH SOMEONE WOULD SELL TIE FIGHTER THO!

Lionheart was just on sales for $3 a week ago.

I thought it was a fun game as far as I played, but every review said the game wasn't finished and became a horrible, neigh-unpplaybale hackfest the last half.

Too bad.

 

[Zenoth]

I like GoG, a lot, but one of the games I bought there doesn't work well, namely Beyond Good & Evil, the video is out of sync with the audio during cut-scenes, the video plays at a very accelerated speed while the audio plays normally, so the dialog cannot catch up to the events unfolding at high speed. I did have other issues such as flickering textures but those were fixed by selecting specific options under the compatibility options in the game's launcher window (hardware vertex processing and so on). But the out-of-sync video and audio issue persists whatever I try to fix it, and because of that I can't play, since the game works in such a way that the cut-scenes suddenly stop to leave place to game-play, and then the cut-scene starts again, that way I lose pretty much everything in terms of story telling and I have absolutely no idea why I'm doing what I'm doing, all I know about the story so far from what I managed to understand is that there's an alien invasion somewhere and there's that girl and that pig-man trying to do something about it.

But it's the only game out of those I bought there that really doesn't work well at all, the others I have (Fallout, Fallout 2, Earthworm Jim 1 & 2, MDK2) all work well (although I did get a few freezing issues in MDK2 during cut-scenes, but it doesn't happen all the time and I can't provoke it). They are doing their best to make old games compatible with today's hardware, OS and drivers, but it must be very difficult to do that, and I don't expect them to be perfect either, I'm just glad I can buy those games in the first place and at such low prices, I could be going to a fast-food restaurant and spend more money there, so I can't really complain. I did send a help message about my BG&E issue but so far no official responses (a week later), maybe it's related to my system, but I wouldn't understand just why, nothing is over-clocked, everything in the BIOS runs at manufacturer's default settings, all my other games work well, no BSODs, no OS-related issues, all is well really. The games I want to see at GoG are both Turok (Dinosaur Hunter and Seeds of Evil), along with Shadow Man and Powerslave (also known as Exhumed).

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

gog is awesome.

I highly recommend Giant Citizen Kabuto, awesome game. Also Kingpin, which has some great multiplayer modes if you can find someone to play with.

My 2000th post, woot.

 

[Bateluer]

Kinda hoping they have all the Ultima games up there at some point.

 

[Edge1]

Would GOG have something like Crimson Skies? I couldn't get the thing to run in XP but maybe they have a way to make it happen?

 

[Atreus21]

Something else they could get that I'd be would be the original Red Baron.

Have to break out my old MS flightstick for that. Still think that was the best joystick ever made.

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

Wish they'd clean up Bioforge, make it run in Vista/Win7 and put it up for $6. I'd buy it in a second.

 

[CrackRabbit]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I like GoG, a lot, but one of the games I bought there doesn't work well, namely Beyond Good & Evil, the video is out of sync with the audio during cut-scenes, the video plays at a very accelerated speed while the audio plays normally, so the dialog cannot catch up to the events unfolding at high speed. I did have other issues such as flickering textures but those were fixed by selecting specific options under the compatibility options in the game's launcher window (hardware vertex processing and so on). But the out-of-sync video and audio issue persists whatever I try to fix it, and because of that I can't play, since the game works in such a way that the cut-scenes suddenly stop to leave place to game-play, and then the cut-scene starts again, that way I lose pretty much everything in terms of story telling and I have absolutely no idea why I'm doing what I'm doing, all I know about the story so far from what I managed to understand is that there's an alien invasion somewhere and there's that girl and that pig-man trying to do something about it.

But it's the only game out of those I bought there that really doesn't work well at all, the others I have (Fallout, Fallout 2, Earthworm Jim 1 & 2, MDK2) all work well (although I did get a few freezing issues in MDK2 during cut-scenes, but it doesn't happen all the time and I can't provoke it). They are doing their best to make old games compatible with today's hardware, OS and drivers, but it must be very difficult to do that, and I don't expect them to be perfect either, I'm just glad I can buy those games in the first place and at such low prices, I could be going to a fast-food restaurant and spend more money there, so I can't really complain. I did send a help message about my BG&E issue but so far no official responses (a week later), maybe it's related to my system, but I wouldn't understand just why, nothing is over-clocked, everything in the BIOS runs at manufacturer's default settings, all my other games work well, no BSODs, no OS-related issues, all is well really. The games I want to see at GoG are both Turok (Dinosaur Hunter and Seeds of Evil), along with Shadow Man and Powerslave (also known as Exhumed).

I have Turok 2, It works fine with current hardware even in Windows Vista-64.
The gameplay however has not aged well at all. The controls are not well designed and mouse aim was not well implemented.
Good for a bit of nostalgia but not much else.

 

[zebano]

Any of these places take requests on what games to sell? I lost my CDs and would gladly pay $20 to own Planescape:Torment again.

 

[coloumb]

Originally posted by: AyashiKaibutsu
Hehe might and magic is how I gauge when graphics cease to matter to me. 1 and 2 just look horrible to me and I can't play them just because of that. 3 onward is good enough to play if the game is good.

I'm pretty much in the same boat - I just can't seem to get rev'd up about re-playing the good old games. Maybe it's because most of the "good old games" I played were on Apple 2, C-64, and Amiga... [I always found the PC games during that time frame to be very bland]

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: CrackRabbit

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I like GoG, a lot, but one of the games I bought there doesn't work well, namely Beyond Good & Evil, the video is out of sync with the audio during cut-scenes, the video plays at a very accelerated speed while the audio plays normally, so the dialog cannot catch up to the events unfolding at high speed. I did have other issues such as flickering textures but those were fixed by selecting specific options under the compatibility options in the game's launcher window (hardware vertex processing and so on). But the out-of-sync video and audio issue persists whatever I try to fix it, and because of that I can't play, since the game works in such a way that the cut-scenes suddenly stop to leave place to game-play, and then the cut-scene starts again, that way I lose pretty much everything in terms of story telling and I have absolutely no idea why I'm doing what I'm doing, all I know about the story so far from what I managed to understand is that there's an alien invasion somewhere and there's that girl and that pig-man trying to do something about it.

But it's the only game out of those I bought there that really doesn't work well at all, the others I have (Fallout, Fallout 2, Earthworm Jim 1 & 2, MDK2) all work well (although I did get a few freezing issues in MDK2 during cut-scenes, but it doesn't happen all the time and I can't provoke it). They are doing their best to make old games compatible with today's hardware, OS and drivers, but it must be very difficult to do that, and I don't expect them to be perfect either, I'm just glad I can buy those games in the first place and at such low prices, I could be going to a fast-food restaurant and spend more money there, so I can't really complain. I did send a help message about my BG&E issue but so far no official responses (a week later), maybe it's related to my system, but I wouldn't understand just why, nothing is over-clocked, everything in the BIOS runs at manufacturer's default settings, all my other games work well, no BSODs, no OS-related issues, all is well really. The games I want to see at GoG are both Turok (Dinosaur Hunter and Seeds of Evil), along with Shadow Man and Powerslave (also known as Exhumed).

I have Turok 2, It works fine with current hardware even in Windows Vista-64.
The gameplay however has not aged well at all. The controls are not well designed and mouse aim was not well implemented.
Good for a bit of nostalgia but not much else.

I also own a retail version of Turok 2 (as well as Dinosaur Hunter). I can make Dinosaur Hunter work with a wrapper (the only wrapper out of dozens I've tried that can make it work, namely Zackensacks'). If I let it (Dinosaur Hunter) run with the default render it will eventually slow down, then textures and the environment will start to flicker and disappear, only to leave the weapon on-screen with the rest either gray or black, and then it will crash to the desktop, it usually takes around twenty minutes, and it happens all the time, in the exact same manner, following the exact same symptoms. But the wrapper I found can make it work without loss in graphical details for any period of time.

In Turok 2's case, it's exactly the same, sans a working wrapper, since Turok 2 is using Glide 3x, and there's no working wrapper for it (for Turok 2 specifically I mean, and most wrappers emulate Glide 2x anyway, the Glide 3x wrappers are very few in numbers and most of them were made for very specific games). I did find a few semi-working wrappers, but since they were not made with Turok 2 in mind there's tons of missing colors, textures, flickering issues not to mention it runs very slowly. Long story short, in the end, Turok 2 has the exact same issue that Dinosaur Hunter has (without a wrapper), it will also have the slow down as a first symptom, then the textures start to flicker, then they eventually disappear, which inevitably leads to a crash to the desktop after around twenty minutes.

I made a thread about that exact issue a while back at the Zetafleet/VOGONS forums (a nice place to discuss old games and get some help and tricks from its community to make them work, sans the help and re-coding from the Gurus at GoG.com that is). The bottom line, so far, is that it looks like the issues experienced were also reported in various other games (about as old as T1 and T2), and that the issue in question as I described it, and the symptoms before the crash, is related to a video driver issue, since the NVIDIA's ForceWare lacks support for 16-Bit texture dithering in the drivers 1xx.xx series, because it is converted to 32-Bit instead, while the 9x.xx series left the dithering unconverted and as is. That's the current theory, but they aren't totally certain. I would understand NVIDIA not trying to fix the issue for 10 years-old games that almost no one plays anymore, I think I would do the same, and that's why we have people like GoG.com trying their magic at making old games work properly. It's certainly the case for Turok 2, and also the original, along with Shadow Man and Powerslave (those I suggested at GoG.com so far by voting for them, along with a few others I haven't mentioned).

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I like GoG, a lot, but one of the games I bought there doesn't work well, namely Beyond Good & Evil, the video is out of sync with the audio during cut-scenes, the video plays at a very accelerated speed while the audio plays normally, so the dialog cannot catch up to the events unfolding at high speed. I did have other issues such as flickering textures but those were fixed by selecting specific options under the compatibility options in the game's launcher window (hardware vertex processing and so on). But the out-of-sync video and audio issue persists whatever I try to fix it, and because of that I can't play, since the game works in such a way that the cut-scenes suddenly stop to leave place to game-play, and then the cut-scene starts again, that way I lose pretty much everything in terms of story telling and I have absolutely no idea why I'm doing what I'm doing, all I know about the story so far from what I managed to understand is that there's an alien invasion somewhere and there's that girl and that pig-man trying to do something about it.

But it's the only game out of those I bought there that really doesn't work well at all, the others I have (Fallout, Fallout 2, Earthworm Jim 1 & 2, MDK2) all work well (although I did get a few freezing issues in MDK2 during cut-scenes, but it doesn't happen all the time and I can't provoke it). They are doing their best to make old games compatible with today's hardware, OS and drivers, but it must be very difficult to do that, and I don't expect them to be perfect either, I'm just glad I can buy those games in the first place and at such low prices, I could be going to a fast-food restaurant and spend more money there, so I can't really complain. I did send a help message about my BG&E issue but so far no official responses (a week later), maybe it's related to my system, but I wouldn't understand just why, nothing is over-clocked, everything in the BIOS runs at manufacturer's default settings, all my other games work well, no BSODs, no OS-related issues, all is well really. The games I want to see at GoG are both Turok (Dinosaur Hunter and Seeds of Evil), along with Shadow Man and Powerslave (also known as Exhumed).

It's the dual core. It seems like games always find bad ways to do their timing. Older DOS games that I have played took timing from the CPU cycles which made it unplayable on a machine like a Pentium or more (Police Quest III comes to mind, the driving scenes are faster on newer computers, so fast that you drive off the map to your death in a second). Find a program that just does NOP on one of the core and run it when you play the game. I have heard people say that if you move all your processes except the game to one core and the game to another that it will work too but that's ridiculous because I have yet to find an automated way of doing it.

I wouldn't blame GOG though. People are complaining about Steam, D2D and GOG not doing this stuff but you can't honestly expect the distributor to recode someone elses game. They are providing you with the exact game that was released years ago. They will just repackage it with DOSBox or the developer will recompile the code. If you had the original game, you would still be having these problems. My only complaint is that I wish Lucasarts put more effort into their releases. They recompiled the SCUMM engine so that it will work in modern OS but they did not provide soundcard emulator's, they just run the music into the MIDI port of your computer. So you lose the OPL2 track which I much prefer.

 

[CP5670]

I think GoG actually does some basic testing on modern hardware and OSs, and fixes any obvious issues they find. The copy of Incoming they're selling has been recompiled on VC2008 and fixes some major problems that the original game had on modern video cards.