What Is Abandonware?

Have you heard about abandonware? Does it actually mean that you can just copy abandonware and can it be in some way profitable for the original developer of the game? In this blog post we are trying to get a thorough answer to these questions.

There are many websites that provide some old games that you can download and install them to your PC. Many games are or can be played on a modern personal computer with a modern operating system. There are games also available for emulators. Some games require a special software application like DOSBox. So it is possibly to play old DOS games with a new PC.

The case of abandonware concerns console game and computer games. Some game companies, like Nintendo, like to stick with their old copyrights and try to ban and make copying old, or retro, games totally illegal. They are acting like this even when clearly there is not a clear option for them to collect a price for this kind of a game that is already some tens of years old.

Some companies publsih remakes. Some companies totally abandon their game. This is where the term gets its true meaning from. What then means public domain? Could games be released in public domain? This means that you could re-publish a game of this kind and even take some parts of the game and make a new game out of it with paying nothing for the original developer.

What would it mean if we had all old games in a public domain? We wouldn’t have to pay for our retro games. There would be more websites sharing these games. There would be a lot of exploration and even research done by playing these games and getting to understand their content.

There are many games currently classified as abvandonware right now. You can find a deeply involved website titled “My Abandonware” that provides ten of thousands of games for you to download. You can download games like Silent Hill 2 or Need For Speed Most Wanted for free. If there is a game that is currently in any form commercially avaialble this is mentioned and it isn’t possible to download it as a free copy but there might be a demo version available.

I have written here in this blog earlier that we are having difficulties of maintaining and keeping old games, I am talking about games that are 20 years old or even older than that, available. Are we supposed to just forget these games? I thinkthey have high value even if nobody has a way to buy them.

What should we do? Should we make every 20 year old game totall free? Should we allow some other parties to make more good remakes out of all these old games? Could large companies like Nintendo provide more opportunities to buy and maintain a collection of old and retro games?

We are having this business that is very profitable for game shops. You buy a physical copy of an old game and the price is very high. You keep the game for years. Of course you have the original gaming system. But what happens when the game gets so old and the divece you are playing on has become broken? Do we just delete this stuff and move on? I think we should think more about maintaining old games and trying to remember also in the future what they are all about.

Basically a game ends up as abandonware because the original owner of this game doesn’t find a way to make the game somehow profitable again. Every game can be profitable when it gets released. After many years the owner doesn’t care about the game and so it becomes abandsonware. There is an issue also with the copyright. It is hard to make a remake out of a gaem that is abandonware. This is why public domain would be a consideration.

Some Very Enjoyable First Person Shooters of 90s and Early 2000s

It was just yesterday as I started to play an old classic FPS game. The game was Quake II. I have to say that there is going to be a remastered version of this game released this year. I am of course very interested in this game. Quake is just so legendary as a PC game.

As I started playing I although noticed some flaws. If you compare this to modern FPS games you are likely to find out that when you shoot an object the impact isn’t so realistic or accurate. There has been lots of improvement in realistic shooting games since this game was released. I also started to wonder if I can come up with some other FPS’s of this era. Quake II was released in 1997. It is released very early in the life of FPS games. We must remember that Half-Life was released in 1998.

I did get my thoughts to some 90s and early 2000s FPS’s. I actually have a copy of Kingpin, Red Faction and also Soldier of Fortune. I have finished Kingpin and Red Faction. I remember that I got stuck with Soldier of Fortune in some level as I played it with my Windows XP PC very many years ago. Today, I have also a retro PC. I should just install Soldier of Fortune some day and give it a one more try.

These games were released way before Call of Duty which transformed this genre to a new era. I first got to play the first Call of Duty back in 2006. I played it with my original Xbox. There are also many newer games like Battlefield and Doom and Doom Eternal. It is a bit sad that we haven’t seen a new Soldier of Fortune game after the third one flopped a bit. In its time Soldier of Fortune was as realistic as a shooter can be. You were even able to shoot your enemy’s leg off. This was a time when realism and brutality combined to form something new and also something a bit terrifying.

As has been stated many times we can say it one more time. Violence in video and computer games doesn’t directly produce violence in real life. I think this has been already proved scientifically. So there’s actually no debate on this matter anymore. There should be limitations of course. It might not be okay for a very young person to witness such a graphical violence. This everything was new to us back in the day. Of course we see this all the time. Graphics are improving and violence seems to still exist.

I can definitely recommend these three games. If you have them you are lucky. If you want to buy them on Steam or some other game store just go ahead. They also can tell you something about how PC gaming has evolved and continued to develop. There might be something else I should write here for you but I think I must stop here and wait for your response. I will keep writing these posts here now and then.

Should Retro Games Be Declared as Public Domain?

How popular are old NES or SNES games? Just think about how popular were NES Classic Mini and also the one that had tens of SNES games on it. I remember that I was working in a game shop as we had hundreds of customers that had ordered a NES mini. They had to wait moths to get one. This same happened with SNES mini. Although customers started to understand and not order a device that couldn’t even be delivered in a reasonable time.

This is exactly the matter when we are talking about the popularity of retro games. These games were released 30 or 40 years ago. They aren’t properly available to us gamers. Nintendo has made them available on their web service. That alone doesn’t make me want to pay for the subscription. You can get a console, maybe original NES or some other type of console, that you can play original games with. This however is expensive. You might have to pay 40 euros for a game. Some games are sold for hundreds or even thousands of euros.

Publishers seem to be holding on to these game titles. How does this make sense? If someone buys a used game from a game shop that is a private entrepreneur how does this give any more profit to the publisher of the game? There have been many sore comments on Facebook ads of this certain web shop that offers money for used retro titles. They pay you about fifty percentage or maybe even less than that for your rare games of the price they are actually selling it. This makes producing and downloading so called pirated copies of these games popular and tempting.

I just today read a story that was dealing with the ability to play old games that were released in 2010 or earlier. This is actually very hard. The writer was very concerned about older games just disappearing somewhere. These games are valuable in a certain way. Future game designers can learn a lot from old games. Someone might be willing to play these games. And many are having this certain appeal to these games now and also in the future.

What would be the solution? I think that certain games should be made a public domain. You could download them and share and even maybe modify them freely. We should have devices available that could convert the game cartridge to a rom file and they should be easily available. There could be devices dedicated to this in libraries or maybe in some other places. I have to tell you that we are already seeing all sorts of video games available in libraries already today.

So, to conclude, we should, in my opinion, share these old games and make them as widely available as possible. We already have these most important video game systems emulators available. Someone might support legalizing some mild drug. I am right now stating that I support the freeing of retro games. This is even today illegal. Who is this statute working for one might ask. I am not supporting or saying that you should break law. That is not the case. I am saying that we should change the law since it seems that old games are getting hard to play and to enjoy.

A Neat Find from a Local Flea Market

You don’t have to necessarily guess what I found from a local flea market. While looking to the image right above this blog post you can see that it is an original CD-ROM of the legendary FPS game Quake. What you can guess is how much did I pay for it? It cost me two euros. Yes. That is right. Two euros. I am a bit tempted to sell this forward for maybe ten or fifteen euros but I decided that I would like to keep it.

I already figured when I decided to buy this that this game isn’t going to work on my modern Windows 10 PC. Fortunately I have a dedicated PC that runs Windows XP. I am going to play it on this old PC. I also understand that there are versions of this game available for Switch, PS4 and Xbox Series X. I think I made the right choice when I decided to buy this game. While re-use centers don’t necessarily always have the right ways to analyze the stuff they are selling I am willing to support them with buying a game for two euros.

There is one cool feature with this CD. It does play the games official sound track if you insert it to a CD player. I think this was why they had it in the audio CD section of this re-use center that I bought it from. I was actually a bit surprised that this disc didn’t have even more value. I have seen some CD-ROM PC games that were for sale for maybe 30 euros. This is of course a price of a game shop and those prices are always a bit high. This is due to some expenses that these special stores have like rent for example. I am very content in this latest purchase that I made. It is definitely a good purchase. Two euros. Wow!

I actually have a holiday at the moment. I have spent it sleeping, reading and playing. I have been just relaxing. I did spend some time in a hotel. And we are going to our family’s summer cottage next week. My wife has her holidays at the same time. We have spent some time together, of course. So, I have had a lot time for these activities I described a bit earlier. Today I had time to go to three different flea markets at Myyrmäki, Vantaa.

Quake has gained lots of attention lately. So I guess that here’s some more hype for the game. I am also waiting to get to listen once again the soundtrack of this game. The soundtrack was produced by Nine Inch Nails. If you like old school first person shooters then why not give Quake a try. Back in 1996 it was something different. It is a good game and a legendary game also.

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