Classics for free

By XavierHyde
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XavierHyde

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Things are slow right now...

Got word today from Housemarque's president. Apparently the freeware snowboarding game for PC they were planning (as a sort of compensation for us PC owners not getting Transworld Snowboarding ported) has been cancelled. At least they seem not to have wasted any time on it as it had not yet entered development. Too bad, but that's the way things go.

They're still planning to release all their old titles for free, though. No word on when, but he says "it's in the back of our heads", so at least they haven't abandoned the idea.

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EugeneE3RD

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Well, I've been gone for a while. I took some time off from looking for games, I've been watching lots of DVD's & playing my PS2 a lot over the last month but just today I found some shareware/commerical games which have become freeware.

Tactical Neuronics has released several of their shareware games as freeware & the games released are:

The Dungeons of Grimlor

The Dungeons of Grimlor II: The Lich

Solder Runner / With Game Editor

Robot Crusades

General Budda's Labyrinth

The games downloads are at http://www.tacticalneuronics.com/content/downloads.asp & the downloads are at the bottom of the page.

Ragnarok was released as freeware almost 10 yrs ago. Ragnarok was originally released as commerical software but the authors then released it as freeware. Ragnarok is a graphical roguelike adventure game based on Norse mythology. You can read about the game at http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/ragnarok.htm & you can download version 2.4 of Ragnarok at http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/roguelike/ragnarok/ . I've played this game several times but I never knew that it was commerical software at one time.

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XavierHyde

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This is actually a remake, but definately one of the nicer ones I've seen. I didn't have time to read through all 19 pages of this thread so I apologize if someone already posted this.

Maniac Mansion Deluxe

I posted it earlier, but thanks anyway. It's certainly a great remake, true to the original in almost every aspect (though I believe some puzzles have changed slightly or been added/removed).

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EugeneE3RD

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Well, this post is going to be about game programming software which has been freeware:

World Foundry is a freeware 3D game development kit which was originall released as freeware & it can be downloaded from http://worldfoundry.org/wfwiki/index.php .

3D Rad is a shareware game creation system but the company did release a new freeware version. The freeware version can be downloaded from http://www.3drad.com/dloadfre.htm . The freeware version can't compile games & you have to release your games as freeware.

3D Rad originally began as freeware software but after it became popular, the author's decided to sell 3D Rad as shareware. I played with the original 3D Rad which was released as freeware around 1997/1998. I'm still searching for the original 3D Rad which is 3D Rad 1.01 because it is freeware & you can compile your games with it even though it is very old.

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-=NeoDoug1=-

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So far, as far as I can see, only one person has mentioned "Shuffle Puck Cafe"...! This was an absolute classic, and deserves to be updated! Is it available anywhere? Was it even released on the PC?

Also, this may be off topic slightly, as I can't remember if it was a commercial release, shareware, or freeware, but there used to be a game I played non-stop on my ST called "Plop". This was a relatively simple puzzle game involving bubbles... I've been searching for it for years - has anybody else heard of it, or am I ever so slightly mad?!? :s

This may be even more off-topic, but is anybody having difficulty running any of these games since installing SP2? Most of the games I try to run come up with an error:

16 bit MS-DOS Subsystem

C:\ [Directory of game .exe I'm trying to run]

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application.

[Close] [ignore]

Nothing happens if I choose Ignore... PLEASE HELP!!! :(

Edited by -=NeoDoug1=-
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Skyfrog

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is anybody having difficulty running any of these games since installing SP2?
No problems running any of them here; perhaps your autoexec.nt file is messed up or something.
I want you dont know jack

All of the games in that series (which is still being updated) are still being sold here.

The very first computer game I ever owned was Star Trek - The Promethean Prophecy. It was an interactive fiction game released in 1986 by Simon & Schuster. Has anyone thought of emailing them about maybe releasing their old titles as freeware?

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  • 2 weeks later...
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XavierHyde

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Added a huge (275MB, 70 levels) puzzle game to the top post. Search for "Fish Fillets" on the first page of this thread and you'll find it.

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paganinio

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Electronic Arts(EA provides a great deal of free games besides the following, go to http://www.ea.com for more)

Following weblink contains some free EA SPORTS games featuring NHL 97, PGA Tour Golf, NASCAR Web Racing, FIFA 97 Gold Edition and many more!

http://www.easports.com/free/home.jsp

Edited by paganinio
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King Raa

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erm this is 20 pages long and i'm a n00b that doesn't know how to search an individual thread on this forum...

http://www.littlefighter.com/ is freeware and great

http://www.drload.de/index.php?page=archive&categorie=0 is a link to the action section of drload.de

the top 2 games, abuse and 68k are so well... i can't sware so i'll just say very good but... w00t.

edit: i'm not sure the first is covered by "the scope of this thread" - and as the other 2 are hosted i'm sure their safe... but this might help a teeny bit i dunno.

i've skimmed to page 6 so far - has ne1 mentioned/heardof/thoughtof Darklands

an amazing rpg when it was out, i've still got the disks, last I heard the rights belonged to some guy so its not publically free :( you poor souls... ne1 of you that likes games like baldurs gate etc this is older and.. pretty good but - only problem with it is the char creation being so damn complex... neway ppl try to make darklands freeware.

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XavierHyde

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Electronic Arts(EA provides a great deal of free games besides the following, go to http://www.ea.com for more)

Following weblink contains some free EA SPORTS games featuring NHL 97, PGA Tour Golf, NASCAR Web Racing, FIFA 97 Gold Edition and many more!

http://www.easports.com/free/home.jsp

Nice move by EA, too bad most of those games are just Flash/Shockwave remakes designed to be played online. NHL97 is a real downloadable, though, and it looks really good, just like on the SNES or Genesis. Nice find! I'll put some of them in the top post on the next update. Thanks!

erm this is 20 pages long and i'm a n00b that doesn't know how to search an individual thread on this forum...

http://www.littlefighter.com/ is freeware and great

http://www.drload.de/index.php?page=archive&categorie=0 is a link to the action section of drload.de

the top 2 games, abuse and 68k are so well... i can't sware so i'll just say very good but... w00t.

edit: i'm not sure the first is covered by "the scope of this thread" - and as the other 2 are hosted i'm sure their safe... but this might help a teeny bit i dunno.

i've skimmed to page 6 so far - has ne1 mentioned/heardof/thoughtof Darklands

an amazing rpg when it was out, i've still got the disks, last I heard the rights belonged to some guy so its not publically free :sad: you poor souls... ne1 of you that likes games like baldurs gate etc this is older and.. pretty good but - only problem with it is the char creation being so damn complex... neway ppl try to make darklands freeware.

Man... SMS-speak always gives me a headache. :x

First things first... this thread is NOT about "original freeware" games: to qualify for this thread a game should first have been commercial, then released for free by the original developer or current rights-owner, and possibly open-sourced.

LF2 is not a commercial game. Abuse is a remake, and has been mentioned earlier in this thread. 68K is not a commercial game.

As for Darklands, I've heard that some people tried to create a freeware engine for it (still requires you to own the original game to rip the data files from) but they seem to have abandoned the project.

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ccrf

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Does anyone remember a vampire themed side-scroller for dos in which you were the vampire and you walked from screen to 2dimensional screen grabbing victims and hugging them and sucking their blood? I used to own this, but can't remember the name and no longer have the diskette. Just wondering if anyone knows if it's legal abandonware and what it may be called... :D

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EugeneE3RD

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Does anyone remember a vampire themed side-scroller for dos in which you were the vampire and you walked from screen to 2dimensional screen grabbing victims and hugging them and sucking their blood? I used to own this, but can't remember the name and no longer have the diskette. Just wondering if anyone knows if it's legal abandonware and what it may be called... :D

I'm not sure what game your speaking about but there is a freeware remake of an Intellivision game which sounds like the game you are referring to. The remake is called Vampire & in the game, you play a vampire who has to suck the blood out of victims & then return to his coffin before the sun rises & you can download Vampire from http://www.ambrosine.com/vampire.html .

BTW: I just bought a new computer (Gateway 550 GR) about 2 weeks ago from Best Buy. This computer has Win XP & if some of these games on this thread fails to run, you might be able to get it to run using the software called VDMsound located at http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/ .

If you get a runtime error 200 when trying to run any of the programs listed in this thread, download Tppatch from http://www.brain.uni-freiburg.de/~klaus/pa...0/download.html & use Tppatch to patch the games exectuable files. Games written using Turbo Pascal will not run on comp's faster than 200 MHZ which is why you need to patch the exectuables if you get a runtime error 200.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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XavierHyde

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Just a quick note:

Dream17.co.uk has begun offering IPS images of all of Team17's Amiga games. Thanks go out to Squirminator2k (website maintainer), the CAPS Project (suppliers of the IPS images) and Team17 (for giving Dream17 the OK to do this).

IPS images are more reliable and truer to the original disks than the traditional ADF format. IPS images can maintain the original copy protection mechanisms and in time will be restorable to genuine Amiga disks with the copy protection left intact.

Also, I won't be adding Electronic Arts' recently mentioned titles to the top post, since it turns out they are indeed Flash/Shockwave/Java games and requires the user to be online.

Codemaster's recent release of BMX Simulator seems to be the original game wrapped in a CCS64 executable complete with kernal images and all that. So for all intents and purposes, it is the original game and not a remake. Very nice!!!

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EugeneE3RD

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Recently, I was reading on the NET that Legend Entertainmet (who was closed earlier this year by Atari) released their game called Frederik Pohl's GATEWAY several years ago as freeware to promote the sequel called Gateway 2.

Well, I did an Internet archive search & it is true, Legend Entertainment did release Frederik Pohl's GATEWAY as a freeware download several years ago. You can read about it at http://web.archive.org/web/19970110031914/...st.html#gateway .

Even though the download links at the site above do work, don't download from the above site because they cut off your download at 1 MB & even downloaders such as Dlexpert, Star Downloader, et al also fail at 1 MB. Just find a site which has the game for download & you can download it since it is freeware.

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evktalo

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Recently, I was reading on the NET that Legend Entertainmet (who was closed earlier this year by Atari) released their game called Frederik Pohl's GATEWAY several years ago as freeware to promote the sequel called Gateway 2.

Well, I've interpeted this NOT as a redistributable freeware release, but a free download only meant to be downloaded from Legend Entertainment. I've been meaning to ask Bob Bates wether or not Gateway was meant to be a true freeware release, but somehow I've still not done it. :)

Anyways, free Gateway was NOT offered to promote Gateway 2, but the Lost Adventures compilation mentioned in the web.archive.org link.

--Eino

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