Classics for free

By XavierHyde
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shake

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well i would like to play monkey island 2 if i can find it anywhere( i have played all the other parts and this is the only one i havent played)

but i dont think it is available

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Grand Master

+BeLGaRaTh Subscriber¹

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well i would like to play monkey island 2 if i can find it anywhere( i have played all the other parts and this is the only one i havent played)

but i dont think it is available

I am pretty sure it will be available somewhere, as I have it from an American cover disk from a while ago off a magazine called PC Accelerator. Sadly they don't produce the magazine anymore? (Can anyone in the USD confirm this, as I had a overseas subscription and it just stopped and I couldnt contact them anymore :( anyway back on subject). This disc had a lot of full version classic games on it, things like Alone in the dark etc (If I remember correctly, I will have to dig it out, its here somewhere) that they said were now freely available as abondonware. So have a good look around, you may find it :)

Brianicoleman, whats that thing dancing around in your avatar? Its kind of funny :D

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Grand Master

Redmak Administrators

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Chaos Engine (1 & 2) by the BitMap Brothers (whatever happened to them btw?). These games ROCKED! I can still hear "NODE ACTIVATED" rumaging in my head. Anyone knwo if there is a STAND ALONE version of this game out there anywhere? I am sure there are some ROMS, but what emulator for what system?

Here's one of my old favs.

Abuse - Great game! (they were also working on a game called Golgatha I think? never played it...). Anyways, one of the BEST side scrollers I ever played. Actually used mouselook in it!

Abuse - http://abuse2.com/downloads.php3 WOOT! WOOT! GIVE THIS GAME A TRY!!

http://abuse2.com/sshot1.jpghttp://abuse2.com/sshot2.jpghttp://abuse2.com/sshot5.jpghttp://abuse2.com/sshot4.jpg

http://www.bitmap-brothers.co.uk/front.htm

Xenon2000 is cool :)

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Grand Master

+BeLGaRaTh Subscriber¹

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Wow, I remember that from PC Format, it was a build your own game tutorial that went on for a few months, basically just to get you into programming. I remember being quite pleased with myself at the end of the tutorial when I had a working game in my hands, erm on my harddrive.

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XavierHyde

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well i would like to play monkey island 2 if i can find it anywhere( i have played all the other parts and this is the only one i havent played)

but i dont think it is available

I am pretty sure it will be available somewhere, as I have it from an American cover disk from a while ago off a magazine called PC Accelerator.

As far as LucasArts' games go, I think they're still selling even Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken. At least they were last time I looked. :shifty: They're under Classics in their online store. If they're not there, I'm pretty sure you can mail LucasArts and ask for a special deal. :whistle: If you're lucky you might even be able to get the very rare Loom Talkie or the Zak McKracken 256 color version for FMTowns. One thing I do know is that LEC are adamant in their position not to accept that their games be spread on abandonware sites. And since they're still selling most of their classics, I can't blame them.

It's a safe bet to say that most versions of the Chaos Engine and Xenon games you'll find out there will be in ADF format which is not a ROM image but a disk image, and will work with WinUAE provided you have the correct BIOS images and know your way around Amiga hardware enough to tweak the emulation settings correctly. And before you ask, read up on this thread to find where you can get legal copies of the various BIOS files. If you buy the Amiga Forever pack, you won't need to worry about hardware knowledge or tweaking, since it comes with a few good presets that will work with most games.

As for Leisure Suit Larry that someone asked for, I'll give you a quote from the Underdogs regarding Sierra titles:

Since this game is copyrighted by an IDSA member, we are not permitted to distribute it due to the IDSA notice. Please contact the company directly to either sell it to you, release it into the public domain, or give us the permission to distribute.

This goes for all Sierra games that have not expressly been released for free on Sierra's website. I know of these titles that have been released for free:

Screen Antics: Johnny Castaway

Betrayal at Krondor

Red Baron

If anyone knows more games from any developer that have been released for free, please post titles and info here. And mind the forum rules!

Edited by cappuchok
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XavierHyde

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Here are some companies you might want to contact and ask them to release old games for free. Remember, be nice.

Adventure Soft

Makers of the Simon the Sorcerer games. Previously known as Horrorsoft. They made the Elvira games under that label.

sales@adventuresoft.com

Anco

Kick Off and Player Manager, need I say more?

marketing@anco.co.uk

Argonaut

Creators of the FX chip for the SNES, and many great games for various platforms.

general@argonaut.com

Ascaron

Previously "Ascon". Made the awesome "The Patrician" and "On the Ball" management games.

marketing@ascaron.com

Bitmap Brothers

Responsible for Gods, Magic Pockets and Chaos Engine.

suggestions@bitmap-brothers.co.uk

Let's work together on this one, mail one of the companies above or some company of your own choice, then post any replies you recieve (except automated ones) on this forum.

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XavierHyde

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It would appear Blizzard have been around much longer than anyone thinks, which means they have a lot of commercially unviable games in their back pocket. They were part of Interplay and were called Silicon & << spam >>.

I've been unable to access their website lately so I can't find an email adress, but if someone does please post it here.

Games that I know to be of Blizzard origin are (I've left out Warcraft and Diablo since we all know they made'em):

Lord of the Rings

Battlechess II

Castles

Battlechess for Windows

The Lost Vikings

Rock'n Roll Racing

RPM Racing

Shanghai II: The Dragon's Eye

-(name changed to Blizzard below this point)-

The Lost Vikings II

Blackthorne

The Death and Return of Superman

Many games well worth preserving in that list. As always, if you mail them and they reply, post that reply here. :)

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devilotX

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I'd like to see 2 classics updated to run on XP and released even if I have to rebuy them

remember The 7th Guest and the 11th hour?

old Dos based games back in the day, pre-myst.

they were point and click puzzle games, not unline the Dracula Resurection type games that you get at a discount at best buy now

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LaraBoft

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remember The 7th Guest and the 11th hour?

Oehhh, I still have them on cd!! The 11th hour was a 4 disc game..... :D

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Evil Dragon

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God... I just downloaded my all-time favorite game for the old computers :rolleyes:.... And I can't get it to work! :angry: I try to run it... Doesn't work... I do it in Win 95 compatibility... Doesn't work.... I run it in the command prompt.... I get an error - Runtime Error 200 at 0002:24ED.

And it ****es me off even more that I have an old computer downstairs that has it on it, but I can't use the computer becasue I'm pretty sure the PS/2 port exploded or something. :(

[Edit] Someone else wanna try it? The game's called "Tyrian". I found it on that site that was posted before.... freeoldies.com or something. :unsure:

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IgwanaRob

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I'd like to see 2 classics updated to run on XP and released even if I have to rebuy them

remember The 7th Guest and the 11th hour?

old Dos based games back in the day, pre-myst.

they were point and click puzzle games, not unline the Dracula Resurection type games that you get at a discount at best buy now

7th Guest was actually the very first video game sold on CD

Yes, I have them both - and both work still work fine with the files from here : http://www.tbyte.com/downloads/

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XavierHyde

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I'm slowly making progress in my list of game makers I want to contact for this little 'project'.

If anyone can help me get working email contact info for any of the following companies, I'd be grateful. ;)

Microprose (featuring Micro Value / Micro Style / Spectrum Holobyte)

Mindscape (featuring Capstone / The Software Toolworks)

Ocean (bought by Infogrames)

Titus (featuring Palace)

Psygnosis

THQ (featuring Rainbow Arts / Softgold)

GT Interactive (featuring Renegade)

As far as I can understand from their reply, Magnetic Fields may provide links to downloads from their homepage soon if everything checks out with their former publisher Gremlin. Magnetic Fields are responsible for awesome racing series Lotus Turbo Challenge and Supercars. :cool:

I've mailed Sales Curve (pr@sci.co.uk) too, to ask them about releasing Silkworm, SWIV and Rodland among others, as well as contacting Silmarils (info@silmarils.com).

I've also contacted neo Software (now called Rockstar Vienna, part of Rockstar) to ask them if they're willing to release some of the neo Classics on their homepage. Their email is office@rockstarvienna.com if anyone else wants to get in touch with them.

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XavierHyde

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Today I discovered a way to get in touch with Virgin Interactive and by extension also Titus and Interplay. They have a rather flaky web mailing form but I did get a confirmation email that my message had been recieved. Now I'm just awaiting their reply. :huh:

If you're wondering what games they've released just search Mobygames and the Underdogs to check their long list of excellent releases. :cool:

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kenshin

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omg... chaos engine WAS the greatest game i'd ever played... had it on my first comp... 486dx2 66... which incidently costed my folks over 3 grand AUD... :\ (sb16 addon was 500 alone)

compare that to prices of today...

let the memories flood back... *sigh*

2 player was the coolest... me n my bro would be playin for hrs on end co-op...

another game which was one of my all time favs was the lost vikings series... which will be ported over the gba soon... and syndicate...

syndicate wars sucked... but the original was the greatest action/rpg cyborg genetic game...

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XavierHyde

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Having been in contact with coder legend Shaun Southern of Magnetic Fields, I've been advised that Magnetic Fields has all but shut down and the original disks to their games are hard to get. So I am currently collecting images (original or cracked) of all Magnetic Fields games, and I could need your help, too.

I currently have these:

Supercars 1 & 2 for Amiga (missing: Atari ST and C64(?))

Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge for C64 and Amiga (missing: Atari ST)

Lotus Turbo Challenge II for Amiga and Sega Genesis/Megadrive (missing: Atari ST, PC(?))

Lotus III The Ultimate Challenge for Amiga and Genesis/Megadrive (missing: Atari ST, PC)

I have as yet been unable to find any copy of Kid Chaos which was released for Amiga, CD32, PC and maybe some consoles.

If anyone can help me, post URLs here or PM me. These images will be tested and forwarded to Shaun Southern for posting on his website. Any and all C64 games from Magnetic Fields (or Mr. Chip as they were called before) are also gladly accepted for testing and forwarding.

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XavierHyde

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Time for a little status update everyone...

As I'm sure you all know by now, 3DRealms really HAS released the source code to Duke Nukem 3D under the GPL (at first I thought it was a really sick April Fools day joke like the Atari 2600 thingy... :wacko: ) so those of you with coding skills, go get it! Hopefully we'll see a "Duke it out in GL" or something appear on Sourceforge or Freshmeat soonish. Obviously 3DRealms are just releasing the source for the engine and not the datafiles as such, but I'm sure many of us have this oldie tucked away safely in some dark drawer somewhere. :yes:

As for all the mails I've sent to various companies, well I guess some of them have really sick rules about categorically blocking all mail from a Hotmail address... I'll try mailing them from one of my "real" addresses (isn't qmail wonderful! :geek: ) at my ISP and see if that gets them going. Now I apparently have another company to put forth as a good example for the rest (see above).

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XavierHyde

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I need to get a hold of a valid email address to someone at Housemarque (Bloodhouse+Terramarque), so I can ask them if they're willing to release their old Amiga and CD32 games to the public... Stardust and Super Stardust, if anyone can remember, was two of the best ever Asteroids clones, and Elfmania was definitely the most technically advanced beat'em-up for the OCS/ECS Amiga models.

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XavierHyde

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I recieved a reply today from Rockstar Vienna (a.k.a. neo Software) to the mail I sent them about a web release of neo Classics. Here it is then:

Thanks for your interest in our old Classics. We know that a strong community is

still playing our games which are responsible for the longterm success of this

company. Currently we are offering The Clue! German version for free on our

website.

Due to license agreements it's often very difficult to provide elder games for

the community. At the moment we cannot offer any other game of neo Software's

history portfolio. This might change in the future and we know that the strong

community support of our older games is also very important for the company's

future.

Best regards,

Martin Filipp

Let's hope they can pull this together and get the licensing all sorted out. By the way, if anyone feels the urge to play this game in English on a PC, you can get the complete source code and translate it yourself. Then post it to their page on Sourceforge for everyone to enjoy. :)

What he doesn't mention, is that you can get a few more neo Classics for Amiga at back2roots.org, these include the English version of The Clue!, as well as the german versions of the Whale's Voyage games and the AGA and CD32 versions of Black Viper. PLEASE NOTE: all of Neo's titles except The Clue! are subject to licensing agreements which prohibits UK residents from downloading these games.

A funny note: on neo Software's homepage (www.rockstarvienna.com) you can read up on their complete company history. Many other developers who go from Amiga to PC completely leave out their pre-PC history (Westwood being the most prominent example). If you check the 2003 history, you can see that's where neo Software was bought up by Rockstar. Their comment on the whole thing: "The night all began...". I might be wrong but why do I feel they aren't very pleased with the situation? ;)

?Til next time, keep mailing your favourite companies. Show them your support, and tell them how important it is to you that their old games be released for free and preserved.

Edited by cappuchok
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  • 3 weeks later...
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XavierHyde

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Another week, another status report... :)

I've started to build a list of companies that I wish to contact, complete with lists of out-of-print games and various other information (related companies etc).

This list will then be made into a database and put up on a webspace where you can check my progress and give me supplementary information about companies which I have failed to trace. Since this project also extends to contacting representatives of defunct companies, I need all the help I can get in tracking down the relevant persons.

I have also been in touch with CAPS, the guys who preserve old Amiga games with odd disk protections. They have made good progress and their image format should now support about 99% of all protections that were used on the Amiga. The image format may be extended to support other media formats. As things are now, they have dumped one of the Lotus games (unsure of which one) which I hope they will send to Shaun Southern.

Factor 5 has initiated relations with CAPS and have used CAPS' dumping tools to back up several of their old and some unreleased titles. With the upcoming E3, Factor 5 has a lot to do besides preserving their oldies but they are definitely making an effort.

According to CAPS representatives, all protections used by Team17 are also supported so should Martyn Brown and the others go ahead and release some nice freebies after the release of Worms 3, they will most likely be able to use CAPS images to ensure compatibility and restorability.

So to sum this up, things are progressing nicely and I hope for a good amount of companies to jump on the preservation bandwagon in 2003.

'Til next time...

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