2008-07-11 10:43:09 GOG.com the greatest service ever!

http://www.gog.com/en/intro

Basically service will have older games and price is between $5.99 and $9.99. Best part is that it wont have any DRM stuff. Great way to get some older games that are really hard to find legally anymore :)

Launching September 2008!

Interview: http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=914

Press release: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/gog-com-new-...

UrukHaiPT told me about this yesterday and I was so excited about it that I thought to make a thread about this.

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Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2
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2008-07-11 18:56:45

This is great, i might finally buy Fallout 1 and 2 ^^

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"And the Heavens - Shall Tremble!"

2008-07-11 19:00:50

Only USD? :(

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Son, this is a big day for you. Today, you become the man of the house, because, when we get home, your mother is going to kill me.

2008-07-11 19:05:09 In reply to blmbox (2008-07-11 19:00:50)

2008-07-11 23:21:59 In reply to blmbox (2008-07-11 19:00:50)

Better that way. If they just convert prices it's cheap place to get stuff.

Damn I hope they get Master of Orion games.

Cool that games are XP&Vista compatible too.

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Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2
War, war never changes...

2008-07-12 01:10:41

I was bummed to hear that Steam is going to change prices to fit different regions. We get some killer deals because of everything being in dollars.

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2008-07-12 10:14:13 In reply to GriftGFX (2008-07-11 19:05:09)

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"That just happened 'cause that was awesome" - Randy Pitchford, Gearbox

2008-07-12 10:16:53

I think Cod4 has always costed more in EU areas even with $ prices. Like come on that game can be get much cheaper from stores...

Isn't Cod 4 69.90$ in steam? then you add taxes and the final price is something like 54€ :/ I can find the game cheaper from any store I look... Digital download FTW...

Hmm but then again Demigod can be pre-ordered for ~29€ from that stardock store impulse. So maybe prices will get cheaper in time.

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Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2
War, war never changes...

2008-07-12 10:24:35 In reply to TheBeagle (2008-07-12 01:10:41)

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"And the Heavens - Shall Tremble!"

2008-09-03 19:15:47

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54545

Beta starts soon. Seems like if you get one game from it at the beta time you get one Interplay-published game for free.

Still time to get into beta if interested: http://www.gog.com/en/intro

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Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2
War, war never changes...
Demigod

2008-09-05 11:46:00

i signed up, sounds cool and maybe i can get my hands on some of those old gems that are very hard to find and wont run well on XP even if i do find them :)

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2008-09-05 13:23:49

Very nice! And coinciding with my increasing interest in older games that I've yet to play.

2008-09-05 16:20:28

All the older games I actually want(ed) to play I already have, simply because I bought them when they were released.. That's what you get when you play PC games since the early 90's.. :P

Besides that going back to older games is usually a dissapointment.. By coincidence I downloaded Half-Life 1 again on Steam last week.. And in your memory a game was always much better then they are in modern reality when you go back to them.. Playing some older games I always think 'why did I find this crap looking game so much fun back then?'.. I do understand though.. ;)

One good thing about it is that you realize how videogames are progressing over the years, even if it's only been 10 years like in Half-Life's case..

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2008-09-05 16:27:11

there are some really good games from back then too though. Just look at games like Fallout and Baldurs gate for example. Or Planescape torment. Warlords, syndicate...man i hope those old goodies all make it :)

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2008-09-05 16:54:47

I have been PC gamer long time too but I have still missed lots of games.

Many good games I had to sell too because I didn't really have money to get new games otherwise. So good way to get those back cheaply :) It's also pain to try to search some games. Hmm and the site promises that the games will work on XP & Vista so that's nice too. It's not a problem to get most games to work but I don't mind if I don't need to tweak anything.

Fallout's should be in this service since I have seen the box arts on some images. Not sure about Baldurs Gate's, Icewind Dale's and Planescape Torment. If not at the launch I hope they add those games as soon as possible.

I hope it won't take too long to add new games. Oh well soon we will see.

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Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2
War, war never changes...
Demigod

2008-09-05 17:39:32 In reply to Inflatable (2008-09-05 16:20:28)

You're kind of talking about rose tinted nostalgia glasses though, and that's not necessarily what it has to be about.

If you play an old game for the first time it's either fun or it isn't. There's no pre-baked notion either way.

2008-09-05 20:40:31

Yes but truth be told the general quality of games goes up all the time. Compare a crap EA title now with a crap EA title from 1990 an you'll understand what i mean, and i think that's kind of what Inflatable means too. The bottom level is a lot higher today, compared to say 90, 95 or even 2000.

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2008-09-05 20:55:03

I agree that the bottom level is probably higher today, but why would you play games from the bottom of that time? That makes no sense. :O

When I watch old movies from the 50s and 60s I don't watch the crap ones (unless it's through Mystery Science Theater) I watch the timeless, still good ones.

If you're allergic to lower res, lower colour sprite graphics then I suppose you're screwed, but I think for instance the Ryu Hayabusa sprite out of Ninja Gaiden 2 is still genuinely awesome looking and that the graphics limitations is a valid STYLE in itself, so it really doesn't bother me at all.

2008-09-05 21:09:40

Of course old games may still be plenty good but what i'm getting at is that even the sucky games today may be in the same league as many of the great games of past. Look at it like this: Super Mario Bros is a kickass platformer game and i still like it because of it's simple concept and solid control scheme, but take a kid today and let him/her choose between this and Space Fucker 3d and you already know what he/she will pick. And that can't just be coincidence. For most of these old school games you probably had to be there, otherwise they are jsut old clunky pieces of pixels.

One example of this is Bionic Commando. Everybody loves Bionic Commando, so i thought i might try it out. And i found it terrible. I'd never played it before and had some hopes for it, but in the end i'd probably have more fun playing some shitty license game or something on a current gen system.

I think it might be hard to see why someone would think your favorite game sucks from the lovy-dovy side of town but really...i think nostalgia plays a bigger part in these old classics than most of us would want to admit, or are even aware of.

Then of course there are true immortals too who by the pure genius of their design still have no counterparts. But i'm thinking about starting a thread about that separately. Could be fun to try and pick our favorite games apart collectively :)

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2008-09-05 21:39:40

Well sure, I certainly agree and it's a good point, but then have a kid pick between a snazzy, shallow remake of a true film classic and the original film and I think we can guess the outcome.

I think appreciation of older things is an acquired taste, because I know for a fact that mine is. There was a time when I wouldn't look back based purely on tech/graphical advances, and I don't even know what changed my attitude. I even wrote a piece called Next Gen killed the Current Gen Star on my now defunct games blog about how scary the tides of graphics can be.

Umm... I have no idea where I'm going with this. I guess I somehow thought I'd be able to tie it to me playing old games now but.. Uh... um.

Well anyway! I think that even if you haven't played the old games you need to have a certain appreciation for the history of games and understand why they looked like they did and understand maybe the surrounding culture better. I think if you show Megaman to a kid today he won't actually GET why it looks like it does and he'll have no connection to that type of graphics, and you'll get the same reaction if you show him a movie in black and white. Or worse yet, wait 10ish years and show a kid a cartoon that ISN'T 3D rendered.

Music is another example. My nephew would rather boil his face than listen to the music I listen to from the 70s and the 80s, even jazz going back to the 30s. I wasn't alive back then and I sure as heck didn't like that music when I was a kid (Dynamite Dance all the way! Ugh...) but I do now. I dunno why.

I guess when you eventually stop being dazzled by all the sparkly lights it's evident just how similar Metal Gear Solid really is to Metal Gear 2, and how superfluous some of the several "revolutionary" things in games are. Voiced dialogue for instance, or "CD" music. I mean these things add to the new experiences and it would feel a bit odd to get a Gears of War 3 with text bubbles, but the DS and now XBLA is repeatedly proving that.. hell.. we haven't really undone older games to the extent that we might think.

I mean I'm sure LOOoooOOoaaAADs of people disagree with me, (partly because they usually do :D) so I shouldn't state this as if it were fact. I'll just let it represent my opinion.

I think it's important not to assume nostalgia and maybe an acqured affinity for a certain era of games (music, movies, clothes, whatever) is game specific. I think if you're into the "style" established during that time (the way I am with 80s synth music for instance) the fact that it's essentially "dated" doesn't matter as long as it's good.

And I'll be damned if Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario Bros 3, etc etc, aren't good. You might well point to certain aspects of them and yell "WAA FUNNY HAIRSTYLE!" but I still think they work as well as they ever did. It's not like a game has ever beat Mario Bros 3 at its own mechanics.

Because there's really no GENETIC REASON why a game that worked for you when you played it back in the day shouldn't work for someone today, and that's pretty much a fact. :)

2008-09-05 22:21:13

The thing is that graphics isn't the only thing that evolves. Game design has come a long way since megaman, SMB3, bionic commando and all the games we love. Games are more involved in many aspects that simply are not there in 8-bit games. We now have epic story lines, many times over more complex gameplay mechanics, much more advanced graphics and sounds to immers you and better AI not to mention more talent circulating in the business of game making.

Graphics is ofc the most obvious element of advance as that is what you as a player is faced with directly. The game doesn't explain how it's AI works or why this attack does that much damage or why that enemy is placed there, you know? But the graphics are there right form the start. There is so much to a game that people just take for granted even though tere is a lot of work put in to it. Try making a game, you'll probably be surprised at all the shit you have to think about ^^

Old games don't work worse than they did back in the day, it's just that modern games work so much better. But like we established earlier, that does not stop us "old farts" from enjoying them ;)

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2008-09-06 00:16:55

Ow, this discussion again. Old games are neither better nor worse than new games. owever, playing older games for the sake of playing old games or to better understand games of today is a terrible idea. 2 years ago, when I wanted two play good 3D platformers, I played Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie (for the first time) and had a great time. This summer though, I watched Mario retrospective and decided to finally play a 2D Mario game to see what makes them so legendary (rather than wanting to play it), so I bought Super Mario World for SNES and got bored to tears and while I understand why someone would love it, it certainly reassured me that a concept of games that every gamer should play is stupid.

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"That just happened 'cause that was awesome" - Randy Pitchford, Gearbox

2008-09-06 16:04:14 In reply to Megido (2008-09-05 22:21:13)

I think it's the usual semantics that gets my trousers in a bunch though. :D

I agree that games are more complex and busy these days, but there's a difference between outright bettering another game and making something different alltogether.

This is probably really the wrong thread to be doing this in, but whatever. :P

I mean, a lot of people get together, grunt and holler, and agree that snazzy AI is the absolute shit. First person shooters are the most obvious beneficiaries, at least in discussions between manly men.

So let's look at FPS primarily then. Nowadays enemies duck and cover and get together and arrange birthday parties for when you walk into a room. You have to outsmart opponents that often have the same tools you do (but aim significantly worse on purpose) and that has contributed to the style of shooters we're seeing a lot these days. Realistic shooters, or even sci fi ones meant to feel believable. So yeah this is arguably an evolutionary step.

But then you look back at the pioneers of the genre and you look at what they were doing and you sort of go "hmm, maybe that wasn't all about getting to the point we are today". I mean if it was, then those titles are prolly already unquestionably dated and off the menu (and annals of history too for that matter) but a game like Doom kind of isn't. You could argue that it's etched into the memory of people because it was the first really successful attempt, but when you give it a whirl on the XBLA (or on your PC for that matter) it's evident that it still works. It's still its own kind of experience.

And we're seeing the validity of simple AI routines and a boatload of enemies in games like Painkiller and Serious Sam. This is just one, very obvious example and if you look to the DS there are a ton more. Old style RPGs, decidedly "dated", presented anew and end up totally playable and enjoyable. In other cases, old style games with "16bit" execution are injected with brand new ideas to create something quite unlike any "next gen" project.

So I think it's less linear than hardware advances would have us believe. I think simple concepts - be they a result of actual limitations or by choice - can be just as successful. You are of course absolutely right in basically everything you say, but I think you still don't exclude this being true in addition to what you're saying.

I think there are a lot of obstacles for "truly" old games to be seen as viable even though new games in the same style, like Cave Story, can come along an be perfectly accepted. Sure enough it's targeting a niché audience, but so is (to a lesser extent) The Man Who Wasn't There, or (to a greater extent) the 2006 silent film Call of Cthulhu. *Real movies* in the style those two emulate still gather new fans.

If I get to temporarily envision a gaming utopia, the mind concepts of old and new would be erased by the all encompassing updated availability of ALL GAMES on current platforms. The same way DVD did or Blu-Ray eventually will with "all" movies.

This is KIND OF happening with Virtual Console, PSN and XBLA but all too often they're still way too discriminating, grabbing the well known names before targeting the still truly playable games. That, and they still aren't a proper long term platform to make games available on.

Anyway, if it were possible (and I'm sure it is, somehow) and you could shake the negative, nerdy ring to it that "retro gaming" sort of carries, I truly belive old games could find brand new fans.

I say this like it is a distant thing in the future, or not possible at all, but I cannot stress how happy Megaman 9 makes me. Gaming is maturing and going through the same stages movies did, and soon there will be a niché large enough for any type of experience. We're evidently at a point where games as an artform can go back and make a pastiche of itself, or use past limitations as a valid stylistic choice. That to me is very cool and it definitely speaks about how old games - because MM9 is every bit like the 20 year old titles - still work. Of course we've yet to see how much it'll sell, but hey. :D

A really well made game from any era that can somehow tap into that mysterious part of our brain that creates this feeling of having fun, deserves to be available for purchase though. Simply because people deserve to be able to experience them. I don't know what it says about games as an artform if the natural flow of time render them useless, neglected, unplayable and ultimately forgotten.

@ szaromir; I think it prolly depends on how you define games a gamer should play. I mean in film there are a lot of movies aspiring directors or even film affectionados "should see" even though they may not enjoy them. There is some merit to having experienced some of the milestones in gaming, but there's really no guarantee that they'll appeal to someone.

The other definition that I think makes a lot more sense is simply.. there are games that you might miss out on based on some superficial prejudice. Maybe it appears too "kiddy" or too "emo" or too "whatever it is you don't normally enjoy". Maybe it just looks weird and all around off putting yet is something you should play at the offchance that you might find it bloody amazing. It would simply be a huge loss to give it a pass based on any prebaked notions.

That is a pretty common thing in fact, and had I not challenged my own preference I wouldn't have gone anywhere near Gears of War. I think it's totally stupid and the characters are all obnoxious asses, but it's a fucking brilliant shooter. So, had I given it a pass, it would've been a game I really should play, regardless. :)

The internet is begging for its words back so I better end this post here. I apologize to you who read all of this, I really totally lack an inner moderator. :D

2008-09-07 00:39:55

I would be more excited about this if they didn't just add Fallout to Gametap. I'm now much more interested in purchasing a year of gold on gametap again than I am purchasing GOG's. It's still a very cool service though, and it sounds like they're pricing it all well.

Megaman 9.. lol.. more like Megaman 1.5 ;)

2008-09-07 00:52:01

Pricing seems to be great indeed. If what I heard is right Fallout's are going to be priced with the lower price tag. So 6$ for Fallout 1 and then free Fallout 2 isn't that bad if you don't have it already (that is of course if both games are available at beta because there is that beta offer). Though I can't blame you, Gametap is good service too. Lot's of games for small price. Too bad it isn't working in Europe yet :/

Heh I always thought it was Mega Man 6.5 :P

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War, war never changes...
Demigod