Here's a thread to discuss all things Abandonware, from the scene, to the techniques, and most importantly, the games themselves.
What is Abandonware?Abandonware is the name given to computer software that is no longer sold or supported by it's original developers; it's "abandoned". Typically, games that fall into the abandonware category are at least ten years old, which means many/ most/ almost all PC games from the 90s, 80s, and earlier on. Abandonware, being abandoned, is often considered part of the public domain, and either no longer covered by copyright, or so obscure that copyright holders don't enforce their claims and allow consumers to freely acquire and run their software- think of it as piracy-lite, the respectable, dapper privateers. In a very few cases, these games are still sold (usually for dirt cheap) but are still unsupported, meaning no new patches, ever.
How do I find Abandonware?Online, how else? If you're not into dredging through the warez scene, one of the best places to stop is
Abandonia, which will often provide you with direct links or at least point you in the right direction.
How do I run Abandonware?This is trickier. Since many older games run best/only on DOS, and not one of them is native to Win7, you'll find that it becomes increasingly difficult for modern systems to run games properly with every passing year (ah, the good ol' digital lifecycle!). Technically, there's no one way to guarantee you can run an abandoned game, and each case must be considered separately. However, there's a well-supported emulator called DOS-Box which should work on most of the games you get and can't get to run. Download DOS-Box, then take whatever .exe file you'd usually use to launch your abandonware game and drag n' drop it over the DOS-Box batch file (or a shortcut). Voila! DB takes care o' the rest.
Some gnarly games to check out (moar to come):
Master of MagicIt's Civ meets Magic the Gathering! No, really. This is a really cool and addictive 4x empire building game with a few rather unique twists. You play as a wizard, battling it out against up to four other wizards in a high fantasy world populated by your standard mix of D&D creatures. Each wizard starts off with a fully customizable mix of spell books and talents (11 books from 5 different disciplines), and can pick one of more than a dozen races to rule over. As the game progresses, you can learn new spells and conquer yet more races, combining the specialties of your chosen magic schools with the quirks of your controlled races, leading to a virtually endless mix of potential tactics and combinations. In addition, many of the spells you get are randomly picked for you (unless you devote yourself FULLY to one school, in which case you'll learn everything in that school... eventually), so no two games will EVER play out exactly the same, even if you use the same setup each time!
The magic system is really cool, and heavily influenced by the MtG trading card game, so much so that I'm surprised it wasn't an official licensed product. There are five school of magic: White/ Life magic, which focuses on healing, beastie smiting, and powerful creature buffs. Black/ Death magic, which has a ton of debuffs, insta-kills, and undead-creating spells. Red/ Chaos magic, which specializes in direct damage attacks and aggressive creature summons. Green/ nature magic, which has the meanest arsenal of summons, as well as some cool enchantments. And Blue/ Sorcery magic, which focuses on metamagic spells and annoying tactical stuff, and happens to be my preferred school.
The races include men, elves, dwarves, hobbits, trolls, gnolls, dragons, and even a race of sentient ants that everybody seems to hate. Each of these races comes packed with it's own arsenal of unit types and unique building trees- High Men, for example, are capable of building nearly every building in the game, while Barbarian Men lack some of the more advanced cultural buildings. The Barbarians, however, get access to some powerful nature-based shamans early in the game, and their standard troop types tend to be hardier than their soft, city-dwelling brethren. To top it off, each wizard can also attract up to six Hero units at a time- these heroes run the gamut from Thieves and Orc Warriors to Necromancers and even an uber-powerful Avatar of the Gods! Heroes tend to be fairly weak in the beginning, but they can be upgraded with hundreds of magical artifacts and grow vastly more powerful as they level up, eventually reaching the point where a single hero can obliterate an entire stack of enemy units... unless the rival wizard casts the wrong spell at the right time.
As mentioned, the gameplay is heavily influenced by Civ, and anyone who's played the first couple games in the Civ series will feel right at home here. In addition to the overland Civ stuff, there's also a neat little tactical battle mode, where you move your various units around in a Shining-Force style chessboard match. Spells play a huge part of the game, and researching new ones takes the place of "science teching" found in most 4x strategy games. To top it all off, there's not ne, but TWO worlds to explore- a "earth-like" primary world, and a darker parallel-plane. The second plane is difficult to reach, but is rarely populated by rival wizards, and is jam packed with fearsome monsters (Sky Drakes! Storm Giants!) and awesome treasure, just waiting to be exploited.
Anyway, MoM is an awesome game, and the unique mechanics make it well worth a play, even for us jaded moderns.
Shadow WarriorTHE best Doom-clone ever made. Period. Shadow Warrior follows the adventures of Lo Wang, an oversexed, totally badass ninja master, who plows his way through hordes of vaguely oriental mutants, ghosts, and demons in true mid-90s FPS style. The game is chock full of gratuitous violence, gratuitous nudity, and gratuitous fart joke humor (the way games SHOULD be!) and it's easy to invite comparisons to the Duke Nukem series, albeit with a ninja theme instead of Duke's sci-fi slant. It even has it's own variation on the "Duke Girls"- levels are liberally sprinkled with partly naked anime girls who give you items, tips, and occasionally blow your face off if you get too touchy-feely. However, the game's not just endless fanservice; the levels are remarkably detailed and feature a ton of ingenious, nonlinear puzzle solving bits, in addition to your basic duties of chopping zombies in half with a katana. Remember when FPS games had stuff like that? Ahhh, the good old days.
Plus, the game's got Sailor Moon AND Lara Croft in it! In sexually compromising positions, no less. What's not to love?
Ultima IVThis one's actually better on the NES than on the PC, but there seems to be a lack of Ultima repping, so I'll mention it here. Actually, you know what? I think I should start a whole thread dedicated to the Ultima series. So I'll keep this one short: Ultima IV is an awesome game, hard as gently caress but chock full of unique gameplay elements. It was one of the first (maybe THE first) RPGs to feature a "morality" system- however, unlike most RPGs, where the "morality" boils down to you being a dick or not being a dick, and affects little else besides flavor text and an ending scene or two, Ultima's morality system actually serves as a sort of parallel "experience point" bank. In order to beat the game (which is remarkably open ended and nonlinear), Players have to master each of the Eight Virtues (Valor, Honor, Humility, etc), storm a crapload of dungeons, and become a paragon of virtue called The Avatar. Only then can you attempt to tackle one of the hardest end dungeons know to man! Leveling up your virtues can be kinda hard, especially when the game gives you a lot of tempting ways to create havoc, like attacking beggars, shortchanging blind shopkeepers, and even obliterating entire towns with the skull of an undead necromancer-king. Worse still, ANY kind of slip can send you back to mere mortal status (such as running from a fight when you've mastered the virtue of Valor). But if you're up for a nice challenge, this is an awesome classic CRPG.
Princess Maker 2A bizarre little Japanese RPG/visual-novel/life sim hybrid, that places you in the role of a proud father trying to raise his young daughter to be a... well, anything you want, really. Think Harvest Moon meets a dating sim, only with less dating and more monster-gutting, and you'll get the idea. The game's gained some internet fame for it's hundred-odd endings, which can see your daughter becoming everything from a milkmaid to an empress, a knight or a schoolteacher, a dominatrix, a house wife, or perhaps even the Queen of Hell (!). There's even a couple rather awkward endings that see your daughter wind up
marrying you. Ahem. Shouldn't take you more than an evening or two to finish, and the countless endings might keep you coming back.
DarklandsHaven't got very far in this RPG yet, but it's really cool from what I've played. Darklands is an RPG set in "real world" medieval Germany, and it's dense. Really, really dense, to the point where character creation includes specifying how well your characters can speak Latin! The world is really fraking big and it's extremely open-ended, sort of like Arena/ Daggerfall, relying mainly on small quests and player initiative to drive things along. Apparently, there IS a main plot and even an ending to the game, but it's hard to find, let alone start the questline, and I've yet to see anything which might pan out into a MQ. Fans of early Elder Scrolls games should give it a shot; hell, it's free!
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