Kicking the Tires of the Good Old Games Service

By Joe Haygood | October 5, 2008

One of the great things about gaming is when you get a chance to dust off an old gaming classic, to play it anew.  It is a hard thing to explain to some people, when you talk about the greatness of X-COM, or the devilishly clever puzzles of a King’s Quest game, because a lot of younger gamers focus on the presentation of the game, rather than the entire embodiment of the game.  For those that grew up on the Atari and early PC gaming along with those other consoles of the 80’s, we had to get past the blocky graphics to find the charm of our games.

The only problem with trying to relive some of the great PC games of my youth is that it is either too difficult to get them to run on a machine today, or you have problems just trying to use the media.  If anyone can tell me the last time a computer shipped with a 5.25″ floppy, I will send you a cookie, but needless to say, it is difficult to get these old games up and running.  Well, a new service has arrived that hopes to change the face of playing those classics, Good Old Games, and it is brought to us by a game developer of all people.  Read along as you can see what the service is about and get a feeling over whether it might be something you want to try.

Good Old Games is all about providing a service for gamers to purchase older classic PC titles that may not run as well as they did in the past.  The goal of the service is to provide the game, with a full installer, and complete compatibility with XP or Vista.  Sorry Mac and Linux users, the service is still PC only as of this time.  You also get the title free of any DRM along with some extras, like soundtracks, wallpapers and manuals.

The Good Old Games service has been created by CD Projekt, the development team behind the RPG hit, The Witcher.  CD Projekt decided to roll out a service like this because they wanted to be able to play some of their favorite classic titles from long ago, but on current machines.  They have taken the time to assemble custom installers that install the game with one to two clicks, and have backed up the purchases with full tech support on the off chance you do run into issues playing the game.  Also, the games are fully patched to current levels, so you know you are playing the proper versions of the game.

Games currently are priced anywhere from $5.99 to $9.99, and include all the extra add-ons in that price.  The service is geared up to add new games every week to the service.  Purchasing the games is as simple as clicking on the purchase icon, and entering a few payment details.  The game is immediately added to your account, and you can download it an any of the extras right after purchase.  And standing with the philosophy of you being the owner of the content, you can download it as many times as you would like, and even burn the installers to disc.  They are DRM free after all.

With all that is going for the service, there are two huge problems that are limiting its true potential.  First problem is that only two companies are currently on-board with the service, Codemasters and Interplay, which means that the catalog is not as impressive as it could be with more companies.  The Fallout games and Giants: Citizen Kabuto are nice games to start off with, but without more substantial hits, we will be stuck with duds like Redneck Rampage and Messiah.  This problem leads into the second problem, which is getting publishers to sign on with the service.  It seems that a lot of publishers are interested, but do not like the no DRM model that GOG.com is using.  It looks like some convincing will have to be in order before I will be able to play Hard Hat Mack and Syndicate through this service.

All in all, the Good Old Games service was easy to use, and very well documented.  I purchased Fallout, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division and Giants: Citizen Kabuto.  Each downloaded very quickly, and installed without any issues.  All are running full screen and are full patched as advertised.  Also, it seems that fan patches will work with these as well, which is another great feature for gamers that like to mod their games with fan made patches.  More game publishers would make the service perfect, but as it stands, Good Old Games could be a major player for those games that no longer run well on our current operating systems.   If you are interested in trying the service, check it out at GOG.com, and let us know what you think in the comments.  I got to go as it is time for me to continue my trek through the wastelands of Southern California in Fallout.