Abandoned Games

Ghost Pig writes "The people of Exiled Gamers have put together an Abandonware Campaign with which they hope to be able to convince game publishers to rescue titles from their current 'Abandonware' status, and make them available for the public to play (legally) once again. They have made mention of quite a few titles that have slipped into the status of Abandonware (titles that it's no longer possible to buy at retail, and that are near impossible to locate on sites such as eBay), which includes System Shock 2, Freespace 2, as well as older titles, such as The Chaos Engine, Alien Breed and Flashback."

Re:Thats what abandonware is!

[Aim Here]

No. It's not legal. It's just a law that isn't enforced much, in that most copyright holders of really old games don't bother chasing up abandonware sites, since it's not exactly a huge revenue loss.

Some do, notably Sierra and Lucasarts, though.

Consider yourself corrected

[Electrode]

Freespace 2 was a commercial game, produced by the same people as Freespace 1. Several years later the source code to the engine was released.

Another world Hi-res

[dalmiroy2k]

Speaking of abandonware, there is also the option of taking the old DOS game and optimize it for current hardware and OS:

On April 14th 2006, a Windows XP/ME/2000/98 version of Another World, with high-resolution support and more detailed background graphics, was released as a tribute to the original game on the Another World website. The port is shareware; to unlock the full version, a special key must be bought from here for 7 euros.

You can download it from:
http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/index.h tm [anotherworld.fr]

Another World is no longer abandonware

[boa13]

Another World (aka Out Of This World in the US), a technological predecessor to Flashback and a great, mythical game on its own, lost its abandonware status a few days ago when a High Resolution Collector's Edition was released by its author, Eric Chahi. It is currently being sold online for 7 euros, a demo is available. You can also play the official Gameboy Advance port, if you have an emulator or a flashable game cartridge.

Official Website (still being translated; download links at the bottom of the page)
http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/index.h tm [anotherworld.fr]

Official Website in French (lots of very interesting details about the making of the game)
http://www.anotherworld.fr/ [anotherworld.fr]

Buying the Game
http://www.magic-productions.fr/aw/index.php?lang= us [magic-productions.fr]

Official Gameboy Advance Port
http://www.foxysofts.com/index.php?l=content/gba/a nworld.inc [foxysofts.com]

An Excellent Review (from an excellent site)
http://www.idlethumbs.net/display.php?id=13 [idlethumbs.net]

An Excellent Interview (from same site)
http://www.idlethumbs.net/display.php?id=44 [idlethumbs.net]

One example...

[MTO_B.]

This is sort of what happened with my favorite game: Continuum / Subspace.
Subspace [wikipedia.org] was one of the first massive multiplayer games for the internet... I played it first in 1995 with a 24k modem... and I continue playing it year after year, still my favorite game.

Virgen Interactive released the game after it gave up on selling it (I guess it was too much ahead of times). The most popular client for it is Continuum. [wikipedia.org]

Download Continuum / Subspace clients at:
http://www.subspacedownloads.com/ [subspacedownloads.com]
http://www.trenchwars.org/Trench/index.php?action= Downloads& [trenchwars.org]

Give it a try & join the hundres of players online! :-)

I hope other abandoned games can find such a future as this Virgen abandoned product.

Yeah, but, that's not the same as...

[Svartalf]

...what they're trying for. Unless I have an actual friend that has it, I can't legally obtain the data to PLAY it on my Linux machine, as much as I'd like to do so. What they're trying to do is get the license grant ammended so that it's legit under specific circumstances (i.e. You can't make money off of it, you can resell it, etc...) to distribute the game data with the Open Sourced engine or FOR the same.

Re:Sounds good

[gEvil (beta)]

I'd love to get my hands on Vib Ribbon or Rez.

Then go over here [gamequestdirect.com] and buy Rez. They've obtained the rights to repress some rare/in-demand games.

Re:Dink Smallwood

[Oopsz]

Victim of "It's a wonderful life".

Seriously. Someone at the studio forgot to register/renew it, so it passed to the public domain. TV networks started airing it at christmas because it was royalty-free, and it became a big hit. The studios got pissed that they weren't making money, and lobbied congress. The irony is if the movie hadn't gone public domain, no one would have ever seen it...

Re:Leave them "dead"

[gEvil (beta)]

So, you want something like GameTap? [gametap.com] Granted, it's more of a subscription/rental service, and I'm not too sure how extensive their library is, but it seems like the first step (well, *a* first step).

some are already doing it

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Apogee (now going by 3D Realms) have released a bunch of their old game for free: Here [3drealms.com]

I'm now going to suggest something that I suggested at least a year ago and is even more feasible now:
CD burning stations in game stores. It need not be bigger than any of those displays which have a working playstation or whatever in them for people to use, so wouldn't take up more sales space than stores as used to giving up with those machines.
It would basically be a computer with a huge wad of storage space filled with game disc .iso s and a CD-R drive. Take your own disc (or buy one from the desk) put it in, put a few pounds/dollars in, choose your disc and burn away - it could even have a lightscribe drive to put a line-art version of the original disc art onto it. (or it could have a printer to print a sticky label and a copy of the license agreement).
All it needs from the game companies is their consent, the .iso of a disc and a pdf file of the manual (which would be included in the disc image). With the beauty of broadband internet, or just DVD discs to be copied onto the machine, it wouldn't be all that hard to keep updating the catalogue available in the machine.
Easy as pie.

Re:Freescape2 license

[rackrent]

It might have been changed since I bought my copy of Freespace2 oh so many moons ago, but the EULA on the disc I just popped in reads like standard boilerplate....but there is the bit about giving it to "friends" (in bold)

This software product, FreeSpace 2 (the "Software"), is
intended solely for your personal noncommercial home entertainment
use. You may not decompile, reverse engineer, or disassemble the
Software, except as permitted by law. Interplay Productions and
Volition, Inc. retain all rights and title in the Software including
all intellectual property rights embodied therein and derivatives
thereof. You are granted a revocable, nonassignable limited license
to create derivative works of this Software solely for your own
personal noncommercial home entertainment use and may publicly
display such derivative works to the extent specifically
authorized by Interplay in writing. A copy of this authorization, if
any, will be provided on Interplay's World Wide Web site, located at
http://www.interplay.com/ [interplay.com] or by contacting the legal department of
Interplay Productions in the US at [phone]. The Software,
including, without limitation, all code, data structures, characters,
images, sounds, text, screens, game play, derivative works and all
other elements of the Software may not be copied (except as provided
below), resold, rented, leased, distributed (electronically or
otherwise), used on pay-per-play, coin-op or other for-charge basis,
or for any commercial purpose. You may make copies of the Software
for your personal noncommercial home entertainment use and to give to
friends and acquaintances on a no cost noncommercial basis. This
limited right to copy the Software expressly excludes any copying or
distribution of the Software on a commercial basis, including,
without limitation, bundling the product with any other product or
service and any give away of the Software in connection with another
product or service. Any permissions granted herein are provided on a
temporary basis and can be withdrawn by Interplay Productions at any
time. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

etc. etc.

That's funny you say that...

[VikingThunder]

I think one of the best examples of this was surprisingly enough by Microsoft Research. After abandoning Allegiance (a game truly ahead of its time), the game was continually run by the community, with them modding the game. Years after the fact, Microsoft Research thought the community's efforts were so great, they finally decided to release the source code for the game. What Allegiance is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiance_(computer_ game) [wikipedia.org] Where the community is/get the game: http://www.freeallegiance.org/ [freeallegiance.org] Definitely a fun game if you can get by the learning curve. One of the best team-work based games I've played. When you have 20+ pilots scramble to a single sector for base defense against an equally large enemy bombing convoy, it is a thing of beauty. (yes, the game theoretically supports 100 vs. 100; though the last time that happened was only in beta testing in 1999)

Re:Yeah, but, that's not the same as...

[LordKazan]

Actually you can legally obtain FS2 for free - the original EULA actually contained a clause allowing you to give free copies to your friends - took three or four years for people to notice

I'm a developer on the source code project and i write some of the major modding tools.

Some Important URLs:
http://scp.indiegames.us/ [indiegames.us]
http://hard-light.net/ [hard-light.net]

Freespace 2

[NekoXP]

I was under the understanding that Volition had released the source code for Freespace 2 *and* officially classed the original game CDs as abandonware already.

The ISO images (capable of being put through Alcohol 120% or so) are VERY readily available online with what looks like a real blessing. The FSOpen project is one of those better game-source-code efforts where some real, even impressive improvement was done to the game engine to bring it up to scratch..

Re:Home of the Underdogs - IP

[RedNovember]

Access it via the IP address [209.120.136.195]. They're undergoing domain name negotiations.

Re:Leave them "dead"

[NickFitz]

...Frogger, Donkey Kong, and 007 all originated with Atari.

Frogger was by Konami/Sega (1981). Donkey Kong was by Nintendo (also 1981). See Videotopia's arcade games page [videotopia.com] for more.

Re:Freespace 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to post this as AC (nobody'll see it!) but the FS2 EULA has a very interesting clause that private, noncommercial distribution (like to friends or family) is allowed by it. So... since we're all friends on the 'Net... there's no piracy involved whatsoever.

Re:Dink Smallwood

[Oopsz]

That happened after a 1990 supreme court decision on derivative works. The argument is that the movie is a derivative work of the still copyrighted screenplay. Before the decision that was considered crap and the copyrights were treated seperately.

That's why after 1990, you only see the movie broadcast on NBC (Who pays for exclusive broadcast rights).

Re:Save the Public Domain!

[Minwee]

You seem to believe that there is some kind of legal status to "Abandonware" and that it is somehow equivalent to being in the public domain.

Most "Abandonware" is still legally under copyright, it's just a copyright that is not currently actively defended. There is no law that says "It's okay to do anything you want with this", only an understanding that you probably won't get sued for doing it today.

It's like sitting on the grass when the nearest police officer is having lunch, or parking in a pay lot after the attendant has gone home. You're not doing anything that you have a clear right to do, but you are getting away with doing something because there's nobody there to stop you at the time.

Re:That's an okay idea, but...

[TheRaven64]

Of course, the initial version of GCC was very simple. It only supported C, for example, which is a relatively easy language to parse. It only generated code for VAX and M68K. C is effectively PDP-11 assembly with automatic register renaming and the VAX instruction set was designed to make it easy to port PDP-11 code (among other requirements). The M68K instruction set is also fairly clean.

We have a second year coursework to implement a compiler for a subset of C targeting a machine that is relatively similar to the M68K, and it takes a good student about a weekend to do. Writing a compiler with simple optimisation for C is probably not much more than a month's work.

Writing a good compiler, of course, takes a lot longer, but GCC 1.0 was not a good compiler. As an example, the papers covering single static assignment (a simple method for optimisation that I would expect a decent student to be able to discover independently) were published by IBM in 1985; two years before GCC 1.0 was released. GCC finally got SSA support last year; twenty years after the technique was first documented.