Many years ago, back when I had my first computer, my favorite game was Red Baron. It was a World War I combat flight game. I played it for many happy hours.
I was at a flea market this week and I saw a copy of Red Baron. It wasn’t a complete impulse - I realized the problem existed - but the price was really low so I bought it.
The problem is that the game is loaded on 3.5 discs. My current computer, like most current computers, doesn’t have a 3.5 drive. (And some of you may be thinking “a what drive?”)
Any suggestions on how I can load this program on to my computer? I obviously don’t want to spend a lot of money on some adapter I’m only going to use once. I’m hoping to find an old computer with a working 3.5 drive than I can load it to and then download it back on to a CD or flash drive. Suggestions on where I might look for such a system would be welcome.
And if I do succeed in loading this on to a more current drive, will it work? Will a current computer run a twenty year old program?
Aside: I have Red Baron on my PC – which has been in storage for over half a decade. You know the pilot log book with the photo? One of the photos looks exactly like me. Weird, eh?
Buy a USB floppy drive. I had a couple extra from one of my last Thinkpads, so they ended up stashed in various locations (office desk, data center, etc) for archival purposes. They should be pretty straightforward to find and use.
Go to www.freeoldies.com and download the game. It’s abandonware now, so I believe you can legally download it, there’s tons of abandonware sites that have old DOS games and I’ve never heard of them being taken down or even threatened with it.
Download ‘DosBOX’. This is a program that emulates an old DOS machine and will support your game with Soundblaster, joysticks, etc.
I love you Little Nemo. “Red Baron” and “It came from the desert” were my drugs back in the days (and special mention to “Their Finest Hour” on an even older computer).
I am writing this from a 2002 computer, with its trusty 3,5 disk on the side.
I know I added nothing to this thread by saying that.
I find the biggest problems with old games are clashes with DirectX. Not a problem with “Red Baron”, but it’s been a long time since I tried playing an old DOS game on my (very obsolete) present computer. I think it was “Ascendancy” or “Fantasy General”. Didnt work, dont know why.
Red Baron isn’t abandonware, I don’t believe, since it’s actually available for sale legally at Good Old Games. It’s offered in a $10 pack that includes Red Baron 1, Red Baron: Mission Builder and Red Baron 3D. You get all manuals and the game is engineered to be compatible with WinXP and Vista. (Also it’s DRM-free, but that’s true for the original as well, I’m sure.)
I still have my Red Baron floppies too. Great game, though I was crap at it. I don’t think I got the hang of the keyboard controls.
To accompany the other suggestions, looking (or asking) or Freecycle for a floppy disk drive or for a computer with a floppy disc drive and a CD drive (that is, most computers 1997-2005 at least) would probably get you one.
Legally, there’s no such thing as abandonware: Someone, somewhere, still holds a copyright to each and every one of those games, and if that copyright holder decided to complain, the law would be on their side. The de facto status of abandonware isn’t due to anything in copyright law, but simply the pragmatic fact that most of the copyright holders don’t know, don’t care, or both, about the infringement. I suppose that one could argue for legality by analogy with adverse possession (squatters’ rights) laws for real property, but the precedent has never been set, presumably because abandonware cases, by their nature, never end up in court.
Who might actually own the copyright? In this particular case, Red Baron was made by Dynamix, which was owned by Sierra. And Sierra, in turn, was purchased by Vivendi. Now the games division of Vivendi has been merged into Activision/Blizzard… so I suppose the IP that was originally produced by Dynamix now belongs to Activision/Blizzard, unless it was sold off to someone else along the way.
Perhaps Good Old Games purchased the rights to Red Baron somewhere along the way? Or perhaps Activision/Blizzard decided to get a bit of money out of its back-catalog and used GOG as a distributor?
What happens to the IP rights if the original studio goes under? Is it sold off for cheap during bankruptcy, to some media company that specializes in snapping up old properties? What if the IP rights were never sold after the original company meets its demise?
2 things. 1) You can run it in “Virtual PC”, downloadable from Microsoft’s website. You also need a copy of DOS to install to it. Further info available on request.
Depending on where in western NY you are, I live in Oswego, and I have a machine that can copy them to CD for you. My desktop is specifically set up to run all my old stuff, as well as the newer stuff. PM me if you like.
At some point in the bankruptcy process, there will be a sale of all of the company’s assets, including probably an item described as “all other assets not otherwise listed here”, or some such. If the IP rights to a particular piece of software aren’t listed separately, they’ll be a part of that catch-all package. Which means that the owner of the rights might not even realize that they own them. Doesn’t matter, legally: They own those rights whether they know it or not. Of course, I doubt anyone would feel any moral qualms about pirating the game in that circumstance.
That’s for abandonware in general. This case looks to not actually be abandonware: I’m pretty sure that Good Old Games only deals in games for which it’s crystal clear that they really do have the rights, which means that Activision/Blizzard or whoever owns the rights know that they own them, and have explicitly sold or licensed to GoG the right to sell downloads.
He already bought a (used) copy of the game, so while it may still be illegal to download a usable copy from the 'net, it’s morally ok, IMHO. Also, the chances of anything negative coming from doing so are essentially nil.