Took me awhile to find one I recognized, but there’s some gems in there. Loom and Monkey Island. Daggerfall & Redguard. Keen. Cannon Fodder.
I loved those Apogee/id side-scrolling run/jump/shoot games. Keen, as you say, the original Duke Nukem, Crystal Caves, the original Wolfenstein, Secret Agent. I loved finding a key to open a door to find a key to open a door to shut off an electronic field to allow access to a 3.5" floppy disc which activated a computer which opened a magnet door which allowed you to leave the level. I would play them again but I can’t without a game pad and there are no more serial ports and software that old won’t recognize USB. Any suggestions? Maybe buy a 386SX from Craigslist?
Here is Apogee/id’s abandonware page (Apogee Software | DOS Games Archive)
Not as impressive as the link in the OP, but there might be some there not in the OP link.
“Center the joystick and press the fire button.”
The nostalgia aches my heart.
I’m fully onboard with abandonware and the validity of questions re:is copyright any good actually ? ; but isn’t this technically against the law since copyright durations have been extended forever and a day because Disney and in any event the people who made Daggerfall and hold the rights for Daggerfall are still alive ? It’s from I think 95, 96 ? Which might as well be before the wheel in the context of videogames and videogame sales ; but not that long ago outside of that context.
DMCA exemption, baby!
https://archive.org/about/dmca.php
Ha ! They have an honest to god real world “Get out of jail free” card. That’s awesome, and I did not know that.
From the Internet Archives DCMA page:
A number of the newly hosted games are still commercially available through GOG or other sources and are not tied to their original obsolete format nor need obsolete equipment to play. I don’t really care one way or the other if Internet Archive hosts them but their reasoning feels flawed.
Much like a public library, not everything hosted on the Internet Archive is in the public domain. Check the copyright notice on many of their books, for example: you may be allowed to read it, but not to print it out and sell copies. It is made available as a public service, but there are admonishments that it is for educational purposes only, etc.
You may also recall a time when public libraries offered computers and commercial software to the general public. This is in the same vein. They also function as an archive of vintage software, which was explicitly ruled to be OK by the Copyright Office, as noted above. Doom 5 does not run in your browser window yet (by the time it does, it should be available on the Internet Archive).
In that specific case, Bethesda has themselves released downloadable Daggerfall(and the first game, Arena) for free. Redguardonly has a downloadable comic PDF, not sure what that means as far as the IA link.
Books are only available to a single person at a time to be checked out though. Even digital versions are limited and can have waiting lists. My wife uses the digital books at our library all the time and is regularly wait listed because someone else “has” it. As far as I know, there is no similar limit for how many people can be playing a particular Internet Archive hosted game at a given moment.
The Archive’s page explaining its DMCA exemption lists criteria that don’t apply to some of the titles. For example, they have the SSI Gold Box games on their site which are not only playable via obsolete media or technology – you can buy a working copy for your modern computer right now – nor do they require a physical dongle.
At the end of the day, I don’t really care beyond curiosity. They can be hosting 2,500 pirated games and it don’t make no nevermind to me. I suspect the answer is “Internet Archive isn’t super choosy or good at validating what gets uploaded” and relies on someone complaining if they have a legitimate issue.
Books are only available to a single person at a time to be checked out though. Even digital versions are limited and can have waiting lists. My wife uses the digital books at our library all the time and is regularly wait listed because someone else “has” it. As far as I know, there is no similar limit for how many people can be playing a particular Internet Archive hosted game at a given moment.
The Archive’s page explaining its DMCA exemption lists criteria that don’t apply to some of the titles. For example, they have the SSI Gold Box games on their site which are not solely “distributed in formats that have become obsolete” – you can buy a working legitimate and licensed copy for your modern computer right now – nor do they require a physical dongle.
At the end of the day, I don’t really care beyond curiosity. They can be hosting 2,500 pirated games and it don’t make no nevermind to me. I suspect the answer is “Internet Archive isn’t super choosy or good at validating what gets uploaded” and relies on someone complaining if they have a legitimate issue. Similarly, IA recently hosted the entire archive of Dragon Magazine. Wizards of the Coast (the right holders) haven’t publicly commented on it, much less joyfully announced it, and it’s suspected that someone just slapped them up on there, rights be damned.
I see Executive Suite is included! It was my favorite game in my middle school’s computer lab. The gist of it is that you go to work for a company and try to get promoted all the way to CEO before you retire. If you get fired, there’s a crude picture of a foot kicking somebody in the buttocks, and it says, “Hit the road, Jack!” on the bottom of the screen.
I note that those all use emulation. I could see an argument that GOG is not actually shipping “a copy for your modern computer” but simply bundling an emulator with a copy for an older computer. I also note that archive.org only actually allows you to download the original software, and does not include the emulator. The emulator just runs using JavaScript.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if this older content had its entire distribution rights sold to GOG, with the original owners not really caring about it anymore. And GOG themselves have not made a habit of going after abandonware sites, as far as I know. Their business was originally built with the idea of competing with piracy by providing a superior “out-of-the-box” experience.
So even if the logic in the first paragraph doesn’t hold, I’m not sure they would be sending cease-and-desist letters on this. And, if they do, it’s not that big a deal for the site to pull it down, or work out a deal where they can show it on the site, but can’t provide a download link.
That seems like a really stupid and borderline insane way to do things TBH. The whole point of digital media is its post-scarcity nature, and the whole point of public libraries is to remove scarcity factors standing between the public and their being able to access media. For a public library to artificially limit access to digital media is at complete cross-purpose.
They don’t really have a choice. They can only offer the amount of access that the copyright holder is willing to sell and that they can afford.
I originally refrained from commenting on this because it is only tangentially on topic, but you have it exactly right, that is the point and the power of digital libraries. The only reason why Jophiel’s library would have a waiting list for digital books (!) is that some private corporation made them an offer they could have refused but chose not to, evidently lacking any semblance of integrity. (Also, one public library may not be able to do much on its own, but together they certainly can, the same way they turned things around against academic publishing monopolies.)
Back to computer games, often the creators themselves are involved with archiving and uploading old games (this may be the case with that SSI box set), even to the extent of posting source code and development tools to Github in cases where they can be salvaged from old backups. Either way, there is an effort being made to preserve this “abandonware”, and not against the wishes of the rights holders who typically either no longer exist, are all for it, or simply don’t care at all.
I would assume that “refusal” would mean not having the book available digitally at all. Simply owning a digital copy of a book doesn’t give you unlimited distribution rights. Authors/Publishers still want to sell copies to pay their bills and libraries, I would assume, want authors to stay in the business of writing books.
To late to edit but this may have been the case. At least, in 2013, the founder of SSI donated the games’ source codes to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games.
For this not to be the case, libraries would need to choose one of:
- Have an infinite budget to purchase unlimited copyright licenses
- Violate copyright law to provide copies illegally (“pirate” the works)
or - Offer no digital copies of any non-(free to them) copyrighted works
Which of these options did you think public libraries should take instead of the status quo of purchasing a limited supply of copyright licenses for works that aren’t free?
I tried the Centipede game I like. It doesn’t respond well to the keyboard though, maybe I can fool around with that. I never played it with a joystick, just the arrow and space keys. It’s at least 25 years since I played it but my fingers remember what to do.