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Now is the perfect time to try something different. Good Old Games (GOG), is holding their holiday sale and Steam will be doing their mega sell probably starting next week. So if you have ever been interested in trying pc gaming now is the time to give it a go.
I know I know, the biggest complaint about PC gaming is cost. It cost so much to game since you have to upgrade your pc every few months (which Is bs but we are not getting into that argument tonight). Well fret not, this is where GOG comes in. GOG sells old games that are worth playing, hence their name. Right now you can pick up about 200 games that will run fine on a netbook with no tweaking whatsoever and all for under $10 each. Hows that for expensive? When you buy a game from GOG you download an executable (EXE) and just double click on it and follow the prompts, 9/10 times it will autoconfigure everything for you. Simple and inexpensive, we have moved up in the world.
However being that this is digital distribution I know a lot of you are hesitant to jump on board. Physical copies are superior no one here is debating that. My thoughts on this are simply that spending $3 to get a copy of Rise of the Triad that installs without me playing around with it for two hours is well worth it. Or if you were an early adopter of Unreal Tournament 2004, like I was those five cd installs get tedious, isnt $6 worth it to not do that anymore?
There are other advantages to GOG. They strip the original DRM from the games and release them DRM free. So games that I would not have bought previously Broken Sword 3 came with Starforce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starforce), are now purchase worthy. Also, though this is frowned upon by some, if you bought a multiplayer game, say Unreal Tournament 2004, you could install it on multiple computers and play with/against them. And if that wasnt enough they will even GIVE you games. They have several free to download aslong as you have an account games Tyrian 2000 was added to that list today.
So if any of that sounds interesting to you, head on over to www.gog.com and give a company that does Digital Distribution for old games right.
Personally, I am picking up copies of:
Raptor
Baldurs Gate 1 my copy is scratched
Baldurs Gate 2
Rise of the Triad
Serious Sam 1
Serious Sam 2
Neverwinter Nights Diamond Those half a dozen cds get to stay on the shelf now
Total Annihilation
Planescape Torment I figure its about time I play the game everyone keeps telling me is one of the best ever created.
Thats almost a years worth of gaming for well under $40.
I bought an EEE two years ago and have been questioned about it ever since. My original purpose for buying it was two fold: I had just broke the keyboard for my palmpilot and a new one cost the price of the refurbished EEE, and I am a sucker for mobile computing. Several of my friends have just never understood my purchase, since I own several laptops and desktops, and they didnt know what to think when I told them the way I envisioned using it.
For the past five years Ive used a Tapwave Zodiac as my pda. It is a great device with a bit of heft, brilliant screen, and a decent library of games. More importantly it had a fantastic emulation scene. But when the keyboard broke and the EEE was the same price as a new one, well I bit the bullet, but kept the same mentality.
I did not view the EEE as a replacement for my desktops or laptops, but more as a Gameboy for pc gaming. What do I mean by that exactly? Well the Gameboy is usually a generation down in power and has a handful of ports from the previous generation. So a Gameboy for PC gaming would play games from 5-10 years ago as well as some new ones. So when I got it, I threw on XP and a copy of Lucasarts Outlaws and went to town. Sure the 9inch screen is not big enough for some genres, and the GMA 950 really hinders what 3d titles you can play, but there are still quality games out there for you to lose track of time with.
Overtime I had to replace XP with a variant of linux for work it was Ubuntu but is now Mint, and only kept Dosbox and a handful of Scumm games installed on it. Recently my old man decided to pickup an iPad and no longer needs his EEE with a bigger harddrive. So what was the first thing that rolled through my head? Thats right boys and girls, I am getting a new Gameboy (one that wont be converted to work).
A fresh install of an nlited version of XP, updated drivers, and I was set. I threw on Dosbox, Scummvm, a couple console emulators, MAMEUI, and decided to do something wild. I went back to the Goldbox and installed Pool of Radiance on it. I had never played Pool for more than a few minutes, but I had been told more times than I care to think of that I had to play it. Ofcourse it ran fine and ate away the rest of my night.
The linelevel Netbook runs an Intel Atom at 1.6ghz, with a gig of ram, and a GMA 950 gpu. So if you think of it as a good gaming pc from 2000 you will be on point for what games can run on it. Sure you can play some more modern games (you can play a lot of them if you play with tweaks (I got Battlefield 2142 to run on one and Oblivion [via Oldblivion] on another), but that is a lot of work for not much reward.
But if you look back there are hundreds upon hundreds of great PC games just waiting for you to play them on a netbook. To keep things legal, lets go to our good friends in Poland, Good Old Games, and see whats on sale. For those of you who dont know, Good Old Games (GOG) is a website that takes old pc games, strips them of DRM, and sells them for digital download. They have sales every weekend and are just a bunch of great folk. The game selection is growing weekly (today 8/10 they added Raptor Call of Shadows) and I am sure there is a game there that will fit your fancy. From Kings Quest to Unreal Tournament 2004. Ofcourse there are abandonware sites out there if you are into that sort of thing.
Whats the point of all this? Simply, dont dismiss netbooks as puny internet only devices since they cant play relatively modern games well. And sometimes it just takes a different way to look at something to make it all click. Many of my older gaming friends have all gone out to buy netbooks simply to have a portable DOS machine. One surprised the hell out of me and hacked a Zipit2 (Instant Messaging device) and to run DOSbox. Very similar to what this guy did:
http://hunterdavis.com/archives/40
A DOS gaming pc, in your pocket. Oh how I longed for you twenty years ago. Loderunner and Fate of Atlantis in my pocket.
I am still waiting for a cheap enough tablet pc/ipod knock off that I can turn into the ultimate ScummVM device. For now I will sick with my G3 iMac:
[img width=700 height=525]http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f394/fastbilly1/Videogame%20Related/DSCF2849.jpg[/img]
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This is fastbilly1's Blog.
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The sometimes unedited, often confusing, ramblings about random topics revolving around videogames. With a heavy focus on retrogaming and exotic projects.
From the mind of the promotion coordinator for Retrogaming with Racketboy and Momocon On Tour. |
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