Good Old Games

I've been hearing about Good Old Games for a little while, but finally got around to checking out their site this week. Good Old Games, owned by the Polish company CD Projekt and launched in 2008, offers older PC games for download that they have patched or packaged with an application like DOSBox and a wrapper of some sort to ensure compatibility with newer versions of Windows (in my case XP). If you've ever tried to play older PC games on a new system you know it can sometimes be challenging to get it to run properly. Also, all their games are sold without any DRM protection and when you buy the game you often get other downloadable extras included like game soundtracks, wallpapers, manuals, etc.

I checked out their games and there were several titles on there that I had heard of but never played and their prices looked pretty reasonable. But the best thing is that they offer 3 commercial games for you to download absolutely free to try out their service - Beneath a Steel Sky, Lure of the Temptress, and Teenagent. Registration is simple and I figured you can't beat the price so I downloaded a copy of Beneath a Steel Sky, a 1994 point and click sci-fi adventure game and tried it out.

I'd never heard of the game but apparently it is a bit of a cult-classic. I played it a while and thought it was decent although I wasn't blown away - all things being equal I'd rather replay Space Quest IV (which is also offered on the site packaged with SQ 5 and 6 for $9.99) - but the point of this post was just to point out the GOG service to any readers that might not have ever tried it out (like me a week ago). It was simple, worked well, and they are offering some full-version free games for you to try it out so what is there to lose?  Check it out at http://www.gog.com/.