Slashdot Mirror

As Linus said: "Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it".

Which is a way of saying that you can find just about anything on the Internet. (From a moral, if perhaps not technically legal, point of view, you have the "bitrotted" originals and these are "backups".)

You can try to find a lot of great and classic applications that are not the size of a full length movie. Check out Abandonware.

The problem, as usual, is that we "geeks" are almost ignored by politicians and lawmakers.

Sort of. The _bigger_ problem is that there exist consortiums of corporations which hate abandonware. Despite the size, organization, and good intentions of the abandonware community (check out this webring, for instance), there are stubborn corporations that will see practically no profit but want to retain their copyrights on silly-but-fun games forever. Slashdot has covered the IDSA's legal maneuverings in the past; Mobygames has an excellent feature that discusses some of the issues around the legal status of abandonware.

Nobody is going to pay absurdly inflated (probably price-fixed) shelf prices of $40 or so for old games. If the companies won't sell their copyrighted software, these games -- good games, like Civilization or Colonization or Wolfenstein 3D -- will gravitate towards an open trade on the Internet. They're often smaller than MP3's, and they're considerably more fulfilling. This kind of "copyright infringement" is usually ignored and not typically prosecuted; the situation's more or less fine as it is. But it's damned annoying trying to find a safe venue for sharing what is, in a way, cultural heritage. oh, and:

The problem, as usual, is that we "geeks" are almost ignored by politicians and lawmakers. It'd be interesting to see a future article describing why that's the case...but who really knows the answer?

IDSA=money

I have this site bookmarked that links to many different "Abandonware" websites that let you download those old PC games (i.e. Sierra, Broderbund, etc..) for free. Just playing Police Quest 1/2/3 gave me old memories of how I used to spend my days on the computer trying to solve the game. :-)

For Starcon 3 you might want to check the disco bins. I got mine from a disco bin at an Office Depot of all things for like $5.99. That said it was no where near the game Starcon 2 was. Although I did like the new ships in versus mode.

It's also worth checking out some abandonware sites, one of them may have it for download.

Best place to start looking for abandonware, that I've found, is the Abandonware ring. Maybe you'll find starcon 3. But I would say it is skipable.

Personally I am in love with lode runner. I have never played lode runner 3d for the n64, but I have a copy of the mad monks revenge, which I originally played under windows 95. I played and beat it under win95, and twice under win98 (I ran 98 for a long time, and that OS made it through two or three of my main machines). ANYTHING by lucasarts is fair game (day of the tentacle and indiana jones and the fate of atlantis are two that I own and have played frequently). The original warcraft and then warcraft two got more play from me than starcraft plus every FPS I ever played. I just reinstalled warcraft II on my machine yesterday, actually.

Check out some of these truly excellent abandonware sites for some good games:

The Underdogs

BumbleB

The Abandonware Ring

The article links (through a redirect script) to http://www.abandonwarering.com/ as the main web page for the abandonware thing. It's got links to many warez sites, use at your own risk. Doesn't seem too legal to me, seems like they're making money off other people's work - it's got banner adverts.

Hi, I run an abandonware web site, that might give you a general idea of what it's like to distribute abandonware over the internet. We have a very strict policy, despite the fact that what we are doing is still TECHNICALLY illegal.

We will not post games that are still sold or supported by the company. It must be truely abandonware. Anything that's old, but still supported, it called "old warez".

Our moral beleif is that if it's no longer supported by the company, it has good educational and hobbyist use. I like to program games, and it's cool to see how they used to it. So even we're against software piracy, when it hurts companies.

If you want to look at our site, here is the URL:
http://www.abandonwarering.com/depot

if you have any questions about abandonware feel free to ask us on the forum, and we'll be glad to answer.