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What (And Where) Are The Classic Free Games?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm flying from the US to Europe in a few weeks and am taking my iBook along for the ride. With a seven hour flight looming, I'm wanting to take some games along to play. But I don't want to download a bunch of freeware that may or may not be junk; I just want the classics. What are the classic free games? I've already downloaded Nethack and am looking into Freeciv. What else is there? I need something that's multiplatform (or at least has a Mac port), something that's stable and has stood the test of time, and something that is more complex and engrossing than a Tetris clone. Thanks!"
The last time I loaded up nethack on my Mac, I was stuck in front of the computer for about 30 hours straight.
If you can't get through an eight hour flight with that, you've got bigger problems than finding free games...
Nearly every platform has an interpreter for the old Infocom text games. Zork I, II, and III are available for free legally from ActiVision,
and once you have a z-machine interpreter for your Mac, you can use any of the other Infocom games you can find. There are also many (legal) free z-machine games available on the net, and I think that Activision recently sold a CD-ROM with most of the old Infocom collection, including Hitchhiker's Guide, Enchanter, and the others.
Any one of these will keep you busy for the whole flight and taxi ride to your hotel, and you'll probably stay up and keep playing once you get there instead of sleeping off the jet lag. Just remember to bring a pad of paper, pencil, and eraser for drawing maps and working out mazes.
I believe the stipulation was "FREE" games. Most of the ROMs used by MAME are copyrighted and are NOT free.