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Bethesda Gives Away The Elder Scrolls - Arena

Posted by simoniker on from the back-to-the-oldschool dept.

Dan L writes "In celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the classic Elder Scrolls PC RPG series (Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, yada, yada..), Bethesda has offered up the original DOS version of The Elder Scrolls: Arena for free download. Also, there is a rather cool contest to win some original game art, or some top of the line video cards and sound gear."

5 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Re:if only.. by 0x0d0a · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know, at one point I was sure that GPLed old games would languish (and that might still be the case, if the dev population is sufficiently thinned out by masses of releases), but games like Marathon, Quake and Doom have certainly not suffered from being GPLed. Quake in particular has been improved in some amazing ways.

    Honestly, I'd sooner that they'd opened the source but kept the data files commercial.

    Lucasarts enjoyed a bunch of people buying their old games after the ScummVM people implemented ScummVM and made the Lucasarts games run (with new features and goodies) on a modern platform. Lucasarts didn't have to pay a penny.

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    May we never see th
  2. Free not Free Enough by jvmatthe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Free versions of binary-only games like this frustrates me. Perhaps this is so old that they don't still have source, but this curmudgeoning is my usual response to games offered as free downloads. In short: making the game available as source will do more to preserve the legacy of your game than any binary distribution ever will. (Again, as long as source is available...)

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    Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
    1. Re:Free not Free Enough by oskillator · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Emulators such as DosBox ensure that binary-only games will be runnable forever, on any platform someone cared enough to port the emulator to. Emulators currently won't help much for the games listed in that article, but that's really just a matter of time.

      The inability to produce tenebrae-style variants is a shame, though.

    2. Re:Free not Free Enough by Nasarius · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There are potential legal issues with releasing the source. For example, all the code has to be audited, just in case one idiot programmer copied some code he shouldn't have and Bethesda gets sued. And as long as DosBox remains active, there's no worries about losing ability to play the game.

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      LOAD "SIG",8,1
  3. Bugs by Dachannien · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm surprised nobody yet has mentioned how buggy this game was. Numerous crash bugs, as well as a tendency to thrust your character on the wrong side of the environment (e.g., walking on top of dungeon ceilings, falling through a wall and out into space), plagued this game.

    Still, this is a nice gift to the community of TES supporters from Bethesda. :)