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Yay old video games

Being a fan of interactive media I’ve discovered that it tends to outpace me. There are more games and fun toys that come out than I can possibly play through, let alone afford, and invariably I miss some really good ones while enjoying the ones that I already have. The problem is that the hardware required to run these tends to outdate, so a given production has a window of time where it can be reasonably acquired and played. Old computers, particularly the IBM/PC platform are troublesome since the updates are incremental and programs can exhibit a “sort of works” behavior that is hard to troubleshoot, but even old console videogames can be hard to play just because of their rarity. Some of the old classics are inaccessible since they cost a couple of hundred dollars on ebay. I’ve often wished there was some mechanism to reprint the older titles in some accessible way.

Fortunately for me, that’s sort starting to happen. Good Old Games is a company that’s offering digital downloads of some great older PC games for the price of a fast food combo meal. Furthermore, they’re either tweaked or run in wrapper software so that they’ll run on modern XP and Vista computers. I bought Freespace 2 from them already, and as soon as I clear out some of the RPGs I’m playing through I think I’ll try out the first Fallout game, which has never run on any computer I’ve ever owned. How cool is this?

Of course, “clear out some of the RPGs” might be a taller order than I think since I’m still in the middle of the excellent The World Ends With You on the DS and Final Fantasy 3/6 on the SNES. And I’ve still got this download of The Spirit Engine that I want to play through. And I’m playing WoW with some friends.

Holy crap what have I gotten myself into.