GOG ... ugh...

[82-T/A]

Ok, despite the title... I actually love Good Ole' Games. That's the problem. I spend possibly... maybe 8 days worth of hours total game time in a given year just because of everything else I have going on. But I find myself buying and buying games... even if / when I likely already own these games on DVD/CD. Anyone else do this?

 

How can I pass up Pool of Radiance for $0.99, or the Star Control series for $5.99???

 

Anyone else doing this??

[Tanooki]

Yeah I did that for a time, but it hit me like a wall ...twice.  Once was seeing how much crap I was getting off of Humble Bundles years ago where like 2 games I cared about.  And then the other, as work got more, kid needed more me time, etc I was buying 66%+ off games and not touching them more than once or twice, or still not... it disgusted me so I cut it off almost cold turkey.  At this rate there has to both but a big sale price AND I would stop what I'm doing to play it, or it's 99% certain I'm going to click, read, erase the notification/emails.  I'm wanting more and more to have less and less so I have more time to focus.

[BydoEmpire]

Yeah, GOG is pretty great. I've slowed down with buying unnecessary games, but my library is of course more than I'll ever play. All that said, it was through GOG that I was finally able to complete the Gold Box trilogy, along w/ Gateway to the Savage Frontier, which is one of those bucket list types of achievements in video games I never thought I'd do. All the rest of the money I've spent on GOG was worth it just for that.  There also a few sub-$2 games I was interested in, played for an hour or so, and that was enough. I got to check them out without breaking the bank.

[CapitanClassic]

I almost never buy games now. With all the weekly free games that Epic gives out 52+ per year, plus 20+ for the pre-Christmas giveaway (although I only think I have played 3-4 of those), and the weekly Prime Games giveaway (probably only played about 7-10 of these) and the random GoG giveaways, and the free games through Netflix (only just barely staring playing Into the Breach after beating TMNT) who has time to play anything else?

 

I did buy a couple of Humble Bundles, but even those I have cut back on.

 

As for buying games I already own, I have almost done it a few times (seriously considered it with HoMM2 / HoMM3), because they have done some work with wrapping the code to run on modern machines. The cost of $1-$3 isn’t much when it is on sale, and it saves me from having to find space for a Win98 / WinXP machine on a desk.

[zzip]

On 9/11/2023 at 12:04 PM, 82-T/A said:

Ok, despite the title... I actually love Good Ole' Games. That's the problem. I spend possibly... maybe 8 days worth of hours total game time in a given year just because of everything else I have going on. But I find myself buying and buying games... even if / when I likely already own these games on DVD/CD. Anyone else do this?

 

How can I pass up Pool of Radiance for $0.99, or the Star Control series for $5.99???

 

Anyone else doing this??

The nice bonus of rebuying games on GoG that I have on CD/DVD is they will run without the requirement of needing the CD in the drive.   So yeah I have done this.  Especially at the bargain prices you can find sometimes.

[Flojomojo]

Buying games is easy and fun! Doesn't take much time, and you forget about the wasted money. Then you have a lot of games from which to choose whenever the mood strikes. 

 

I bought those games you mention, and the likelihood of me actually playing them is very tiny. I do not have the attention span of CRPG Addict.

 

Does it help if you try to think of your game hoard as a library, rather than a backlog? When framed that way, I don't feel guilt, I feel like I have lots of opportunities. 

[zzip]

1 minute ago, Flojomojo said:

Buying games is easy and fun! Doesn't take much time, and you forget about the wasted money. Then you have a lot of games from which to choose whenever the mood strikes. 

 

I bought those games you mention, and the likelihood of me actually playing them is very tiny. I do not have the attention span of CRPG Addict.

 

Does it help if you try to think of your game hoard as a library, rather than a backlog? When framed that way, I don't feel guilt, I feel like I have lots of opportunities. 

Heh,

 

When I buy a game that I can add to my emulation setup, I'm curating a library and the purchase was totally worth it, even if I never play it

 

When I buy a game that sits in my Steam or PS5 and never gets played, it's a backlog and I feel guilty about wasting money 

 

I guess it helps that the former is ususaly cheaper than the latter

 

[zzip]

On 9/11/2023 at 12:04 PM, 82-T/A said:

How can I pass up Pool of Radiance for $0.99,

Was this a recent purchase?  I  can't find it on GoG

[CapitanClassic]

I don’t know if they sell it by itself, but it is part of the Forgotten Realms - Collection 2

 

GOG has it for $10 (is there a price tracker like for steam?)

Steam says it has been as cheap as $6.

Always wanted to own these bitd. The combat scenes looked amazing and I loved the closeness to the Adv. D&D rules. Eventually the closest thing I got was Realms of Arcana: Star Trail and Heroes of Might & Magic 1&2 (as well as renting Kings Bounty [Gen].

 

Don't know if I could wade through the archaic interface of these old Gold Box games these days.
 

 

[Flojomojo]

@CapitanClassic if you wishlist it on GOG they will email you when the price drops. They have sales all the time if you don’t want to pay full price. 
 

I remember trying Pool of Radiance when it was fairly new and not being able to get past the simple graphics. Maybe I’d do better with it now, but like you say, we have other options …

[BydoEmpire]

1 hour ago, CapitanClassic said:

I don’t know if they sell it by itself, but it is part of the Forgotten Realms - Collection 2

 

GOG has it for $10 (is there a price tracker like for steam?)

Steam says it has been as cheap as $6.

Always wanted to own these bitd. The combat scenes looked amazing and I loved the closeness to the Adv. D&D rules. Eventually the closest thing I got was Realms of Arcana: Star Trail and Heroes of Might & Magic 1&2 (as well as renting Kings Bounty [Gen].

 

Don't know if I could wade through the archaic interface of these old Gold Box games these days.
 

 

The interface is clunky, but once you get used to it you can do what you need to do pretty quickly.  IMHO it's not that bad.  Having played them on c64 originally (but never finishing), playing these games on a fast, modern PC with near instantaneous load times is amazing convenience. The turn-based, strategic combat is the real highlight, and it holds up really well. There are some memorable settings and dungeons as well. Not everyone's cup of tea, especially with modern tastes, but I really enjoy the series.

 

Incidentally, I still own the manual & strategy guide for Secret of the Silver Blades and I used that when replaying on GOG. That was a nice mix of old and new.

 

[edit] and now I've got Realms of Arcana in my GOG wishlist... only $1.49!!!!

Edited September 13 by BydoEmpire

[zzip]

1 hour ago, CapitanClassic said:

I don’t know if they sell it by itself, but it is part of the Forgotten Realms - Collection 2

 

GOG has it for $10 (is there a price tracker like for steam?)

Steam says it has been as cheap as $6.

Thanks, searching for "Pools of Radiance" and even "Dungeons and Dragons" wasn't returning results-  their store interface could use some work.

[Tanooki]

I keep a small rolling wish list still with them, Steam too. 

They both notify but since I'm not highly motivated, nor have I been for years given so much I could finish I have I don't bite most the time.

 

When I do, I look at this: https://isthereanydeal.com/

 

GO there, pop the game in, every site that sells GoG, Steam(and any steam key broker that's legit), lame epic, etc are all there.  Sort by what you want to use (GoG in this case alone) then to make it the fastest/easier approach click on history.  You get a nice line graph going back months, years, decade plus even and you can see all the drops ever had and how much.  Maybe it comes down to 60% the last few times, and this sale is at 75%, you'll see it notated as largest drop, then buy if that's your magic number to care.

 

Perfect example: MOnster Boy is in my queue and I was notified, it's 29.99 and currently at 9.89 (-67% off)

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/monsterboyandcursedkingdom/history/

 

Line graph looks like the deepest cut, hovering shows that value, and below is this:
Price

	All time	Last 3 months	Change
Lowest	$9.89 67% off on GOG  Duration: 23 days Recorded 2021-12-13	$9.89 67% off on GOG  Duration: 3 days Recorded 2023-06-30	$0.00

Edited September 13 by Tanooki

[CatPix]

23 hours ago, zzip said:

The nice bonus of rebuying games on GoG that I have on CD/DVD is they will run without the requirement of needing the CD in the drive.   So yeah I have done this.  Especially at the bargain prices you can find sometimes.

Not to mention older games come packaged in DosBox. Windows 95-98 era games are updated too in order to work on Windows 64 bits version (alot of games before the Windows 2000/XP era were written in 16 bits and thus cannot work on 64 bits vesions of modern OS).
Also most games come with a scan of the manual and sometime box art as well.

More hit and miss but many games that require a dead service like Games for Windows have this requirement removed as well.

[zzip]

1 hour ago, CatPix said:

Also most games come with a scan of the manual and sometime box art as well.

And a lot of 90s games had manual-based copy protection where they'd tell you to go to a certain page in the manual and type in the word you see.   I think GoG disables this as well, even though you might still see the prompt in game?  (it now accepts anything you type).

[Tanooki]

They do and in some cases when they upload the package, they upload the full package.  Star Trek 25th you'll get the otherwise useless star chart which was the lockout for thieves short of a cracked release.  I've seen others where they'll include the wheel if they got it and so on.  Various titles get their stacks of extras scanned, like ST25th's amazing Cluebook which is mostly just really a well written novella which turns each episode of the game into an actual book (even one written in game and book by DC Fontana who wrote for the original series.)  They do a lot of nice touches, even overlaps when stuff is cracked because they care.

[CatPix]

The only issue I often see for many games (which probably boils down to licencing issues) is that games that had translations and sometime even voices are only available in English. Buuut heh, there is sometime ways, if you own the original game, to do mix and match stuff with the files to restaure it.

[82-T/A]

On 9/13/2023 at 10:38 AM, zzip said:

The nice bonus of rebuying games on GoG that I have on CD/DVD is they will run without the requirement of needing the CD in the drive.   So yeah I have done this.  Especially at the bargain prices you can find sometimes.

 

Totally, this. I save all of the games too... the actual downloads, and save them to a small NAS that I have.

 

 

On 9/13/2023 at 11:25 AM, zzip said:

Was this a recent purchase?  I  can't find it on GoG

 

Haha, sorry... I was just throwing that out there as a silly example. I don't really keep old games (I tossed out ALL of my old game boxes, manuals, etc.)... EXCEPT for Starflight 1 & 2, Sentinel Worlds, and the Gold Box (and Silver Box) Series games. Still, I ended up buying every single AD&D game I could possibly find on GoG. I've replayed Pool of Radiance about 3 times since the 80s... each time on original hardware (an 8088, or a 386 something or other). But the game still holds up. My opinion, it has the least advanced engine of all the Gold Box games, the worst graphics, but still has one of the best story lines and freedom of play. There are almost no other games like it. Most of the other AD&D Gold Box games require you to follow a path, so to speak. Quite literally sometimes. You can visit towns and do whatever it is you want to do... but usually you can't do anything in those towns unless you've solved a problem in the other town. For Pool of Radiance, all the towns were completely open, and you could solve all the challenges at your leisure. You could even finish the game without solving half the quests so to speak. And there's even hidden quests like a dragon cave in the mountains, hidden Wyvern caves throughout the game, and entire Keeps and abandoned towns that are hidden (fixed) throughout the countryside that aren't even mentioned in the game book (other than the clue book). The attention to detail on that game was significant.

 

The only thing not great about it is that it was EGA, compared with VGA for the other half of the games, and the mechanics of the game engine lacked the features that they added in the later games, like Automatic fight setting for when you just wanted to get through some quick battles with weaker groups, or the auto-learn for pre-defined spells during camping.

 

 

On 9/13/2023 at 12:11 PM, CapitanClassic said:

Don't know if I could wade through the archaic interface of these old Gold Box games these days.

 

I'm sorry, we can no longer be friends.

 

 

On 9/13/2023 at 12:18 PM, Flojomojo said:

I remember trying Pool of Radiance when it was fairly new and not being able to get past the simple graphics.

 

I'm sorry, we can no longer be friends.

 

 

On 9/13/2023 at 1:33 PM, BydoEmpire said:

The interface is clunky, but once you get used to it you can do what you need to do pretty quickly.  IMHO it's not that bad.  Having played them on c64 originally (but never finishing), playing these games on a fast, modern PC with near instantaneous load times is amazing convenience. The turn-based, strategic combat is the real highlight, and it holds up really well. There are some memorable settings and dungeons as well. Not everyone's cup of tea, especially with modern tastes, but I really enjoy the series. Incidentally, I still own the manual & strategy guide for Secret of the Silver Blades and I used that when replaying on GOG. That was a nice mix of old and new.

 

Hello, my new best friend!!!

 

 

On 9/13/2023 at 1:33 PM, BydoEmpire said:

[edit] and now I've got Realms of Arcana in my GOG wishlist... only $1.49!!!!

 

Dude, those are such great games too... I only ever played the first one, but I have all three of them... never got to finish the first one. Having to eat all the time was frustrating. I wish I could disable that.

 

Edited September 20 by 82-T/A

[zzip]

1 hour ago, 82-T/A said:

But the game still holds up. My opinion, it has the least advanced engine of all the Gold Box games, the worst graphics, but still has one of the best story lines and freedom of play. There are almost no other games like it. Most of the other AD&D Gold Box games require you to follow a path, so to speak. Quite literally sometimes. You can visit towns and do whatever it is you want to do... but usually you can't do anything in those towns unless you've solved a problem in the other town. For Pool of Radiance, all the towns were completely open, and you could solve all the challenges at your leisure. You could even finish the game without solving half the quests so to speak. And there's even hidden quests like a dragon cave in the mountains, hidden Wyvern caves throughout the game, and entire Keeps and abandoned towns that are hidden (fixed) throughout the countryside that aren't even mentioned in the game book (other than the clue book). The attention to detail on that game was significant.

I was looking forward to Pool of Radiance,   It was announced but apparently never released on ST, so I never got a chance to play it.    But even if I did get a copy, there was a good chance it would have just sat in my backlog.    SSI was releasing a ton of RPGs around that time,  and I didn't have enough time to play the ones I already owned plus I was going through college around that time.

[newtmonkey]

I had Pool of Radiance on the C64 back in the day, but was just a dumb kid and never got anywhere in it.  It seemed so complicated and difficult then, even though I had experience playing the AD&D pen and paper game.

 

I gave the game a try again back in 2020 and absolutely loved it!  It didn't take long to get used to the interface (in fact, I'd argue that the interface is superior to that of many modern RPGs), and I found the graphics to be good enough, even charming.  I ended up completing the game, and then took my Fighter/Thief through Hillsfar, and then imported my party into Curse of the Azure Bonds, which I also completed.  I'm partway through Secret of the Silver Blades, with the same party.

 

I've played through dozens of RPGs, both old and new, and I'd rank Pool of Radiance in my top five games of all time.  It's got great combat, a large world full of nonlinear questing with plenty of optional stuff to do, and evocative writing... and the interface is snappy so the game never wastes your time.  Modern RPGs could learn a thing or two from it.

Edited September 20 by newtmonkey

[CapitanClassic]

3 hours ago, 82-T/A said:

 

On 9/13/2023 at 9:11 AM, CapitanClassic said:

Don't know if I could wade through the archaic interface of these old Gold Box games these days.

I'm sorry, we can no longer be friends.

Quality of life improvements are a must these days with the plethora of options to choose from for entertainment.

 

I love old games like this or XCom, but after playing a game like Xcom with XComUtility where it automatically equips your troops based upon naming conventions, it is hard to go back to the clunkier interface.

Edited September 20 by CapitanClassic

[Tanooki]

Speaking of quality of life, this dropped about a week ago, a remaster rebirth of sorts of Wizardry

https://www.gog.com/en/game/wizardry_proving_grounds_of_the_mad_overlord

[82-T/A]

4 hours ago, zzip said:

I was looking forward to Pool of Radiance,   It was announced but apparently never released on ST, so I never got a chance to play it.    But even if I did get a copy, there was a good chance it would have just sat in my backlog.    SSI was releasing a ton of RPGs around that time,  and I didn't have enough time to play the ones I already owned plus I was going through college around that time.

 

Dude, it was SUCH a good game. It literally came out on everything... even the Nintendo, the Famicom, Amiga, Apple ][e, 2GS, Commodore 64/128, IBM PC... it was available for almost everything. They actually DID end up releasing it for the Atari ST, but it was so delayed, that I don't think a lot of people got it for the Atari ST. If you ever do play any of the old SSI gold box games... you've got to start with that one again.

 

 

2 hours ago, newtmonkey said:

I gave the game a try again back in 2020 and absolutely loved it!  It didn't take long to get used to the interface (in fact, I'd argue that the interface is superior to that of many modern RPGs), and I found the graphics to be good enough, even charming.  I ended up completing the game, and then took my Fighter/Thief through Hillsfar, and then imported my party into Curse of the Azure Bonds, which I also completed.  I'm partway through Secret of the Silver Blades, with the same party.

 

I've played through dozens of RPGs, both old and new, and I'd rank Pool of Radiance in my top five games of all time.  It's got great combat, a large world full of nonlinear questing with plenty of optional stuff to do, and evocative writing... and the interface is snappy so the game never wastes your time.  Modern RPGs could learn a thing or two from it.

 

I could not agree more... it was such a fantastic game... really... as you put it... a world full of nonlinear questing with optional stuff to do is something that you really just did not see in many of the other games. It almost to me seems like they over-built the game world... and then with the huge success of that game, they were forced to spit out quick succession games afterwards where they ended up cutting some corners in the plot. While the games themselves advanced, they lacked the depth of world exploration and felt more like (in comparison to a real AD&D game) the DM would be pushing the party along a very confined path.

 

 

2 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

I love old games like this or XCom

 

Ok... you've got my attention...

 

 

20 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Speaking of quality of life, this dropped about a week ago, a remaster rebirth of sorts of Wizardry

https://www.gog.com/en/game/wizardry_proving_grounds_of_the_mad_overlord

 

Dude, that looks so awesome. I'm tempted to buy it right now, but as it stands... I apparently have 374 games on GOG... God help me...

[zzip]

1 hour ago, 82-T/A said:

Dude, it was SUCH a good game. It literally came out on everything... even the Nintendo, the Famicom, Amiga, Apple ][e, 2GS, Commodore 64/128, IBM PC... it was available for almost everything. They actually DID end up releasing it for the Atari ST, but it was so delayed, that I don't think a lot of people got it for the Atari ST. If you ever do play any of the old SSI gold box games... you've got to start with that one again.

It did?     In my mind, I owned Pool of Radiance, but couldn't get a copy of Curse of the Azure Bonds on ST.    But when I moved my stuff over to emulators, I was never able to find a dump of Pool, but Curse is readily available.    Even Atarimania suggests it was advertised for ST but never released.

[82-T/A]

16 hours ago, zzip said:

It did?     In my mind, I owned Pool of Radiance, but couldn't get a copy of Curse of the Azure Bonds on ST.    But when I moved my stuff over to emulators, I was never able to find a dump of Pool, but Curse is readily available.    Even Atarimania suggests it was advertised for ST but never released.

 

Yeah, I just looked it up... it seems the Atari ST really got screwed on those games. I'm not sure why, the ST certainly has the ability to handle a game like that... I mean, if they could make it work on everything else... it doesn't make sense why they couldn't do it on the Atari ST. I never had an Atari ST during the time, but maybe it just didn't get the love it deserved. Honestly... my opinion, it was really designed for the IBM PC... graphics for all the SSI games was significantly better on the PC across the board. Only the music was better for the earlier games until they started supporting General Midi (which some of the later ones did).

 

I hate that Curse of the Azure Bonds was your first foray into AD&D SSI games... my opinion, really, Curse was probably the worst game out of all of them. Many people dislike Secret of the Silver Blades (which came right after), but both Curse and Secret were extremely linear... which is completely different than Pool of Radiance. Pool of Darkness, which was the fourth one, was far less linear and more "open-world" like.

 

The other major series... Dragon Lance, that series... Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, and Dark Queen of Krynn... those all follow a storyline to some extent, and if you ever read the AD&D novels growing up, they incorporate all of those characters from the Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman novels into those games ... which is odd for people like me who name my characters after the people from those games. So it was weird when Raistlin met Raistlin, and Tanis meets Tanis. Haha...

 

But yeah, if you have the time, those SSI gold box games are fantastic on PC.