Might and Magic is finally out on GOG!!

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Limited Edition, which needs its own special patching procedure. See my site at http://members.cox.net/dave.caspermeyer/ for the 1.1 to 1.2 upgrades(if you want them) and please follow the recommended patching. I checked the Mok's links, and they're broken. Find them thru the TELP M&M boards.

P.S. - I already have the Limited Edition with the Dragon holograph, and the extras which was only $20. I'm not sure what is included to run the older games, so I'll add the DOSBox site link http://www.dosbox.com/

I'd use versions 0.65 to 0.72. I've heard of issues with the latest DOSBox release.

Hmmm. Shouldn't the game be released already patched in GOG?

Really? The patches are not even pre-installed? Can anyone verify this?

This will be another win for Mondblut if this is the case.

 

[DaveO]

I asked to check the MM6.EXE, but so far it's been an epic fail to get anybody to do so.

If the image is from the actual Limited Edition media, that is version 1.0. The big question is whether anybody from GoG knew this and the patch procedure or if its a complete copy.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Really? The patches are not even pre-installed? Can anyone verify this?

This will be another win for Mondblut if this is the case.

Well, it would be a shame if they release a game as originally sold.

Most of the old games come already patched to the lates version. So GOG wouldn't have to care with the majority of their games. But they MUST check and test every game at least. If not, what a shame.

One thing is selling the games as they are already download for free. Other is selling them with the same bugs the free versions would have.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I asked to check the MM6.EXE, but so far it's been an epic fail to get anybody to do so.

If the image is from the actual Limited Edition media, that is version 1.0. The big question is whether anybody from GoG knew this and the patch procedure or if its a complete copy.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

$$$

 

[mathboy]

Blame the publishers. Nobody forces them to drop a price of a game every few months post release, making it cost twice as less in 2 years and 5 times as less in 4. Nobody forced them to sign up the whole media on a decades-long "new is better" campaign, continually praising the latest tech fad as the best shit evah and deprecating the older products as worthless and outdated. So no wonder people think a 15 years old game should be free, the industry paid billions to convince them of that.

The publishers are evil because they don't sell old games!

The publishers are evil because they sell old games!

 

[Geofferic]

I am truly shocked at the number of idiots with a problem with GoG.

Truly just blown away. Also, the outright fabrications are stunning. That MetalCraze dude should just change his nick to Craze. Just makes shit right the hell up.

 

[Lingwe]

I also find it puzzling why a couple of people have such a problem with it. Sure, they might not have a problem tracking down a torrent with enough seeds and then tweaking dosbox to make it run, they might not even want any of the extras offered. Other people however may well be willing to pay the $6-10 that Gog charges to get those games. You pay the price premium for the ease of download and installation. You don't need to be a genius to figure that out.

Sure some people might be willing to put in the extra bit of effort to do that themselves, but for those who don't and are willing to pay a few bucks for the convenience then why not let them. I alsoi have a sneaking suspicion that those who don't mind searching around to download their games for free would probably balk at doing it and setting it up all ready in a single location for everyone else to download. And if they aren't going to do that for free then why the hell do they think that CDProject/Gog would do it for free either.

are all lining up like puppies to give GOG a sloppy blowjob for a chance to pay them cash for software created a long time ago by long-dead companies and people who went their own ways and won't get a cent for it, software that has been openly (if not technically "legally") available for free for a decade and more everywhere, with GOG's own involvement being limited to bundling a DOSbox shortcut with it.

Those scumbags. We're giving them money for stuff they didn't even work on!? You serious?

Oh wait, could it be that the company that bought the rights off the original creators gave them much needed money so that they could pay their employees their overdue salaries before they were laid off (not to mention their other creditors etc). Then another company bought the rights off that company and that allowed the second company to pay their staff and anyone else they owed money to. And then the next company did the same. Except they haven't failed yet. This company which didn't have anything to do with the creation of the game, yet legally owns the game, then puts the game up for download on Gog. People pay for it and some of the money goes to Gog (for the convenience premium i mentioned earlier) and some goes to the company that owns the game.

And somehow you feel the need to take umbrance against people for praising Gog for its convenience, while slagging it off because apparently they are 'making money off other people's hard work'.

Right.

 

[thesheeep]

I am truly shocked at the number of idiots with a problem with GoG.

Truly just blown away. Also, the outright fabrications are stunning. That MetalCraze dude should just change his nick to Craze. Just makes shit right the hell up.

But mondblut is the skyway of this thread! Not skyway! Get it?! AHAHAHAHAHA....

 

[mondblut]

It took less than 4 pages for fanboys to finally gather enough balls to jump in

 

[Zeus]

It took less than 4 pages for fanboys to finally gather enough balls to jump in

From the top of the first page:

Finally, it is OUT!

They don't make them like this anymore...

I am downloading it now.

GOG rocks.

How's the weather out there in Made Up Land, anyway?

No, I'm being unfair. Technically, the original post is "less than 4 pages"!

Oh, for fun.

 

[mondblut]

A happy little circlejerk that called for my original entrance does not count, of course. Why else would I come by in the first place?

 

[Zeus]

A happy little circlejerk that called for my original entrance does not count, of course. Why else would I come by in the first place?

Because in Made Up Land, things "don't count" if you want them to.

 

[Hory]

Criticism against GOG may be bad in the sense that they're not worse than the average company. But having more than a neutral opinion of them is equally bad. GOG profits tho it provides no real value. They didn't create anything nor do they reward the creators. They just benefit from juggling "intellectual property", which is a flawed concept protected by abusive, monopolist and corporatist laws. In the end, all they do is increase the price of culture. Without intermediaries such as them, and those that they collaborate with, games would be cheaper and developers would earn a bigger share.

Services such as pre-patching the games are just an excuse. It simply wouldn't make much sense, from a business perspective, if the games didn't work on the clients' computers. And this "service" has already been provided, for free, by sites such as oldgames.sk, which distribute their games patched and with installers and pre-configured versions of DosBox. And even without these, it's hard to believe that one who is a retro gamer (with decades of computer experience) couldn't apply the patch himself. But heavens forbid that the consumer is disturbed from his vegetative state. It's the same shit as "pre-grilled bread".

Simple example: paying for an Interplay title = paying Herve Caen = paying the destruction of the "good old" Interplay.

 

[thesheeep]

And this "service" has already been provided, for free, by sites such as oldgames.sk, which distribute their games patched and with installers and pre-configured versions of DosBox.

Did they?
Was/Is their service really comparable to what gog does?
This is no rhetorical question.

And even without these, it's hard to believe that one who is a retro gamer (with decades of computer experience) couldn't apply the patch himself. But heavens forbid that the consumer is disturbed from his vegetative state.

It's not about what people could do, it's about what they want to do. Sure, I could fiddle about with DosBox to get most (perhaps even any) games working. But if I try for like 15 to 30 minutes, and all I get is a stuttering window, with shitty, f*cked up music & sound... I could go on until it works or I could just say "well fuck this, I will pay 6$ and save some time of my life and get something that works witout me having to do something".
I want to have my challenge in the game, not in getting the game to work.

But as stated before, it's not like GOG offers only Dos games. Far from that.
Those games are sometimes hard to come by. And even if you'd find one somewhere... a FAST direct download, that will "always" be there, is certainly better than some unreliable torrent one.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

I want to have my challenge in the game, not in getting the game to work.

To be honest, I used to have pleasure in making a game work. I remember the days of crating multi-tasking Autoexec.bat and config.sys, with menus in order to make a specific work.

Ultima 7 and World Circuit were hard as hell to make work.

In DOS, there was a low memory limit of 640 kb. The rest was the high memory, which in a 386 was normaly 4 Mb. But it didn't matter having 3 MB of free memory if you had only 500 Kb of low memory free. Most games didn't require more than 500 Kb, but Ultima 7 required about 610 kb iirc. Less thanthat, and you wouldn't have sound effects, and the game would be laggy.

It was more satisfying making some games work than really playing them.

Configuring dosbox is a piece of cake.

 

[Jasede]

Ultima 7... was so proud when I finally managed to see it run...

 

[mathboy]

It took less than 4 pages for fanboys to finally gather enough balls to jump in

24 hours is a long time if you don't sleep or go to school/work!

I like GOG because they give me the chance to pay for games that were previously not for sale. I really don't see the problem with the money going to for example Ubisoft who didn't create the original Might and Magic. After all, like someone else said, they were nice enough to pay money to the original creators (or to someone who did). (This is of course not counting games like Beyond Good and Evil, that they actually created.)

Also, buying old games tells somebody somewhere that making old-school games might actually be worthwhile as a long time investment, (they're kind of cheap to make and they can still sell for $10 after 10 years). And if you don't think you can survive for that long/want some quick money, you can sell the IP to some company that either wants to make a sequel or just to get the profits from your game.

Abandonware, I think, does the opposite. Sure, it shows the publishers that old-school games can be (kind of) popular if they're free. But it also shows them that the marked for old-school games is probably already full of games that have at least three advantages (they're "free", they're famous and people are nostalgic) compared to a new game similar to them.

Whoever said that buying Might and Magic 6 will make Ubisoft create a nextgen Might and Magic X seems to have a pretty bad memory. People buying Fallout Tactics made Interplay want to make Fallout Tactics 2 instead of Fallout 3, because it would be easier and cheaper to make, kind of like an old-school RPG compared to a nextgen game. If anything, buying Fallout 3 will make Ubisoft realize most people like nextgen sequels to old game and make a horrible Might and Magic X.

 

[Zomg]

I'd bet that a fully mature monetization of abandonware would actually depress any creation of new "old school" games rather than encourage it, since copyright laws would be used to smash all of the free abandonware infrastructure that's been spreading the old games to new players (or cross-pollinating them among nostalgia gamers who missed some of them) . You'd instead just get nostalgia heads buying games they'd already played ten years previous for five bucks and that would be the extent of their market penetration. God knows I've played a bunch of ROMs and DOS games based on a couple of screenshots and maybe a stilted recommendation from a guy speaking bizarre ESL that I ended up liking and it's a certainty that I would have never bet five bucks on that outcome (in fact I'd be a thousand or so in the hole from the vast majority of that stuff that I try and find to be shit).

I've been exposed to that gameplay, art style, lore, whatever, and I'm much more ready to buy into some indie touting their "spiritual sequel" to some 1992 VGA blobber or whatever.

 

[Lingwe]

God knows I've played a bunch of ROMs and DOS games based on a couple of screenshots and maybe a stilted recommendation from a guy speaking bizarre ESL that I ended up liking and it's a certainty that I would have never bet five bucks on that outcome

You spend more on a single hamburger.

 

[DaveO]

I appreciate the earlier screen shot. Now since Mok's patch is unofficial, I doubt it's put into the install bundle. So the game likely still needs patching.

 

[Bluegrazz]

I stopped reading this thread a while ago- BUT I Torrented the M and M games in .exe form, with the proper patches and Vista Compatible long before GOG started selling the game. I didnt need DOSBOX or anything else- It was siple and I felt no guilt.

I tried to get JA2 to run on DOSBOX (unsuccessful) but rather than screw with getting it to run- I purchased it from GOG for cheap and was happy to pay them.

Any (non Indie) Game that is no longer sold in stores or in boxes (only by Digital) is fair game IMO. Indies are different (to me) for personal reasons.

Any Movie which has been shown on TV or TV Series or Flick not available in my Country is fair game.

Any new Game without a good Demo is fair game (to try the damn game and see if its worth buying)

This is my story and I am sticking to it.

 

[Zomg]

God knows I've played a bunch of ROMs and DOS games based on a couple of screenshots and maybe a stilted recommendation from a guy speaking bizarre ESL that I ended up liking and it's a certainty that I would have never bet five bucks on that outcome

You spend more on a single hamburger.

Buying a videogame is a pig in a poke. I am gambling that a game is worth the 5 bucks because, unless it is a nostalgia buy, I don't know what I'm getting. I wouldn't bet 5 bucks on a 1/20 chance to get a hamburger.

 

[mondblut]

I tried to get JA2 to run on DOSBOX (unsuccessful) but rather than screw with getting it to run- I purchased it from GOG for cheap and was happy to pay them.

I bet it was unsuccessful. It's a windows game, silly.

 

[Cynicus]

... And this "service" has already been provided, for free, by sites such as oldgames.sk, which distribute their games patched and with installers and pre-configured versions of DosBox.

This is certainly true to a point, but doesn't oldgames.sk require you to be a paid member of their site to download some games? Maybe I'm thinking of another place.

Now owned by a Japanese company named IPM "..a division of Asian online-game outfit Gamepot"(sic)

Apparently they make crappy asian MMO's. And they're planning a reboot. Oh, and a manga. There's a bit of irony to be found in this, at least.

Indeed. At last, the circle is complete. Oh well, Wizardry needed more emphasis on angsty androgynes and furry tentacle rape anyway. Thanks for the heads-up.