Good Old Games - Relaunch PR

So, GOG sent us a lengthy official relaunch PR:

GOG.com Officially Launches, Revives Baldur’s Gate and other Classic Hasbro-Licensed PC Games

The definitive resource for DRM-free classic PC games leaves beta with a new site, new features and some of the best games of all time from Hasbro and Atari.

Warsaw, Poland – September 23, 2010. GOG.com (http://www.gog.com) celebrates its second anniversary with one of the biggest announcements ever for fans of classic PC games. After reviving and releasing more than 230 classic PC games and attracting hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers, the DRM-free platform leaves behind its “Beta” status and has officially gone live. GOG is commemorating the milestone with a new site, brand new features and the massive announcement of a deal with Hasbro to breathe new life into some of the most desired titles in PC gaming history, including BioWare’s role-playing opus, Baldur’s Gate: The Original Saga. The titles from Hasbro will be unveiled gradually in the coming weeks, and today's announcement is just a small taste of what’s to come.
Available now for $9.99, Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga (Role-Playing Game, 2000) is the first part of one of the most important franchises from the RPG masters at BioWare and features the core game, as well as the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion. Utilizing the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) ruleset, the game was deemed an instant classic upon release and praised by many as a revival of computer role-playing. Baldur's Gate, set in the Dungeons & Dragons setting of Forgotten Realms, gives players the best from the RPG genre and provides countless hours of great, classic gameplay.
Leaving beta means lots of changes to the site itself, as well. A sleek new design makes it even easier to browse through the huge catalogue, share one’s passion for classic games via popular social media, get to know more about the classic games available and recommend favorite titles to other gamers. Among other changes, the team has introduced GOGmixes, which are, in short, user-created lists of games around one theme.
“We've decided to celebrate our second anniversary in typical GOG fashion: big, loud and with style. Announcing the agreement with Hasbro and launching the new site was a perfect way to finally leave the beta stage,” said Guillaume Rambourg, Managing Director at GOG.com. “We're very excited to see users’ reactions to the new features and we're exceptionally excited to see how they like the Hasbro deal and the incredible games we're releasing in the coming weeks. It's worth waiting for every new release."

Check out four chapters of GOG.com Revival videos on http://youtube.com/gogcom to learn more about the new GOG.com, explanation of the recent events, announcement of Hasbro games and a summary of the service's first two years.

More information.

Nice

It's been a while since I last browsed through their catalog - and wow, they have a lot of interesting titles now!

I have a question that some of you might be able to answer. How are they generally ensuring compatibility with newer systems? The last game I bought from them was Stonekeep - which I already owned, but I was hoping for a version that would just run natively on new systems. Turned out I just bought a package with the original game + a copy of DosBox. This was what I already had… but oh well, nevermind at that price.

Now I'm considering getting "Return to Krondor" which I also already have, but last time I checked it had some problems with the font on Windows XP (or maybe it was Win7). So I'm wondering if they actually *fixed* some of these issues?

Basically I guess what I'm asking is - do you guys know of any game they have where they've actually modified the code to run better on newer systems? Or are they just selling packages, where you don't have to hunt down all the tricks needed to run the game yourself?

I think they predominantly just sell it with the "tricks" needed. I've never really had an issue with any of their games outside of having to get it windowed.

You're right, though. Mostly they ensure compatibility with things like DosBox, but I think *some* games work natively without an emulator. Best thing to do is browse the Gog.com forums or ask there what the situation is.

If you check in the gog forum of the game you are having problems with there is usually a solution. What they have done is make sure the game runs on modern systems……. but there are still sometimes problems, for outcast there were some extra patches in the forum solving these problems.

However I bought realms of arkania… but didn't manage to get it to run that well

For DOS-based games, they generally slap on a configuration that will run "ok" with DosBox, but you're typically far better off tweaking it yourself. It depends on your setup, and you can't really create the ideal config for a game without knowing what hardware will be running it.

But, I think the advantage of GOG is the cheap prices and the easy availability of the manuals.

Coupled with no DRM and server storage, it's a very nice place to buy games - especially if you're not "tech-savvy"

I had problems running Arx Fatalis on Windows 7 so got it off of GOG and it works much better.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
However I bought realms of arkania… but didn't manage to get it to run that well

Try DOSBOX, if it doesn't work.
I think it might run better, then.

I recently bought a Big-box version of RoA3 on Ebay. Hope it'll run - and that I can manage to get into the game

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
However I bought realms of arkania… but didn't manage to get it to run that well

What problems did you have? I got all three of them to work just fine, although I didn't buy it from GoG. I installed them from my CDs and used dosbox. I don't believe I did anything special except for ramp up the cycles. I could reinstall them to check, but I know that those games work great or can with a few tweaks here and there.

I will post my settings later…..

I bought Baldur's Gate from them, and am happy to report a good install & startup on win7x64. Unfortunately, the dreaded black box graphical glitch does indeed rear it's ugly head with my Nvidia card here at work.

Thankfully, setting the color to 16 bit and selecting the last option in the graphical fix-its seemed to take care of the problem.

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
I bought Baldur's Gate from them, and am happy to report a good install & startup on win7x64. Unfortunately, the dreaded black box graphical glitch does indeed rear it's ugly head with my Nvidia card here at work.

Thankfully, setting the color to 16 bit and selecting the last option in the graphical fix-its seemed to take care of the problem.

Apparently this will fix everything:

http://www.shsforums.net/index.php?showtopic=30840

I wonder if they'll ever get Ultima VII to run on modern o/s's (I know about exult and it's great - I'd just like to play the original game on a modern o/s).

It works with DOSBOX.

The problem will rather be : Will "modern" OSes be able to run Ultima IX ? Because so far there's no emulator for Windows + Direktx to be seen.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
I wonder if they'll ever get Ultima VII to run on modern o/s's (I know about exult and it's great - I'd just like to play the original game on a modern o/s).

The programming is flawed either it is choppy either it is too fast. The game has no time tick management making it one of the worst old game to replay.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
It works with DOSBOX.

A few years ago I tried to get U7 to work in DosBox but couldnt get it to work.

Go here. This guy made a patch for the game. I've never tried it out myself, but it sounds like he got it running in Windows.

Here's a good website for all kinds of unofficial patches/mods for Ultima. Most of them are dead now, but there are a few that are finished.

Personally, I don't know why anyone would want to play Ultima VII in DosBox as opposed to using Exult.

Well, last time I played Ultima VII with Exult, nobody minded when I took all their stuff. Stealing was without any consequence. Kinda an immersion-breaker.

…but that was a long time ago. Is this fixed now?

Planescape launched last night at GOG for those of you who don't already have this classic.

Coincidentally, I reinstalled it for a replay recently (I probably got 75% through the game but put it aside for something and never resumed!).