Somebody’s found old computer games and made them available for download. Er… how?

There’s freeware, there’s shareware, and now Abandonware. These are games which are no longer proprietary, if I understand the blurb. Whoever’s put this lot together must have spent ages hunting them down.

There are arcade games, simulations, strategy games, and… well, everything. Free downloads. I haven’t yet downloaded anything. If someone showed me a gift horse, I’d ask to see its vet’s birth certificate, and photo ID. That said, there’s some stuff here I do want. A quandary has arisen. I’m not that ethical. In fact, how anybody could look at a face like mine, and assume it’s somehow attached to an ethical system, I cannot imagine. I am, however, wary. Don’t know about the proprietary angle. Some of them look like property to me, unless electronic rights for games lapse for some reason. That said, there’s some pretty memorable things on this site. I’m an ex-arcade game fan, and I was looking for a game called Commando, a shooter with a lot of levels. What I found was what must have been the original. There are even old C64 and Amiga games. I asked Methuselah, and they’re before his time, but they were the big thing of their day. This is like a museum. It’s easy to say “how much things have changed”, but these games really prove it. Another game I was looking for was Sim Life, a “mutate your species” game where you have to evolve them to a point where they can survive contact with humans and other disasters. It’s not on there, curses, but there are a couple of that genre, too. Those with XP or Vista might find these games’ running ability a bit limited. I think they’re worth a punt based on the facts that (a) current strategy games are getting very cutesy and over-produced, (b) some of these things were good games, and (c) fun is fun. One thing that’s quite intriguing is to see the tools boxes of games evolving. As a random pick I had a look at something called Kingdoms of Germany, and the screenshots show a pretty basic margin with some controls. Ironically, the game shot looks a bit like the former icon, Civilization 3, with those cartoon mountains. (Oh how I wish they’d stuck to Test Of Time, and not gone all kidsy on us Civ fans! That was just insulting.) No Talonsoft stuff, unfortunately, although I have a feeling those will show up sooner or later. Anyone who remembers the old board games, and knows what hit points were, will recognize some of that being transferred over to the computer games pretty much unchanged. The thermometer measures for damage didn’t exist then. Can’t swear for the quality of the games as games, and neither can, or does, the site. There’s reviews of each game, some quite devastating, and usually some shots of the things so you can recognize the type. That matters to me, because I get seriously put off by some graphics. On the other hand, I’m so cheap I charge myself for breathing…