[wplug] old PC games?

[Patrick Wagstrom]

Jason Jerome wrote:
> I'm surprised no one mentioned the various emulators out there yet.  
> I recently hooked up a retired pc to my tv and play a bunch of games on it.  It helped that my parents never let me buy another system after our Atari 2600, so a lot of these games are still new to me. 
> 
> 
> The one thing I would recommend is buying a USB converter for whichever game controller you have (or find at Goodwill).  I bought a PS2 -to-USB converter and use a PS2 controller for all my games.  It hands-down beats any computer "gamepad" I've ever had.

On reason why you haven't much discussion of emulators is because the 
way that most people use them is illegal.  Downloading roms is never 
legal unless you're getting them from an authorized source.  StarRoms 
tried to build a legal business model around this, but folded.  It's 
questionable whether or not using a cartridge dumper is legal or not, as 
the variation on copyright law has not be fully tested in the courts. 
Despite the fact that many roms are no longer published, and the vendors 
may have long since disappeared, that doesn't grant them status of 
"abandonware" or anything like that.  The fact is that every creative 
work since 1976 is under copyright, which means that only the copyright 
holder has the right to reproduction.  Just because you have an item on 
one media, doesn't mean you can download it.  That's why it's still 
illegal to download ripped DVDs even if you own the DVD.  It's up to the 
courts and government to carve exceptions out.

That being said, there are emulators out there for other platforms that 
people should check out, especially if you have the original PC media. 
ScummVM plays a lot of the old Lucas Arts games, and a few have even 
been released for free, such as Beneath as Steel Sky.  If you've got a 
copy of Ultima VII on CD laying around, you can use Exult to play 
through a pretty faithful reproduction of the game, although food 
doesn't disappear as fast as it should.  Many games from the mid-late 
1990's play just fine under Wine.  I've got StarCraft, Master of Orion 
2, and Fallout installed on my laptop.  The work great.

Another great source of free (as in beer) games, many of which run under 
Linux, is http://www.liberatedgames.com/.  For example, if you've got a 
more modern computer Savage: Battle for Newerth is a blast to play, 
especially when you get in a game with 63 other people.

--Patrick