OT: Old Computer Games (Was: Weekly Vocab #1.1.3 (repost #1))

Hi!

H. S. Teoh writes:
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2006 at 03:24:42AM +0200, Henrik Theiling wrote:
>...
> > It is sad that the old computer games are unavailable and will never
> > become available again.
> [...]
>
> That's not really true, y'know... have you seen sites like
> ftp.apple.asimov.net? I just looked, and my childhood favorite Apple II
> games are still there. Doubtless, there are other sites that keep all
> this old stuff around for other platforms. There are still people who
> enjoy the good ole games, and nowadays there are good emulators
> available that recreate the original environment almost exactly. (I know
> of emulators that are so accurate that CPU timing hacks in old code
> still work.)
Yes, that's amazing.  I've seen a Sinclair Spectrum emulator for X
that is cycle-correct, too, so all the music sounds exactly like on
the original hardware.  So for the very old style games, you're
probably right.

But for DOS, I fear the OS and the computer hardware were already too
complex to be emulated well enough for all those picky game engines
that failed to run even on native DOS in most cases.  I doubt that
many DOS or Windows games will survive the DOS/Windows time.  To save
them, the game engines themselves will probably have to be ported,
which is quite some work.  For some block busters, yes (e.g. ScummVM
for Day of the Tentacle etc).  But Goblins III for example, can I play
that?  Not the most widespread game and thus not too many enthusiasts.
It was one of my favorites.

I am very happy that at least Descent and Doom were ported to Linux by
enthusiasts.

Hopefully you're right and I am just too pessimistic and I will be
able to play Goblins III under OSUnknown when I am 75. :-)

**Henrik

PS: In the unlikely case that I will still have the floppy(!) disks
    the game was on, will I be able to find a computer that has a
    floppy drive?  Will the floppies still work?  They never worked.
    Did I back them up early enough?

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