A few links to classic games.

[Dark Jaguar]

I played these as a kid, in shareware. Now they are freeware, so enjoy! http://www.adeptsoftware.com/classics/
Here's Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow, now freeware. http://www.christymarx.com/writing/camelot.htm http://www.christymarx.com/writing/robin.htm
A fun puzzle game called Boppin' http://jenniverse.com/boppin%20main.html also freeware.
Al Lowe's web site has a collection of the games he made released as freeware, like The Black Cauldron (yes, based on the movie) http://www.allowe.com/More/download.htm
3DRealms has a listing of most of their works while under the company name Apogee. Some of them are freeware, and some are for purchase. The store is selling them at a price competitive with Steam and GOG. http://www.3drealms.com/
Operation Inner Space, no freeware here I'm afraid, just a shareware edition and a full version for purchase. http://www.sdispace.com/inspace.htm

I'm still trying to round out my classic DOS collection with full versions. Software Creations Ltd went defunct years ago, so I can't find anyone offering Hexxagon for sale. The shareware is still out there, and a bunch of flash versions of the game, but flash is fleeting. I'm also looking for One Must Fall 2097. Supposedly it was released as freeware some time ago, but it is hard to find as well on any official channels. It was an early Epic Megagames game, and I'm also looking for a number of their games, if anyone has some leads.

I'll add more links as I find or remember them. Fortunately, a lot of games are still available in one form or another. Most of them are cheap, but Operation: Inner Space is still being sold full price. Supposedly it still works on Windows 7. It was a very fun "open ended" overhead space shooter that used your file structure and icon files to generate levels. Unfortunately, the company that owns it now does everything but make games, and they seem set on just keeping those rights and listing that game on their site for the original asking price, even charging extra for addon packs. Maybe someday I'll cough up the cash, but really I hope GOG is willing to convince them they'll make more money putting it there and charging far less.

[A Black Falcon]

It was an early Epic Megagames game, and I'm also looking for a number of their games, if anyone has some leads.

Unfortunately, Epic has never re-released any of its old games on any digital distribution networks. It's really, REALLY annoying, but they simply don't care about any of their past library. Tragic stuff. :(

The only place you will find Epic's classic games now is on ebay or Amazon (used) sales. They are not sold anywhere, and only a few have been released as freeware either. Traffic Department 2192 is freeware, but not much else... though yes, OMF2097 was indeed made freeware too. Epic doesn't have it on their site of course, but the sites that let you download it as freeware are correct in calling it freeware.

As for the other stuff you mention, I love Apogee of course, and I found Boppin' some years ago because that was by a person who also did an Apogee game. I also really liked Hexxagon; great game! I've never played the registered version, but the shareware is pretty much the same, so I didn't really care... I don't know if I've heard of Operation Inner Space before, though. Doesn't sound familiar...


Did you ever play the DOS game Jetpack? It's a fun Lode Runner-esque game, and was made freeware years back. I don't know if you heard, but the guy who made the original game Kickstarted a sequel last year (low dollar value), and was successful. So, Jetpack 2, like the original but higher resolution and with new puzzles (and a website to make level trading easier) is under development, and should hopefully be finished in the coming months. I really liked the original, so I'm looking forward to it. :)
http://www.jetpackhq.com/

[Dark Jaguar]

Let me explain Operation: Inner Space. It was a rather odd game. I think you would call it a "shmup", except instead of being vertical or horizontal auto scrolling, it is a freely controlled "all range mode" style game. The whole thing is like a virtual online community. The premise is sorta like Tron in that you get digitized and are exploring your computer and the "net". You design your own ship, join one of the 8 "teams" in the world, and then start jumping into "levels". The game has as many levels as you have directories. You literally browse levels as your computer's directory tree, plus a few additional "fake" directories to represent special maps. The difficulty of each level scales upward as you make progress. The game asks you to collect "icons" as currency to buy upgrades to your ship. These icons are based on the actual icons in the directories, or if that directory has no icons, it will instead use generic icons to represent other files. The max icons in a level is 8, but if a directory has a lot of files in it, then you can complete the level, go back in, and it will give you the next 8. Essentially you've got a nearly unlimited number of icons to get. This was true even when the game came out in 1994 or so, as even then I had a massive directory structure. Now here's the thing. The game doesn't read .ico files. It can only read icons from .exe files. It'll pull multiple icons from those sometimes, but that's what it is limited to. If you want more "flavor" in your levels, rename your icons to .exe (Windows can still use them). Now onto the 8 teams. This "world" has a legal system. If you start attacking people who didn't provoke you, or breaking other laws like shattering icons instead of collecting them (excepting an icon that has been infected with a virus, which you should destroy as collecting it will infect you), then the enforcers get called in. They have a unique grappling claw weapon used to arrest people. Once in court, you'll have to pay a fine. Other teams have their own rules. Enforcers are the cops, there is another honorable group who aren't cops but do try to help people in trouble. There are also really evil groups who like to steal or just plain attack anyone they please. Also, there is "inner space". The normal "space" you fight in is inside your computer, but "inner space" is a level deeper inside your mind. You fight your own evil as some huge demon in that world. There are 4 gems you can get in that inner space as well, each one granting a very powerful weapon, representing the fundamental forces (strong and weak force, gravity, and light). Gather them all and you can eventually destroy your inner evil. Oh yes, some of the special directories include an arena and some race tracks. I should mention one rather well done detail. Whatever side you pick sets your initial relationship with everyone else in the game, but it can change. An avenger can eventually befriend a pirate if you help them enough. They all will talk with you as you wander around the levels, and you'll see familiar faces across them. Every individual NPC has it's own relationship to you. Sometimes helping one person will make another swear to be your eternal rival. It's a very interesting system that gives the illusion you are playing the game online, even though they are all NPCs.

All in all, it was a rather ambitious game. It is pretty fun, if you can stand the midi-est of all midi soundtracks. Play the demo and check it out. The demo is pretty expansive actually, and it's all I've ever played. As fun as the game is, it is hard to justify spending $25 on a game from the early to mid 90's. Honestly I'd love to see someone take the concept and add true online play to it some day, but as it is, try it out. I've yet to see any game quite like it.

Annoying. Yes Epic, Gears of War is cool and all, but I'd like to play some Epic Pinball too! The one bad thing about the freeware version of Boppin' is that it lacks any support at all for resolutions higher than 320x200. I mean it doesn't even handle a basic "upscaling", so if your video card flat out doesn't support that mode, the game just plain won't start, giving a generic video error. Jenni appears aware of this, and had considered releasing an update to fix that, but as of yet I've heard nothing of it. As it stands, in order to run it on my machine, I have to run it in "windowed" mode, which results in a VERY small box at my resolution. Other than that, the Windows version is the best because instead of MIDI it uses the original Amiga sounds.

I played Jetpack as a kid, yes. In fact, I linked to the freeware version of that game in the first link above, along with another game I played, God of Thunder. Interesting that a sequel is being made. That should be fun.

[Dark Jaguar]

Bad news nobody, it turns out that Operation: Inner Space is a 16 bit application. It won't run on 64 bit versions of Windows, as they removed support for 16 bit applications in those versions. As it stands, my processor does support virtualization, so I just virtualized 32 bit Windows XP and can run it there just fine.

[Great Rumbler]

GoG's also got a number of games for free:

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/teenagent
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/ultima_4
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/beneath_a_steel_sky
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/lure_of_the_temptress
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/dragonsphere
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/tyrian_2000
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/worlds_of_ul...age_empire
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/ultima_world...ian_dreams

[A Black Falcon]

Right, Tyrian 2K has been freeware for a while too (since its release, really, I think), somehow i forgot that one when listing now-freeware games published by Epic (MegaGames). BASS and Lure of the Temptress have also been freeware for years; I first saw the freeware releases on SCUMMVM's website. They may have first been there.

But yeah, I don't know why GOG has that handful of freeware titles, but not anything else... it seems fairly random.

[Great Rumbler]

I believe they only have freeware games that have been officially sanctioned, as it were.

[A Black Falcon]

What do you mean, officially sanctioned? Any game which is freeware has been released as such by its developer...

[Dark Jaguar]

It doesn't get much more official than the game's designer putting it on their web site.

[Great Rumbler]

Well, they also have to change the games to work on modern computers, which most freeware releases don't bother with, so they're probably picking those that they feel people are most interested in.

[Dark Jaguar]

I'll go ahead and send them my dosbox .conf files.

[Great Rumbler]

Pearls before swine, I tells ya!

[Dark Jaguar]

?

Anyway, here's a thing:

http://www.remaininplay.com/

They maintain a list of all games that have been turned freeware by their makers, nothing more. Seems like a good resource.

[A Black Falcon]

That sounds like a very useful site indeed.