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"Get your retro games back-Abandonware"

remember a classic game that you no longer have....want it back?

Well i was searching the net a few months ago and found a load of "abandonware" games. These are games which have ben out of production for more than 3 or 5 years and can therefore be download. This provides loads of old classic games which you can no longer buy and i am reliably informed that downloading them is legal although posting them is currently legal but being reviewed.

Either search for them under abandonware on a search engine or the best one i found was www.theunderdogs.org/ which is definitely worth a look. They have thousands of classic games in alphabetical order and classic games which you thought lost can be recovered.

whoever it was looking for a good site in the other section i sad i'd chuck the thread to the top.

Software copyright doesn't last as long as ordinary copyright. Although in 1991 is was classed as 'literary' work, and got a 70-odd year protection, it has since been updated. Currently (as of 2000 onwards), it is protected for ten years.

Oh, the 24-hour 'trial' law is an Urban legend too, in case anyone was wondering.

Another option is actually buying the stuff second hand on somewhere like ebay. You can also get old hardware pretty cheaply. If you're old and sad like me, it's amazing the memories some of the stuff on there brings back. Especially of old handheld games from when I was a kid.

Emulators of old systems like the SNES are good to download too.

MikeAll wrote:
> Is this Abandonware thing a new concept and is it legal?

Well, its been around 5 years at least, so not exactly new.

And no its not legal. Even if a company no longer publishes a piece of software it still owns the copyright to it meaning nobody else is allowed to distribute it unless the company itself chooses to allow it. Copyrights last 75 years too, so doesn't matter how long they've been unpublished yet, we're a long way from any expiring. :)

-G

Is this Abandonware thing a new concept and is it legal?

>
> That sites a good one, good find :-)

yeah its quality

the posting of abandonware is legal. the posting of emulators for downloading is not.

Tyranitar Master wrote:
> Ive been collecting abandonware for years now but more and more come on all the
> time i downloaded DOOM 2 just a few weeks ago.

Now that was a classic game
> especially running it on the DOOM 95 mod which gives you better graphics and a
> windows based GUI (Just slightly mind you)

That sites a good one, good find
> :-)

Doom 2? I saw that available to buy in Electronics Boutique the other day!

There do seem to be alot of retro games available online, although i'm really not sure it's legal. But, apparently, according to a friend of a friend, if you were to own a dreamcast, you can download and burn cdi emulators for the SNES, Megadrive, NES, Master System, Game Boy, C64, Spectrum, Colecovision and all the games for those systems for free. If this is legal, i highly recommend everyone buys a dreamcast while they're still around, simply because it enables a glorious retrospective of 20 years of gaming genius... on your dreamcast, slouched in the sofa in a reminiscent haze of nostalgia.

If it's not legal, i suggest you don't do it. The gaming industry deserves what it is owed.