«

[CrybKeeper]

LOL, what happened to Abandonia?! Nearly all the great games have been "sold"! Why? This is simply ridiculous! I can purchase much newer games on Amazon, Steam and various other places for the same price.

To top that off, any game that is still abandonware, will not mount to DosBox in Vista. Maybe I need to do some research into why this is? Every game I download, has no EXE file in it. Even when I find some obscure EXE file and dragNdrop to DB, it gives an error. trying to execute them without DB doesn't work either, as the file formats are not recognized. I am not very attached to Vista and this is a temp machine, until we get moved into the new house.

Oh well,...since I own a lot of these games anyway and will soon get my other PCs hooked up(XP and XP pro), I will just install and play them on those machines.

[Scatty]

Originally Posted by CrybKeeper

I can purchase much newer games on Amazon, Steam and various other places for the same price.

That's the point. You can't (with few exceptions) do that with old Ms-Dos / Win95 games. Which is a profitable niche that GOG grabbed for itself. Availability dictates the price, and bought copyrights pushed free copying (which never was truly legal in the first place) aside.

[RRS]

"LOL, what happened to Napster?! We used to freely pirate the MP3s, and now some online businesses like iTunes make people pay for them? I can find cassettes on flea markets for that price! Scandalous!"

^^that's how it sounds

[Smiling Spectre]

Originally Posted by CrybKeeper

Every game I download, has no EXE file in it. Even when I find some obscure EXE file and dragNdrop to DB, it gives an error. trying to execute them without DB doesn't work either, as the file formats are not recognized.

DOS-games cannot work without .com or .exe files. So...

To top that off, any game that is still abandonware, will not mount to DosBox in Vista. Maybe I need to do some research into why this is?

This. Maybe you made some obscure "hide" check somewhere? Enable "show file extensions" in IE. Check system for viruses. Something.

[Tracker]

The thing is, someone bought the copyrights, and can sell those games. That's all. There's nothing to be done there.

The only good thing about gog is that they make old games work on new machines with a few simple clicks. Otherwise, the prices they set are ridiculous. The fact they set prices ARE ridiculous.

Just my two cents.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally Posted by CrybKeeper

LOL, what happened to Abandonia?! Nearly all the great games have been "sold"! Why? This is simply ridiculous! I can purchase much newer games on Amazon, Steam and various other places for the same price.

Recognize that Abandonia never had legal rights - or even permission - to distribute any of those games in the first place.
We are trying to do the right thing: if something is sold from a legitimate source, it's not abandonware. Consequently, when someone DOES get the rights, we link back to them instead of providing downloads of the game(s) in questionl;

To top that off, any game that is still abandonware, will not mount to DosBox in Vista. Maybe I need to do some research into why this is? Every game I download, has no EXE file in it. Even when I find some obscure EXE file and dragNdrop to DB, it gives an error. trying to execute them without DB doesn't work either, as the file formats are not recognized. I am not very attached to Vista and this is a temp machine, until we get moved into the new house.

There is something wrong either with your machine or the archives you are trying to download.
Remember, though, that drag & drop is not recommended for multiple reasons. See link for something more effective but similarly convenient in the long run: http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=28964 (requires some initial setup, but done right the configs can be exchanged between different machines)
Tell you what, post a thread in Troubleshooting specifying the games you got from here and are trying to run. We have added a number of CD-rips lately that contain most (or even all) data from the disc but require some additional steps to run properly in DOSBox.

[Panthro]

The fact that someone cares enough to sell working DRM-free versions of classic games is enough for me.

It wasn't long ago that places like Abandonia were the last hope for classic games that were on their way to being completely forgotten.

There are still plenty of games that don't get that sort of support, and hopefully Abandonia (amongst other sites) will continue to be a valuable place to preserve those games for the future.

[Mighty Midget]

Originally Posted by Panthro

The fact that someone cares enough to sell working DRM-free versions of classic games is enough for me.

It wasn't long ago that places like Abandonia were the last hope for classic games that were on their way to being completely forgotten.

There are still plenty of games that don't get that sort of support, and hopefully Abandonia (amongst other sites) will continue to be a valuable place to preserve those games for the future.

^This. It's all about making old games available, one way or another, to new generations of gamers.

[arete]

What Fifth said. ^^

[Japo]

Originally Posted by CrybKeeper

To top that off, any game that is still abandonware, will not mount to DosBox in Vista. Maybe I need to do some research into why this is? Every game I download, has no EXE file in it. Even when I find some obscure EXE file and dragNdrop to DB, it gives an error. trying to execute them without DB doesn't work either, as the file formats are not recognized. I am not very attached to Vista and this is a temp machine, until we get moved into the new house.

I recommend that you ask on the Troubleshooting board for each individual game (one thread each).

Every game has at least one executable (.EXE/.COM) and almost always it's very obvious, or at most there are more than one candidate. If you see this error message, the file format does get recognized as not working in 64-bit.

Originally Posted by The Fifth Horseman

Remember, though, that drag & drop is not recommended for multiple reasons.

It's not recommended by you, it's recommended by others including Qbix and yours truly. The only difference is if the game was installed so that it won't run from C:\, but it's both possible to make this work with drag'n drop, and to get it wrong with any other method. In the latest DOSBox versions even the dosbox-0.xx.conf file is parsed (which isn't always desirable while troubleshooting, as the first step must be to reset DOSBox to defaults).