Rebuying old games on Steam or GOG. Is it worth it?

[Douche McBaggins The 4th]

I currently have over 200 old pc games in jewel case. However, most of this stuff is Dos to Windows 98 era stuff. It will not run on modern operating systems properly. Has anyone ever had this problem where they considered buying a digital version so they could play these games again? Some games I'm hankering for

Quest for Glory series
Duke Nukem 3d
Quake
Hexen
Heretic
Quake 3 Arena
Doom, Doom 2, Final Doom
Hexen 2
Shadow Warrior
Blood

I keep an old laptop for the purpose of playing them, but setting them up is always such a time sink. I have a Pentium 1, Pentium 2, and a Pentium 3 laptop. None of them configured at this time. It feels like ScummVM never gets it quite right, Dosbox always feels off. Yet I have the urge to play, but the motivation sometimes escapes as I think what it takes to get the REAL experience. Anyone else having this problem?

 

[Hella]

On Steam? Not really. You're basically buying them digitally, with the whole compatibility can of worms that entails.

On GOG? They do the work to update classic games for modern operating systems, and have some goodies too. So definitely--there's a huge convenience factor there.

 

[the_wart]

Never had any trouble running anything I've gotten from GOG, though I haven't actually played any of the games on your list except for Doom. AFAIK all the versions they sell are supposed to run on modern operating systems with no trouble. For DOS games, they'll usually come bundled with a custom DOSBox configuration.

 

[Douche McBaggins The 4th]

So, if I buy these games on steam, I"m getting the same compatibility issues that plague these games on Windows 10 right now? Great. That sounds like fun. Is steam at least more convenient if it does work?

 

[Rickenslacker]

It's worth it for me. I don't really have the affection for physical media that I once had, so being able to download them at any time is a huge convenience factor. That, and rebuying the classics isn't much of an investment given the sales on those stores.

Generally speaking however you're better off getting older titles with various compatibility issues on GOG because they have them packaged up and prepped for modern system use, while Steam releases tend to have less regard for having them playable out of the gate and are more for just having a handy means of grabbing the data for configuring your own DOSbox or source port use.

 

[Garou]

On Steam? Not really. You're basically buying them digitally, with the whole compatibility can of worms that entails.

On GOG? They do the work to update classic games for modern operating systems, and have some goodies too. So definitely--there's a huge convenience factor there.

Click to shrink...

The Steam-versions are the GOG-versions in many cases. Often GOG gets like 6 months exclusive distribution, then they go to Steam.

 

[Deleted member 12430]

Consider looking for source ports for most of these. For example:

Quake has QuakeSpasm for singleplayer and ezQuake (included in the nQuake package) for multiplayer.
Blood has BloodGDX.
Doom series, Heretic and Hexen have GZDoom for a modern look and Chocolate Doom for a classic look.

 

[Hella]

The Steam-versions are the GOG-versions in many cases. Often GOG gets like 6 months exclusive distribution, then they go to Steam.

Click to shrink...

That's good.

I guess, thinking about the old games I've played on Steam, it's been about 25% compatible out of the box. e.g. IIRC X-Com: UFO Defense ran fine, while every old Star Wars game I tried needed a lot of compatibility stuff.

 

[Arthands]

Personally I will suggest selling them off and purchase them digitally. Digital format means lesser physical storage space, which you can use for other things. In addition, buying them digitally now means lesser compatibility and technical issues with modern hardwares.

Old classic games are fairly priced. In fact, shadow warrior is free on gog
https://www.gog.com/game/shadow_warrior_complete

Doom 2 and Final Doom also comes with Elder Scrolls Arena and Elder Scrolls Chapter 2 Daggerfall
https://www.gog.com/game/doom_ii_final_doom

 

[Douche McBaggins The 4th]

Personally I will suggest selling them off and purchase them digitally. Digital format means lesser physical storage space, which you can use for other things. In addition, buying them digitally now means lesser compatibility and technical issues with modern hardwares.

Old classic games are fairly priced. In fact, shadow warrior is free on gog
https://www.gog.com/game/shadow_warrior_complete

Doom 2 and Final Doom also comes with Elder Scrolls Arena and Elder Scrolls Chapter 2 Daggerfall
https://www.gog.com/game/doom_ii_final_doom

Click to shrink...

It feels wrong to sell them as I have memories of them. I actually enjoy collecting games. If I bought GOG/Steam versions, I would use those while keeping these games in my collection. I also use them if I have a possible party going on to set them up to play a lan game. I still have all my PS3 games too. Though I'm willing to sell my small box games and big box games at some point as I have like 100 pc games I do want to sell at this point.

 

[Bluelote]

gog is probably better, but some of their games are outdated, like use a very old version of dosbox;

you can probably play most old games with a single windows 98/dos laptop few games are broken on fast CPUs, and those are probably OK with dosbox

 

[El Mariachi]

On Steam? Not really. You're basically buying them digitally, with the whole compatibility can of worms that entails.

On GOG? They do the work to update classic games for modern operating systems, and have some goodies too. So definitely--there's a huge convenience factor there.

Click to shrink...

GOG versions of several games can have compability issues as well. Not as bad as on Steam obviously but they don't always work.

 

[Gabbo]

It feels wrong to sell them as I have memories of them. I actually enjoy collecting games. If I bought GOG/Steam versions, I would use those while keeping these games in my collection. I also use them if I have a possible party going on to set them up to play a lan game. I still have all my PS3 games too. Though I'm willing to sell my small box games and big box games at some point as I have like 100 pc games I do want to sell at this point.

Click to shrink...

No reason to sell them if you don't want to. I have several hard copies/disk versions for games I have on steam/gog just because I don't want to part with them, and some of the steam,/gog releases are missing certain things the old versions arent (soundtracks are often the big ones)

That being said, I'm sure you'd get some interest in the buy/sell/trade thread here if you did decide to sell them.

 

[Jebusman]

If you ever feel like you want to, most of the GOG games can be ripped from their installer and run directly on those old laptops, no DOSBOX or ScummVM necessary.

Sometimes they might need some manual configuring, occasionally they're missing a file or two, but for the most part it's not hard to get them running.

 

[Fleck0]

I would say yes for all of those. As mentioned GoG put more effort into making games run well (and is drm free), steam has worked just as well, they both give you the raw files which you can plug into whatever modern wrapper you want. Ideal for laptops imo.

 

[EdgeXL]

I think it's worth having DRM free versions on GOG.

 

[Douche McBaggins The 4th]

If you ever feel like you want to, most of the GOG games can be ripped from their installer and run directly on those old laptops, no DOSBOX or ScummVM necessary.

Sometimes they might need some manual configuring, occasionally they're missing a file or two, but for the most part it's not hard to get them running.

Click to shrink...

Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose as I already have those old games on the original media? I still have my disc of Quest for Glory Anthology and Quest for Glory 5. And Police Quest. No King's Quest Collection though.

 

[BigDes]

Be aware of Gog connect as well

It is a thing where several times during the year you can tie your steam account to gog and some of your games on Steam (depending on the selection) will also be added as a gog game.

 

[Pixel Grotto]

I recommend buying them on GOG. Both GOG and Steam versions of these older games can have slight compatibility issues, but GOG's whole business model originally started around re-selling these old titles, so they're better at it than the guys at Valve.

You can download each game individually from GOG or use GOG Galaxy, their launcher, to run them and get access to stuff like a playtime counter, friends list, etc.

Overall I've rediscovered a ton of old titles on GOG and they're giving away a few old games for free on there, like Ultima IV and Lure of the Temptress. Great platform and I prefer it to Steam in some ways.

 

[Al3x1s]

A large number of Steam releases of old games are just the gog releases after any exclusivity period and there's a fair share of games that have problems requiring fan patches (or worse without fixes) on both services and it gets even wonkier when stuff like Galaxy started requiring newer Windows but certain games don't support newer Windows yet (if ever) instead only going up to XP at best. Also it's really up to the publisher to push the same updates on both services rather than Valve/Steam. And then there are many releases that just run through dosbox or whatever with not always the best configuration out of the box and it's not as user friendly as newer games that just had a couple compatibility fixes and run natively in Windows. I prefer gog, just saying. Anyway, OP, seems like you'd appreciate the ease of use and lack of fiddling with discs so just get them from either service but first pop by the given game's sub forum to make sure there are no reports of the game flat out not working properly for a majority of people on a given OS (a few people here or there you can usually ignore like with any PC game, old or new, it happens).

 

[petran79]

If you have those games on CD, there are custom installers to rip and play them on modern systems.

I'd also suggest replacing GOG Dosbox version with Dosbox SVN Enhanced Community Edition.
GOG Dosbox is deprecated, using a version from 2010.
ECE offers features like pixel perfect scaling, better General MIDI and 3DFX support, less slowdowns etc

Eg Jazz Jackrabbit 1 would freeze between levels and menus with the old version.