PC gamers........how do you find older games?

Not a troll post. Serious question. I posted a similar inquiry awhile back. People rant and rave about the enormous back catalog. I know trillions of games have released on windows, etc, but how exactly does one find these games. I've checked gog, steam, origin for numerous titles and continually come up empty.

Are there other sites? For example I can't seem to find Warcraft 2 anywhere...

...you checked GoG and couldn't find any old games?

Amazon.com

GoG's library goes back to the early 1990's... how old are we talking here. Pre-DOS?

some games you'll struggle. i know blizzard still sell digital copies of starcraft 1 and warcraft 3, but warcraft 2... i can't say i've seen it.

i found my discs for x-wing vs tie fighter the other day. that would be another example of a game which one can't get by 'modern' means.

I mean yes and no. I'm talking like Tomb Raider era to maybe 2003. I guess I sort of expected everything to be available.

WarCraft II Battle Chest

Mixture of hard copies and DD.

that's pretty expensive, I dont buy old PC games often are those kind of prices typical, or is that game rare-ish

@Heirren:

save yourself the trouble of finding an expensive outdated copy of Warcraft 2 that might not even run on what I assume to be a modern computer

you won't find a legal digital copy

anyhow, here's a link for you...

http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/10/5087768/blizzard-warcraft-and-warcraft-2-working-on-modern-pcs

...so, word is it's being made to work on modern PCs, just be patient, there's tons of older games to play

I have a bunch of games from 1990 to 2003 in storage at my uncle's house back in my hometown. I handed down my old games to relatives. Once they're done with the games, my uncle put them away. I have a couple boxes of them.

that particular game is kind of special because it's only available retail boxed.

starcraft is another blizzard game. it is slightly newer than warcraft 2. i paid 10 US dollars for the battle.net version of that game.

i've bought other older games like theme hospital for about $3 on gog.

Blizzard doesn't seem to have a means of digital distribution that I know of for their older games. It would make sense for there to be Steam/GoG versions of them, but there isn't. WCII is one of the few older, popular games that isn't widely available.

Makes me wonder if they are planning their own DD service like Origin.

@CrownKingArthur:

Wouldn't it be beneficial to them and the consumer to make it available on Gog or steam, or is it not that straight forward ?

I think every PC game should be available to buy DD somewhere.

I want to re-buy FSX soon, its pretty expensive especially some of the versions with Add ons included. The FSX game with Concorde add on is about £50

well blizzard are pretty special. i don't see their games on steam/origin. they seem to handle it themselves, through battle.net. battle.net fits the role of blizzard's DD platform.

would it be beneficial to them? i guess that's a question of economics. but earlier someone made a post alluding to such devlopment already being underway, so i suspect the answer is 'yes'.

Depends on the game and genre tbh. Some old school games relied on gameplay vs graphics and hold surprisingly well, others (ie most shooters) not so much.

Reminds me to check local relatives storage. My laptop can't run most modern techy games, but I sort of prefer the older stuff anyways. I'm also concerned with compatibility. I'd like to get Warcraft 2(I might still have that Battlechest somewhere), Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Commandos, Tomb Raider..............................................I've just been digging through steam today; it is odd how I have a hard time remembering all the pc games I played in that era. Wouldn't mind Star Wars Racer.

Ebay!

if you can explain which games are you looking for? For example tomb raiders are all on steam.

FSX is US$30 for the Gold version which includes Acceleration. if you can't afford payware Concorde addons, there are also free ones.

The payware Concorde addon is £44 by itself at flightsimstore.com (not including FSX). FSX and the payware Concorde addon at £50 together sounds like a good deal to me.

Most of the big ones can be found either on Good Old Games (GoG), run by CD Projekt Red or on Steam. Only a select few gems like Swat 4 can't be bought digitally nowadays...though there's other means to get such games (buy physical off amazon if available or....well...you know).

Ebay or go for

http://www.cdaccess.com/

Amazon, Ebay, GoG .... torrents (sorry, but some you have to... fact.)

@Heirren: Is this a joke or what .... Google it and you find all kind of sources , depends your search and the availability. But definitly youll see it up there with one way or another ....

Instead of buying WC2 buy Populous: The Beginning if you have never played it yet.
I played WC2 2 years ago and it has crumbled under time. I found P:TB was almost the same experience as it was when it released.

Nope they make it run worse if anything, most of my time playing FSX i'm messing with config settings trying to stop it performing like garbage

I checked ebay and I found a ton of hard copies of old PC games.

I already have most of the ones I want because I purchased them at the time. If I do want an older game that I missed out on I generally check Amazon, Play, CEX, Steam and GOG.

@jun_aka_pekto: I'm still hesitant even though my system is about the same as yours, my old fsx when I had it ran like garbage.

If I was confident I could get it performing well I'd pay the £50.

Might take the plunge and go for gold, about £20 I have seen it for on various eBay stores

A certain site which i am not allowed to mention here.....

I'll check on the suggestions. Thanks for the responses. I've been debating going into building a pc. It has just been so long I don't know what to expect. I bought a ps4 and unless these AAA games like The Order are very new and stellar, I think I'm getting rid of it.

You have ask yourself if the games coming to the PS4 like The Order, Uncharted 4, Bloodborne, etc, are so interesting to you that it's worth having a PS4. Prsonally, while i want to finish UC and BB looks awesome, with games liek GTA5, The Witcher 3, Batman AK, and Unreal Tournament, i don't think it's wroth it for me at the current price.

Regarding older games, like others have said, depends on the game. If yuo can't find a cpy anywhere, the use torrents. Yes, it's piracy, but if you are willing to pay for a game and simply can't find it, but can track it down on other sites, i think it's fair. Any particular game you want that's older?

Well that is sort of why I jumped on ps4. Sony was really doing everything right. They were supporting a wide assortment of genres, even if they weren't selling. However, this next gen, and this goes for popular pc as well, is starting to feel just like last gen as far as design goes. So I bought the thing more so on good faith in regards to naughty dog. Seems silly, I know. I don't own an Xbox One but I think it is the better console right now, and may end up being so in the future. The problem with Sony at the momen is they are riding high on an industry standing on the edge of a cliff. ALL the negatives will roll off unto them--and it seems they may just stick with current trends.

As of now WiiU is A MUST OWN CONSOLES yet gamers are so hellbent on tech specs YET pc is the way to go if one is so inclined to have the best visuals...down the line, possibly.

I think the best games going forward will be Nintendo, a select FEW sony/ms titles, along with the NICHE pc titles. I say niche because I don't mean "indie" but moreso the more indepth titles nobody talks about that require ms/kb etc.

So let me get this straight, a physical copy of any given pc game can be easily played on a windows7 machine? I'm going to swing by a relatives house in the next coming days and see if I have anything laying around, and then hit up a used game store.

I ask because I've had issues in the past. Half Life comes to mind.

I think GOG is the best, but for me personally, I cant play any of them. They are too antiquated for my tastes.

FSX ran fine on my desktop PC so long as I didn't pile up the volumetric clouds, even if I have the detail sliders all the way to the right and traffic levels at realistic (aka subtle) levels.

Lots of volumetric clouds will kill framerates even in other flight sims.

Did your old FSX have SP1 installed? There's supposed to be two patches for non-Acceleration FSX. Mine ran like crap until I had those patches installed.

For starters, a lot of PC gamers who talk about backwards capability already have the games, and bought them when they were new. I have big boxes of old games. For lots of older games, the only way to get them is through amazon or ebay for big big $$$$$.

But...that's always the case with backwards compatibility. People want systems that can play the older games THEY ALREADY HAVE.

Also GoG is often (but not always) for games that aren't normally backwards compatible. I can't run Wing Commander: Privateer or Castles 2 from the original disks, because I don't have Microsoft DOS anymore!

Yes.

Port Petition

I love older games and play them often . Recently played Thief trilogy , amazing games .

GOG is best place to get old games . I think Warcraft 2 can be purchased through Blizzards' Battle.net . I could be wrong though .

lol PS Now

Good point . No One Lives Forever 1 and 2 are nowhere to be found , due to its copyright problems . So only way to get those awesome games is through illegal means . It's sad because those games deserve your money .

To be honest i don't thinks it's right to say the PC is completely backwards compatible, i simply can't get many of my old games running or they have major glitches from the compatibility, most of the time i've just waited for a re-release on Steam or GoG. Even then i've had to wrestle with SW:BF2 that doesn't load into singleplayer battles unless there's a mic plugged it (why i don't know?) and Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 that has a chance the game will crash whilst saving.

yeah I had both patches installed, it did improve when I installed it.

My issue was terrian not loading fast enough, so I could never see the runway until I touched down, it caused a lot of dodgey landings and fatal crashes lol.

Did you mess with any additional settings to help with multithreading, I know FSX runs better with intel processors but I have the 8350 like you.

Theres a lot of tweaking you can do in the config file, also I remember being told on the flight sim forums it works better on a SSD, and on its own hard drive with nothing else on it.

I will be getting it again soon its been too long

Be a bit more specific about which games you're looking for because there's plenty of places to get tons of very old games.

No not everything will, games with shitty DRM that is outdated and won't work on modern OSs like SC: Chaos Theory for example but luckily there are digital versions of that game (i think) that do work on modern computers.

But yeah it's rare to find a game that just will not work.