By John Walker on December 12th, 2012 at 4:30 pm.
Do you want to play Duke Nukem 3D for free? Well, since it’s increasingly difficult to get hold of it on floppy disc and copy it across, the most practical way to do this would be to just take it from GOG.com. Cos they’re giving it away for free. Sure, it takes some of the thrill away, but at least you won’t be destroying the games industry in 1996. This freebie is intended to lure you in to spend more money at the site, as they’ve just launched their nonspecific Holiday Sale. Which holiday?! Is it Easter already?
There’s some decent prices in there. Very much straight copying Steam’s approach, some offers appear to be timed, such as getting a bunch of Bullfrog classics for $11.92 instead of $47.92. Others may well last the course, like 60% off The Witcher 2, or Alan Wake at half price. The joyful Botanicula is down to just five bucks, and you can pick up the splendid Arcanum for just $3.
It’s funny how these sale prices do rather reveal how GOG’s pricing set up is a little strange. Like Fallout being $5 at 50% off. They were charging $10 for a 15 year old game?! Good grief. Icewind Dale’s the same – buh? Anyhow, the sale seems to be reducing these archaic games to more sensible prices, as well as some hefty discounts on more recent releases. And Duke is freeeeeeeee.
12/12/2012 at 16:33 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
It’s time to kick ass and chew gum!
12/12/2012 at 16:46 lorddon says:
And I’m all out of ass…
12/12/2012 at 16:47 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
*snerk*
12/12/2012 at 17:31 I_have_no_nose_but_I_must_sneeze says:
They Live is fun movie, isn’t it? Oh, we’re talking about Duke? My bad.
12/12/2012 at 20:17 SominiTheCommenter says:
Keith David rocks! That wrestler guy, meh.
EDIT: Isn’t the wresler guy a companion of The Doctor?
12/12/2012 at 22:52 PopeJamal says:
“Rowdy” Roddy Piper is no companion. Begone heathen!
13/12/2012 at 07:40 noom says:
I love the massively prolonged shouty-buff-man fight they have around the middle.
Oh hey, here it is! Possibly mildly spoilery
13/12/2012 at 12:10 DrunkDog says:
Probably the best fist fight ever committed to celluloid – extra points for being over-long and featuring absurd haircut.
12/12/2012 at 17:51 x3m157 says:
GUMFACE
13/12/2012 at 00:10 thecat17 says:
Your face?
Your ass?
What’s the difference?
By the way, this is the best Duke prank calling I’ve ever heard!
12/12/2012 at 16:34 WhiteZero says:
Be sure to check out the High Resolution Project for a sweet graphics upgrade
12/12/2012 at 17:08 Pemptus says:
And not-so-sweet (quite hideous, actually) 3D enemies. I’ll stick to sprites, thankyouverymuch!
12/12/2012 at 17:30 Shooop says:
Holy crap.
You sir are a champ.
12/12/2012 at 16:35 Terragot says:
“They were charging $10 for a 15 year old game?! Good grief”
Fallout will always retain it’s value, man. Infact, it should increase with age because… Fallout.
12/12/2012 at 16:41 AmateurScience says:
I find no fault in your logic.
12/12/2012 at 20:23 Optimaximal says:
*gah*
You missed a pun there :(
13/12/2012 at 07:00 jdbcowih says:
I got Theme Hospital and AoW: Shadow Magic for half price while i was there. Damn them. Damn them to all hell.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/371818/blog/relax-uk-cultural-tax-breaks-isnt-all-bowler-hats-and-red-phone-boxes/
12/12/2012 at 17:40 Kodeen says:
It used to be $6, but they raised the prices on some Interplay games recently because, you know, Interplay.
12/12/2012 at 18:11 MrLebanon says:
I wish i had played these games when they were new
i played fallout for the first time about 2 months ago and couldnt get passed the fact it looked and played like ass
12/12/2012 at 20:03 roguewombat says:
Ahh, but did it chew like gum?
12/12/2012 at 18:20 Frank says:
Yeah, Fallout’s the last game I would use as an example of GOG’s weird pricing. How about Descent or Phantasmagoria instead?
12/12/2012 at 19:09 kalirion says:
With Descent you get the first 2 games for the price, so not a good example either.
How about The 7th Guest, 19 year old game, $10.
12/12/2012 at 23:33 Lord Byte says:
Or even Heroes of Might and Magic I or II… Each costs 10! euros… I mean I’ve seen Homm 5 cheaper on Steam, even the Homm 3 with all expansions is 10$ (which is arguably worth, although I personally never liked 3).
12/12/2012 at 16:42 povu says:
GOG’s discounts may not be as deep as Steam’s, but it’s DRM free, you get a ton of extras, it has a lot of support both from GOG and from the community for getting the game and its mods to work, and it’s nice for Europeans because you get to pay the dollar price. So hooray for GOG.
12/12/2012 at 23:59 Shivoa says:
Agreed, the work stripping any legacy copy protection (& not adding any new DRM to the mix) and testing the functionality on modern OS (& even existing community patches and mods) is great. As long as you’re not buying a game that is now controlled by EA (who don’t seem to believe in the extras from GOG standard and only give you a pdf of the manual, if you’re lucky) you also likely get a rip of the soundtrack in mp3 format so you don’t have to dive into the data files you purchased to extract & convert the music and a host of other stuff (up to a level matching digital deluxe special expensive edition offerings for new games in some cases with commentary videos with devs, concept art ‘book’s, and a second arrangement OST).
The one universal price is a bit less lovely because it basically means everyone buying from GOG is paying a 20% sales tax. Having everything in dollars is just fine and when us Europeans buy it means our tax is being recorded and shipped off to the right places but Americans are actually being ripped off as GOG pocket that 20% extra (or give it to the publishers whatever the deal they have is) so our No Oceans view should be that actually those foreigners should be paying slightly less to account for no tax.
12/12/2012 at 16:43 Javier-de-Ass says:
I wonder how much they charge for fallout and fallout 2 on steam. oh wait, I already know. 10 euros.
12/12/2012 at 16:43 JackDandy says:
So many free games, holy shite. And some of them are pretty fucking good, too.
I feel kinda bad for it, honestly! But hey, a gift’s a gift.
12/12/2012 at 16:44 misterT0AST says:
Speaking of free stuff…
Probably absolutely ALL OF YOU already know of this, but they’re giving away free copies of Metro 2033.
http://www.facebook.com/MetroVideoGame?sk=app_395840630491782
12/12/2012 at 17:31 SkittleDiddler says:
Am I mistaken, or does that “free” game install an .exe file that (among other things) collects info from your IP address? I understand that this is a Facebook app we’re talking about here, but for fuck’s sake…
Pay a dollar and get the game from the Humble THQ Bundle instead.
12/12/2012 at 18:21 frymaster says:
the act of DOWNLOADING the game will give them your IP address.
12/12/2012 at 19:05 SkittleDiddler says:
Of course, but does normally DOWNLOADING the game also install files that snoop out personal info from your system, as is apparently the case with the Metro 2033 .exe installer? I avoid Facebook, so I have no idea whether that kind of third-party intrusionware is commonplace with them.
Oddly enough, the giveaway’s Terms & Conditions page doesn’t even mention Steam, something that is normally required with Metro 2033.
12/12/2012 at 20:12 Suits says:
Yeah, it’s a steam key in this case
12/12/2012 at 20:04 Casimir's Blake says:
I noticed this download AFTER pasting the given code into Steam, which promptly downloaded the game. Apparently this additional EXE is not necessary.
12/12/2012 at 21:04 SkittleDiddler says:
Good to know. Maybe I’ll grab a key and gift it to a friend.
12/12/2012 at 16:45 Drake Sigar says:
Yoink.
I really must pick up Superfrog sometime and relive the Amiga days.
12/12/2012 at 18:58 Bonedwarf says:
Emulate it. In games that existed on both platforms, like Cannon Fodder, using an Amiga emulator is infinitely more preferable as it had the superior versions of games back then.
12/12/2012 at 20:35 PostieDoc says:
The Amiga 500.
Best. Computer. Ever!
12/12/2012 at 16:49 WoundedBum says:
This just reminds me how good 3D was, but how bad Forever is.
Sadness ensues.
12/12/2012 at 16:58 s0nicfreak says:
I was a console gamer in 1996 – PC games were still on floppy disk then?! (Honest question, that’s a little surprising to me.)
It is interesting how nowadays something being old means it is (supposedly) worth less. In the past something being old would make it more treasured, worth MORE. I guess that is just a reflection of the throw-away society we have now, where things are not built to last, and so a 15 year old item generally means broken, worn out, throw it away and go buy a new one at walmart. How many of our grandparents had a knife passed down from their dad while the knives we buy today only last a couple of years?
12/12/2012 at 17:20 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
How many of our grandparents had a knife that didn’t rust, or blunt, or otherwise degrade, while knife technology rocketed past it to the point where the current state of the art is chainsaw lightsabers, and a cottage industry of independent knife makers who make artsy or otherwise unique knives has sprung up, and all knives are also trivially easy to duplicate?
I’m not sure where I’m going with this.
12/12/2012 at 19:33 The Random One says:
Sir, please drop the knife metaphor.
12/12/2012 at 18:26 LionsPhil says:
My copy of Dook came on CD. It was the era of mixed formats, though; some poor sods probably had to make do with floppy versions with less content.
Bear in mind that there existed—and sold for a while before the CD one—a version of System Shock 1 without SHODAN’s voice.
12/12/2012 at 20:15 Casimir's Blake says:
There was a time, once, where a game like System Shock was considered a major, mainstream relase. A massively non-linear, first person RPG that had a consistent, hand-designed world. On floppy disk. The quality of the worlds in these games do make the visually impressive but distressingly empty and commonly generic worlds in todays’ RPGs look tremendously disappointing. I would sooner play King’s Field, dodgy PSX visuals and all, than another minute of Skyrim.
And returning to the topic, I would sooner play Duke3D over ANY modern FPS. Duke3D may also have its fair share of corridors, but they tend to go in directions other than “always forward all the sodding time”.
12/12/2012 at 20:21 SominiTheCommenter says:
Dishonored?
12/12/2012 at 23:45 Baines says:
King’s Field had falling-through-the-floor and game-becomes-more-unstable-the-longer-you-play bugs long before Bethesda started putting its RPGs on consoles.
Some day, I want to go back to playing King’s Field. I never did finish it.
13/12/2012 at 10:49 Casimir's Blake says:
I don’t ever recall any of the four King’s Field games “bugging out” on me, maybe once but I’m struggling to remember. However there were some intentional floor holes, particularly in Melanat Island (KF2), leading to other areas. I would consider these creative traps, not poor design: one of the first puzzles in Ultima Underworld 2 involves floor holes. I miss, to a great degree, being faced with such abstract challenges in modern games, as the developers of which seem too concerned with realism to allow such creativity.
13/12/2012 at 08:38 f_zul says:
What I need from the internets is more comments like this one. Thanks.
12/12/2012 at 20:17 belgand says:
I’m pretty certain it was on CD only. True, that was the era of things still being a bit mixed, but by ’96 it was pretty heavily weighted towards CD with floppy reduced to more of a legacy format. I’d compare it to around 2001 for VHS/DVD.
12/12/2012 at 21:14 MrTambourineMan says:
My Duke3D was on CD as well.
12/12/2012 at 22:42 MichaelPalin says:
value /= price
If we would live in a society based on reason and not greed a 15 year old piece of culture would have long been made free from copyright and become public domain. Fallout 1 and 2′s cultural value is enormous, which does not mean the copyright holder should keep making money from something they broke even with eons ago.
13/12/2012 at 02:56 DonDrapersAcidTrip says:
Duke3d came on CD.
12/12/2012 at 17:04 de_Monteynard says:
Just a remainder concerning the price of Fallout, it used to be $5.99 until recently, when Interplay forced GOG to increase the price on several of its games, such as Fallout, Descent and MDK. Even at the new price range, a 50% sale makes it more than attractive for purchase in my opinion.
12/12/2012 at 17:05 Swanny says:
I got Theme Hospital and AoW: Shadow Magic for half price while i was there. Damn them. Damn them to all hell.
12/12/2012 at 18:23 Saiko Kila says:
AoW: the game that still looks splendid. Well, the campaign maps at least. The generated maps are a bit worse, still nice.
12/12/2012 at 19:27 Swanny says:
AoW 1 and 2 are my favorite turn-based games, ever. I never picked up Shadow Magic, just haven’t had time to play. Those maps can get really long, especially the ones with many layers. Going to give it a run tonight.
12/12/2012 at 22:25 Soon says:
You may want to pick up Eador if that’s your kind of thing. It borrows from pretty much all those types of games and creates it’s own curious, little blend.
Also, it can hype you up for Masters of the Broken World.
12/12/2012 at 17:14 Dark Nexus says:
Anybody know how the Populous games have held up to time? Seriously considering grabbing the BullFrog pack…
12/12/2012 at 19:15 AndrewC says:
I recommend them! They play very much like I remember they played back in the day!
12/12/2012 at 17:34 strangeloup says:
I mostly picked up some older stuff in the sale (and was… reasonably restrained), but the one recent-ish one I picked up was Inquisitor. It looks like a rather nifty old-school type of RPG, and while I wasn’t sure about chancing it for $15, for half that it looks like a very interesting prospect.
12/12/2012 at 17:43 Feferuco says:
The other day I discovered there were to other Duke Nukem games before Duke 3D and that they were sidescrollers. What. Also discovered there were only two FPS Duke games besides 3D, it was Forever and a game on the GBA. What the what. When I think classic FPS franchises things like Duke Nukem and Doom come to mind. Next I’ll discover the FPS Doom games are actually spinoffs from the RTS main series.
12/12/2012 at 20:21 Rikard Peterson says:
The first Duke Nukem game was pretty good. At least the first, shareware, part. I was disappointed when I played the other two parts, as nothing new was introduced in them. It was just more of the same. All the good stuff was in the first, freely available part.
(Disclaimer: It was also the first platformer I ever played, so I didn’t have much to compare it to at the time. But I had fun with it. I even hacked together my own level editor for it.)
12/12/2012 at 18:05 derbefrier says:
I have been waiting for this. I think I’ll get the whole bullfrog pack cause I loved all those games plus ultima 7 since for some reason I have never gotten around to ever playing it…
damnit and I promised myself I wouldn’t buy any more games for a few months. I think this is the good time to make my new years resolution – not to buy anymore games until I catch up on my backlog. Be strong I can do it.
12/12/2012 at 18:42 Bhazor says:
Best deal I’ve seen was Witcher 1 for $2.99 and Witcher 2 for $11.99. At those prices there’s no excuse not to grab it.
13/12/2012 at 03:43 GunnerMcCaffrey says:
Oh I don’t know, “The Witcher is awful” sounds like a reasonable excuse to me.
13/12/2012 at 07:51 Nucleus says:
Does “way better than other modern RPG-s” mean awful nowadays?
13/12/2012 at 16:21 GunnerMcCaffrey says:
Getting shot is also way better than drowning, but I still avoid firing squads.
12/12/2012 at 19:36 The Random One says:
I’ll pick it up and see if I’m as bad as I remember being. (I couldn’t get past level 2.)
Also, it looks like they’re making Steam style daily deals, so it might be worth it to wait it out until the game you want is EVEN freeer.
12/12/2012 at 21:17 MrTambourineMan says:
Oh, come on. It was one of my favourite games in my teens (that is at the time it was released) and I actually pirated it a year and a half ago (I’ve lost original CD) – it was super easy and it has aged rather well – like Doom (1&2)).
12/12/2012 at 20:20 belgand says:
I’m not certain how bad it is in the UK, but bringing up the whole “War on Christmas” nonsense is a bit unpleasant.
12/12/2012 at 21:18 MrTambourineMan says:
Brits are notorious atheists (remember Dawkins, Hitchens ? ) so they don’t have any problem with blasphemy on X-mas (or otherwise).
13/12/2012 at 03:30 x3m157 says:
Downloaded! Thanks for the heads-up. Will definitely be checking out GOG more often now!
13/12/2012 at 07:14 Hahaha says:
Are the people who like gog the same as the ones who are saying the updated BG is pointless?
13/12/2012 at 08:14 nimzy says:
So does GOG indicate whether or not it is sending your money to the publisher or the developer when you buy the game?
If the money goes to the developer, I’d be happy to pay for the game.
If the money goes to a publisher instead (or the developer doesn’t exist anymore), there’s no reason to buy the game. You know, like Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.
19/12/2012 at 01:18 rentonx says:
I already had Duke 3D on GOG anyway. To celebrate them giving it away for free I even played the game most of the night :D such good times.
You can actually get any game on GOG free too, through community sites. It’s a bit like Steamgifts website but with GOG: http://free-gog-games.webs.com/
12/12/2012 at 22:29 Blaaaaaaag says:
There’s no such thing as a gorgeous 2CV, robot. And you can’t buy a Mclaren F1 with your 85 thousand pound paycheck. Artificial intelligence, huh? Right.
Hmm… perhaps this is simply a ploy to throw us humans off our guard so we don’t expect the robot uprising.