I’ve been on a heavy retro kick of late, accentuated by being commissioned for a couple of ye olde PCe gaminge features. Initially, tracking down the out-of-print games I wanted to talk about from abandonware sites or, when all else failed, torrents, was as natural as spotting typos in Kieron’s posts. Then a terrible moment of clarity hit me.
I shouldn’t be doing this, I realised. Not because of legal or moral unease, but because really I should own these games already. That I’m so dependent on the kindness of law-juggling strangers is a precarious situation at best. One day, giganta-publisher-purge-o-tron #312 may have finally killed those abandonware sites with avaricious fire. One day, those torrents might be seeded no longer. Important games could all but cease to exist. Retrospective features may never be written.
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