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Idea #1258: It's all about the (retro) games



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Written by autonomouse the 29 Feb 08 at 10:59. Category: Gaming.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New
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This is one for the folks at Canonical, I guess:

The number one cited reason for your average non-techie or only slightly-techie user not coming across to Ubuntu, or any non-Windows distro, is that the backlog of games that they have invested in over the years won't play on it.

(well actually, the main reason is that most have never heard of it, but amongst those who have, this is the reason)

But it's not about the latest and greatest, mention Elite, Dungeon Master or even some old spectrum game to a grown man and you might just glimpse a tear of nostalgia in his eye.

Would it not be in everyone's interests for the companies who have a vested interest in linux (Canonical, Novell, etc) to get together and buy a few licences for some retro games that everyone else has forgotten about and then open source them?

This can then maybe lure in folks who can't play these games on windows...

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PreviousN wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 11:03
Waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere, like advertising or development.

There are plenty of open source games out there for linux, that rock!

Neverball, Neverputt
OpenArena
Wolfenstein: ET
Urban Terror 4
Wormux
Frozen Bubble
Lincity

... The list goes on. There's also emulators freely available such as snes9x and gens, and the wine project already supports more windows apps than windows vista does.

Magnes wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 11:08
And there is plenty of abandonware that works in DosBox or some Amiga Emulator.

autonomouse wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 11:14
Yeah true, but not the *classics*.

I'm just thinking of resurrecting the games everyone grew up as a way to draw in the punters. Once they come a few might stay and contribute.

Its a bit tricky fiddling around with emulators and stuff and your average user might not be bothered to do it.

The abandonware is a grey area and once people start realising that there's a market for it, they'll start with the legal bullpoo.

shadowfirebird wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 11:54
well then, maybe getting the emulators to work out of the box would be a good idea?

thk wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 12:16
better mame support , develop a better mame application easily download roms

autonomouse wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 13:24
that works too I s'pose

:-)


rieping wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 16:30
Abandonware is a good idea, but number one way to get gamers is DirectX support. Games is the number one reason why I don't switch over to Linux. I have 5 computers in the house and I dabble with Linux on one of them. I have a game library going back over 15 years, and if I want to dust one off and play it, I can with my windows machine, luv DOSBOX, but don't get me wrong, I hate Microsoft. I would dump Microsoft in a second.
The problem is DirectX games. If I go to Walmart and pick up the latest 5 star game, I don't have to ask myself will it run (except Vista only games) on my XP box. I've spent more time trying to get a game run on Linux then it takes to beat the game :(
I have no problem with proprietary code in Linux, I just want it to work, "Git R Done"


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