LucasArts To Re-Release Old Games Through Steam 147
LucasArts today announced that they will soon be releasing games from their back catalog through Steam. The releases begin this Wednesday with a group of eight games, including Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, The Dig, LOOM, and Star Wars: Battlefront II. This is apparently just "the first round of releases," so we can doubtless expect to see more of their old games before long. Joystiq spoke with LucasArts CEO Darrell Rodriguez, who said the company is considering updated versions of the old games, depending on how well next week's launch of Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition goes. He also hinted at the possibility that some games could be ported to mobile gaming devices, such as the PSP Go and the iPhone.
Still Waiting on KOTOR (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Dig (Score:1, Insightful)
I wish someone would write more games of the same quality. :(
Bring back... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And thank you TellTale Games... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm here waiting to purchase more NEW adventure games. Thanks for the back catalog re-releases and all, but I still have my old disks and they work great in ScummVM. The new Sam & Max has done pretty well, so how about coming out with some new titles?
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Childhood memories, here I come."
Dude, no. If you value those memories, don't. I would love to play 'Full Throttle' again.
But, I got Novalogic's old pack on Steam last week. I though it would be fun to revisit Armoured Fist 3 and Commanche. It's brutal. They didn't change a thing about the games. 640X480 - hardcoded keyboard commands - NO instructions!
I should have saved my $20 and fond memories.
Re:Bring back... (Score:4, Insightful)
Careful what you wish for--a modern version would probably be released for consoles, too, and would therefor lack the deep controls that made those games what they were. Shield (and perhaps power management in general) would probably be totally gone, for one thing.
Re:Excited, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll probably just use DosBox like the other Dos-era Steam games do.
I'll pick these things up for $2-$5 a pop on a bargain weekend. $10 is absurd--that's what they sold for in the bargain bin a couple years after they were released. This is many more years later, and they don't have to ship physical media. $5 is about right. Jesus, it's not like they're still trying to cover development costs on these old games--I don't think it's too much to ask that they not get greedy while taking their free money.
Re:Nostalga (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not going to give them money when they can take all the items back without issuing a refund. I don't pirate games and I'll be damned if I have anything to do with software so crippled.
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
>NO instructions!
Thats really inexcusable. I find almost all the steam games I have bought dont have any instructions. How hard is it to load a pdf of the manual or deliver a real help file?
Steam really has become a ghetto dumping ground for old borderline worthless titles.
Re:Nostalga (Nostalgia?) (Score:1, Insightful)
I am actually disappointed by this announcement, precisely because I would rather get the games from Good Old Games and be sure they -are- DRM free, and, more importantly, made to work on modern systems.
Not to look far, the Steam release of X-Com refused to run on a friend's Vista machine, whereas a DOSbox setup for my old copy of the original release worked without issues.
Otherwise blow them, at this point asking money for something rightfully belonging in public archives without doing any effort to actually put value in it is just.. well, typical business model of the media companies...
If you want to milk old games, at least make them bloody playable on modern systems - which is what I pay GOG for - not just the game itself.
Re:Nostalga (Score:4, Insightful)
The only DRM for dosbox games over steam is the encryption used to send your CC# to Valve. You can take your /dosboxgame directory and play it in linux under dosbox there and it works just fine. Also all of Valve's games work just fine in offline mode. (i.e. Valve auth servers destroyed in a nuclear attack or---heaven forbid the internet goes down for a day). Steam has gone down repeatedly recently with all their steamcloud updates (particularly during major TF2 updates) and nobody notices that steam's not working until they stop getting random unlocks for an hour or two.
So yes, Virginia, you can backup your precious $2.99 dosbox steam-bought games.