Hello there!
I must say I'm somewhat disappointed here. As a classic games fan, I'm happily running a PIII Win98 machine at home, so I can usually enjoy all those old gems one way or another. Some stuff just still runs, other goes via DOSBox.
Now I found this page offering a lot of these old games for reasonable prices and I thought I should give it a try.
When reading all about XP/Vista compatibility here, I just got the impression this means you tweaked stuff to still run on these machines also.
What I _NOT_ thought it would mean is that you managed to pack the games (which should by default run perfectly on my system!) into an installer which _DOESN'T_ run on Windows 98.
Superb. So now I have to download it again onto my work PC, install it there, burn everything onto a CD and then pray that I get at least the transfered game running somehow.
I think I was a lot happier when just using eBay before.
Here's a suggestion: Why not offer the installer for the masses and addditionally original/protectionless ISO images for those who know what they're doing?
Greetings,
Manuel

Why should I assume that someone would go ahead and break the games for systems where they should've been running already straight away?
In fact I'm pretty sure the games themselves will run just fine on Windows 98, no?
I've honestly never seen an installer not working on Windows 98 before.
I thought that was a nice bonus, yes. But why make those games unavailable for slightly older computers? Isn't it rather natural that people interested in older games would also have older hardware available?
It's not like the installer does anything special or generally impossible on Windows 98 machines, it just unpacks directories and creates start-menu entries.

The games aren't broken for systems where they should work. The installers were made in a way that allow the games to work on systems where they weren't working. That's the point.
And yes, i assume the game themselves work fine on W98. The installers won't .
If many of these games are notorious for not playing allong with XP/Vista, after finding gog and seeing them advertised as fully XP/Vista compatible, didn't you at least wonder what changes had been made to the installers, and how those changes could/would affect the installation process on older systems like W98 ?
Not really, no. Take me, for instance.
I love old games, but i also love new ones, and i simply can't afford the time or space to have an extra old computer around just for old games, so gog is a blessing.
Besides, why would you think that everyone that loves old games would keep an old specced machine around, when people need new machines to run modern games and work with new apps ?
The vast majority don't, and that's exactly the point.
Many people who like old games had given up on playing them all togheter because they didn't had an old machine around and/or the time to fiddle around with old games to get them to work on modern rigs/OS's.
Now they can play those games again, on their new machines that they also use to play new games, work with new apps, etc., without any hassle.

I was pretty sure that they would just use DOSBox for getting it to run on XP/Vista machines. Everyone can do that. In fact I do all the time. And actually from what I've seen so far that's in fact just what GoG did here with the Castles package.
What I don't get is why they then wrapped it into a XP/Vista only installer. They could've just zipped it. Or if the start-menu entries and desktop icons are a must, then use an installer that works on all Windows machines - it's not rocket sience.
Well, that's absolutely fine with me. That amazing feature doesn't mandatory require locking out Windows 98 users though. If ISOs were offered additionally like I suggested, even plain MS-DOS machines could still run those games.

Well, that's your opinion.
But keep in mind that any additional OS would mean additional testing and adittional support, i.e. additonal resources, that maybe can't be justified to support a 10 year old OS and 10 year old specced machines.
The fact is, W98 is not mentioned anywhere as a supported OS. XP and Vista are mentioned everywhere as a requirement.
You can always send your suggestion to support and see what they say.

Just for the record, bypassing the installer did the trick. The games themselves both run smooth on my system.

That's great ;)
Even with the incovenience of having to carry the install over, i hope you'll still be able to enjoy these good old games.

Thanks! :-)
I'm still a bit puzzled regarding the installer. I did some research and actually it should work just fine on Windows 98.
Look here: http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php
First line of the "Inno Setup" feature list: "Support for all versions of Windows in use today: 7, 2008 R2, Vista, XP, 2008, 2003, 2000, Me, 98, 95, and NT 4.0. (No service packs are required.)".
That's basically what I'd expect from a decent Windows installer.

I'm really not in the know about that kind of thing, but from what i understand, even if the installer does have the ability to run under W98, the configuration and packaging will determine if it will in fact run under W98 or not.
But like i said, i really don't know much about installers other than double clicking on the setup.exe files to get my games up and running :)

Oh, it's not simply refusing installation, it's crashing midway into the process, right after the file integrity check.
Since I wasn't sure wether this is just a speciality of my system, meanwhile I tried installing it into a virgin VMWare 98 installation on my work PC, with the same result.