jforte: I just noticed this today. I'm sure there's some reason why it was done that way, but It would be nice if they could somehow be consolidated or if owners of the "classic" versions could get switched over. They are not displayed as "owned" whenever I browse the store, and that could be a bit irritating during sales/bundles.
mrmarioanonym: the classic versions include fanpatches (high-res and i think bugfixes)
The Classic versions are the same as the new versions. IE they are the Bethesda releases of the game. The reason why they are separated is the Interplay Fallout games came with a number of extras that aren't included in the current Bethesda releases. The current Bethesda release only includes the manuals (according to the store cards). The Classic versions have the Fallout Bible, wallpapers, soundtracks, artworks, etc. in addition to the manuals. Those were part of the original package from Interplay.
The Bethesda versions include a launcher and a hi-res patch. In the Start menu folder is also a link to play the Classic version, which doesn't have the patch applied. As far as I can tell no other patches were included (though Fallout 2 does include SFall 3.2a).
One thing I noticed with the original Fallout is if you click on the Fallout Classic start menu link, it shows the game version as 1.1 whereas if you launch the Fallout link, it shows version 1.2. Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics are the same versions (1.02 and 1.27 respectively) regardless of the link.
Flynn