- I've tried contacting Sam Palahnuk, who worked on Nomad, on Twitter about the game. Personally, I think the game was acquired by Take Two when they acquired GameTek. But until we know for sure, I'd ask people who worked at each development studio.

No Replies Yet:
- Asked Ed Heinbockel about Tsunami Media's games
- Asked Michael Taramykin about Wetlands
- Tweeted to Stefan Ljunkvist about Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi
- Tweeted Dan Schmidt about Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri
- Tweeted Jamie Fristrom about Mindcraft's games
- Tweeted Matt Green about Revenant
- Tweeted Karl Buiter about Shadow of Yserbius, SpellCraft, Hard Nova, and Sentinel Worlds I

- My earlier query to Data Design came back with a could-not-deliver error.

- I've asked Playmate Toys about what happened to the rights to Playmates Interactive Entertainment games, and they say that they have no inventory of those properties. I hope they understood my question correctly.

- Mr. Mark Giambruno tells me that Virgin Games (or whoever owns them now) ought to have the rights to the games Critical Path and The Daedalus Encounter.

- Got a reply from Ant Software that they still have the rights to Shadows of Cairn, but it would be a lot of work to update it to run on modern systems. I thought that there was a DOS version they could release though. We'll see. :)

And I've updated my post here:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_search_for_game_rights_a_diaryesque_thread/post139
That's where I'll post as definitive an answer as I can get on my end for a game's rights.

- Clipper Software (Clipper Computer Products Ltd.), the developer behind Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer, still exists. The creator of the game, Graham Ernest Lilley may still have the rights to the game. Here's the company's address and details, I'm in the process of looking for contact information:
http://www.cdrex.com/clipper-computer-products-limited-1461639.html

As always, bravo! So does Ali Atabek not own the rights to Mindcraft stuff, or are you confirming with someone else?

I think DX-Ball is a really good freeware game (perhaps the best of the PC "Breakout" clones) that I'd like to see come to GOG.
I talked to Michael Welch a year or so ago, and he was thinking more along the lines of Steam. I'll give GOG his contact info, though, and maybe they'll try to convince him.
https://twitter.com/BlitWise - tweet sent.

I also grew up with this shump called Nebula Fighter, which I think is quite good. I may try to make contact with this person again, and see if he would like me to give GOG his contact info or contact them himself. (You can downloadNebula Fighter here: http://www.holodream.it/nebula_dl_eng.htm )

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I'm adding the feedback people have made on the various Abandonia games into my text document lists. Consider providing your opinion on various games.

With regards to a couple freeware titles in the Dropbox document (I didn't want to muck up the original):

Dreamweb: Excellent game in my estimation, and one that would fit in well at GOG. It is as much horror as cyberpunk, and has a well-written diary that comes with it. Personally I'd like to see it here, and hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult, since it is being distributed for free elsewhere.

NetHack: Probably not a great fit simply because it is one of the original roguelikes. Don't get me wrong, I love roguelikes, they constitute one of my favourite genres.But people tend to find them on their own if they are interested, and I don't know how much it would appeal as a free GOG item. Maybe if it was packaged with the (also free) <span class="bold">Falcon's Eye</span> graphical engine. But in general I think pure roguelikes are a niche interest, and easily obtained elsewhere for those who want them.

Two other games that could be good gifts I rediscovered in my freeware folder just recently. The first is <span class="bold">Lord Monarch</span>. It came out ages ago, but the site is still up and the game plays fine on Windows 7 for me. It's a simple but addictive strategy game, with charming graphics and lasting value. I don't know how difficult it would be to negotiate with the makers, given the potential language problems and the age of the game. But at least you can download it and play it yourself, and determine whether you think it would make a good GOG freebie.

The other game is <span class="bold">Schiffbruch</span>, in which you play a shipwrecked survivor trying to eek out an existence until he can be rescued. It plays in many ways like an earlier Don't Starve. It has some minor glitches on a modern system (on my computer the in-game mouse pointer doesn't move, but the actual mouse pointer appears and works), and the menu graphics are appallingly crude. As a free game however it has positives to recommend it.

Great, thanks! I posted the text to my "freeware" doc.

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I was able to get in contact with Ted Hofmann of DataSoft/IntelliCreations, and he seems interested in bringing these games to GOG! I will be sending his contact info to GOG soon.

I do feel a little bad, though. I think most of these games have probably aged pretty poorly or aren't very compelling today, and didn't really do much research into them. Mr. Hofmann genuinely seemed happy about hearing from me, but I'm not even sure GOG will accept any of the games. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datasoft So this kinda feels like a false win for us.

In any case, that will be up to GOG to decide (as I haven't actually played any of the games), and I will send the info to them right now.

I wonder if he could be persuaded to change his mind? Adding the game to GOG would bring the games to a lot more people than pirated software since not everyone can fiddle with DosBox/want to download illegal games. You'd think these things would be close to a fan's heart and such. In addition, you only intend to converse with the rights owner who has the right to make these decisions, not some damn pirate "fan".

I sent another email, trying to be reasonable, but haven't heard back. Do you want to take a stab at it? In earlier posts here, we ended up agreeing that it's best not to be deceitful (not not mentioning GOG), but maybe you could reason with him. Or if he sees email from a variety of people, that might help to change his mind.

His email is here, if you or somebody else wants to talk to him: http://thalion.exotica.org.uk/info.html

Looks like accounting wording. I love accounting ( sort of) . This might simply mean that the rights are not recognized (anymore) as intangible assets in their books. Could be that the rights have been transfered to someone else. Could be that they booked an impairment . Could be they never had them. It doesn' say much actually because it is the legal status of the rights that is of interest, not how it is accounted for ...

He says he can pass on your details to the ex-employees if someone wants for any reason to contact them. So how about if I e-mail him and simply say I want to get in contact with them? I don't need to lie, I just don't need to give him details that aren't any of his business anyway.

The only problem is: which ex-employee should I try to contact?

Imho, there was a single version, working under DOS or WIN 3.1. from what I could google around, the game could be packaged as an image file and mounted directly in Dosbox.

Datasoft pack would be great, titles like Bruce Lee, Pooyan or 221B Baker Street would be awesome addition. But the problem with those games is that GOG would have to move into Amiga/C64 market. Some of Datasoft games have DOS versions, but they are not very well.

That's the really problematic part, I'm not sure what to tell you. You could look back over the past few pages, since we have been talking about Thalion a bit. Erik Simon doesn't know, and he co-founded it. (He also said that it was unlikely any other employees could help.) Holger Flottman was the other founder, but iirc he left several years before Thalion closed.

You can get info on who worked on Amberstar specifically here: http://www.mobygames.com/game/amberstar
SCPM did actually find Karsten Köper's email address (although we don't know if it works), so I can PM that to you if you want.

When I passed Ted's contact info onto GOG, I did emphasize that GOG use quality control. It's in their hands now, so it's possible they may reject all of the games. (I based my whole contact on 221B Baker Street, but it was only a few screenshots on Abandonia.)

Ah well...

I actually came across some freeware compared to that called Stranded 1 & 2, from Unreal Software. http://www.unrealsoftware.de/game_stranded.php

I sent Unreal a Facebook message suggesting they consider GOG for freeware release. (although, they may be popular enough on their own)

Congratulations! It will be interesting to see where it goes from there.

That looks like an excellent choice. I do hope they talk to GOG about bringing that over.

This is an amazing topic and one that I will be following closely although I don't post regularly on the forums, I love this pooling of resources to help get more games on gog. The work put in by people so far has been amazing.

I would like to comment on some games.
I too would love to buy the Jill of the Jungle trilogy mostly for nostalgia's sake. I played a lot of shareware dos games back in the day and have fond memories of them.

I recently played through Peppers Adventures in Time, from Sierra and can say that although it is kind of educational game, it has aged well and was a lot of fun to play. It worked perfectly for me in ScummVM. Jane Jensen was the game designer and there is a very favorable review of it here . I think it would go well bundled with the Eco Quest games, although I haven't played them but the first one also has a favorable review at [url=]http://www.adventuregamers.com/articles/view/18223 and was also written by Jane Jensen.

Speaking of educational games. I can see why they would not sell very well on here, but if we got Brøderbund Software I would be all over The Treehouse and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

Did anyone contact David Gray about The Hugo Trilogy? I loved these games as a kid and would gladly buy them again for a working copy.

What about I have no mouth and I must scream? It is a very highly requested game on the wishlist and he seems to be selling it on his website [url=]http://harlanellison.com/herc.htm#ihnm[/url] but for $32. That might be the problem. I can see this game being worthy of a $9.99 price point but maybe the price is the reason why we haven't seen this game on gog yet.

I don't know if this has been discussed here but what about 3D realms games? [url=]http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html[/url] I would gladly buy a lot of their platformer games like Commander Keen? We already have a few and the Commander Keen pack is on steam already so this seems like it should already be in the works.

Thank man! I, SCPM, Piranjade, and the others are pretty dedicated to this! (when we have the time; summer in America is winding down, so that may change) My focus has been on compiling a list of games on Abandonia that GOG could bring because the publishers of said titles are already here, and also doing my part to try to figure out rights for some games there that were published by companies here.

I also gotta give props to the others for their "detail" ability (I'm not a great details person; I more of a skimmer), and for even keeping my moral compass straight in these matters. Epic Games has various other titles that need to come here; I'm not sure why these haven't yet. Nice! Maybe it could be bundled with Willy Beamish instead? Perhaps 5.99 for the two EcoQuest games, 5.99 for the two Dr. Brain games (or is it three?), and 5.99 for Pepper + Willy. :)

GOG has probably been a little hesitant to bring titles construed as "kiddy" or "edutainment", but I've talked to them about that, and hopefully that is changing a little. (I really want to see the Humongous Entertainment classics show up! ;) Well, I believe SCPM suggested that some of Broderbund's/The Learning Company's rights are now in Ubisoft's hands, so theoretically we could see some of those games come here. (I know Reddit might enjoy seeing Zoombini's show up, lol) But again, there is the thing of edutainment on GOG (hopefully changing), and the idea of "solid gameplay". http://www.dgray.com/hwpage.htm as I'm guessing you saw. If you really would like to me to make contact, I can try, but those graphics kinda make me go "ugh". The games are only $10, so maybe GOG could talk him down to 5.99.
Do you really feel like these games have a place here? Interestingly, Night Dive Studios posted a picture a few months back of a box of these games they ordered, lol. Thanks for this website, though! Perhaps I'll send a message. (I'm not sure if anybody else has.) I believe some of those properties are owned by iD software now, and that's why we haven't seen them come on yet. But I would like those to be here, too.