are you willing to pay money for a game that
1) is unsupported by the developers for 20 years???
2) there is a 99% of not running properly (or at all) at your pc ???

This post definitely deserves a thumbs up. <3

simple question:

the game is unsupported by the developers
option a) use DOSbox or VirtMachine or VMWare or power up an old rig from your pc

option b) a fan group made a "direct-setup-file" which is:
the game fully compatible to run 100% at your system with no undesired result, from start to finish
you donwload it, install it (in your modern pc in 2 mins), play it (from your hard disk)

ps: you own the original retail version of the game when it was first released 20 years ago or so...

which method would you go for??

While Abandonware sites might be legally questionable - for many years back in the day they were the only place you could acquire pre-Windows games. Many of which are STILL no longer available from publisher or game dev (and likely never will be). I appreciate that they still exist, to give mind-share to these classics that would up and disappear without their efforts. When people forget about the classics and the earlier days of computing, those games will be lost. It's really more about preserving history, and digital history is hard to preserve when it's packaged in a game binary.

Amen.

The good old Home of the Underdogs was almost doing a service to humanity and art history in general when the site was on its height.
I, myself, managed to remember many of the classics I used to play as a kid, thanks to that site.

Too bad the girl behind the project lost her marbles and decided to abandon the site out of the blue. So much money and time wasted (sigh).

After Deponia was staring me in the face all morning I finished the trilogy and that gives me a final count of 350.
Watch out IAmSinistar, I'm catching up :p

Depends on different factors but I generally would probably go with the easiest and least risky solution that I come across while researching how to get something to work. If it's doable with some shortcut compatibility tweaks, or in-game tweaks, editing a .ini file or similar, I'll do something like that if I can get away with it. If it is more involved, I'll hunt around online and see what I can find and look at the different options available.

For Command and Conquer, the game would not run in any modern OS because it had a segmentation violation in the original game, which in authentic MSDOS will not cause a crash and despite it being a bug the game keeps running. In Windows, Linux, or any modern protected mode OS -> crash with no way around it. No patch available from the publisher even to this day as far as I'm aware. But some diehard out there made an unofficial binary hack to the game which fixed that bug and I think several others, so I got a hold of that and it worked like a charm in both Windows XP, Windows 7 and Linux. The patch also adds support for high resolution and also I believe widescreen support to the game. I'm totally all over that.

Battle for Middle Earth II - one of my favourite games. Does not work in Windows 7/x64 by default. There is an unofficial patch for the game that fixes 9347923479234 bugs in the game, adds widescreen and high res support, makes it work in Windows 7 etc. Also a similar patch for the Rise of the Witch King addon. Both of these are awesome patches that make the game not only work, but a better experience.

DOOM, DOOM II, Quake, Quake II, and a handful of other old games - I wouldn't try to get the original games to work in a modern OS but instead I'd download one of the modern replacement engines such as GLDOOM or ZDOOM or similar, take the original game media I have and copy the data out of it and use that. The game experience is greatly enhanced over the original in most cases.

Right now I'm playing XCOM UFO Defense, which I own both on ancient floppy disks, and now also on Steam as well. I'm playing the Steam version at the moment and while it is allegedly buggy as hell, I'm not noticeably encountering any of those problems although I did read a webpage yesterday that listed dozens of bugs in the original game. But, there is an open source replacement for the game engine called OpenXCom, which fixes all those bugs and improves the game greatly allegedly, while it requires the original media to get all of the game data and assets from in order to play it. I haven't tried this one out yet as the savegames are incompatible and I'm already 75 hours into a game and don't want to start over. :)

If there are patches/hacks for some game floating around that one can get a game to run with and trust the files are not infected with malware or other risks, then one is a fool to not look into it. Half the time such patches are semi-endorsed by the companies or developers that made the game anyway, the other half the time nobody gives a super hopping jumping flying crap either way... I sure don't. :)

I just want to play my damn games, and if I set my mind on that being the goal - anything that is technically possible to do is within my radar. I bought the damn games and it'd take someone slinging at me with a flaming hockey stick to try to stop me from playing them however I see fit. ;oP

But... if for a given game, googling around does not yield instructions on how to get an oldie up and running, or some patch, mod or other tricks - then it's back to the basics, and using virtual machines, DOSbox or other forms of emulation/simulation, or going back to the original hardware or other solutions depending on how bad I want to play a given game.

On a side note, I just dug around upstairs in my old floppies and found Lemmings 3D, DOOM 1.2, ROTT, Pong Kombat, Smashing Pumpkings Into Small Piles of Putrid Debris, and ... <drumroll>

Disk 4 and 5 of the original X-Wing game. <sigh> I seem to have lost the rest of it and Tie FIghter and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, so it appears it's all in Disney's hands now. :) I do have X-Wing Alliance on CD though... I wonder if someone has a patch/hack to make it work in Windows 7... :)

You only need another 180 games, should be doable before the Summer Sale's over. ;-P

and consider that.... you coulnt download titles from Sierra or LucasArts from HomeoftheUnderdogs.org
it had freeware, shareware, demos, and links to buy games that were still available by their publishers....

p.s.: HomeoftheUnderdogs.org was just the beginning...not the greatest site (in Abandonware) for me.
it was the site that led the creation of so many other sites nowadays....
it led the way...
it was also the most complete in terms of game info (informative) site

consider a few principles:

a) abandonware is not 100% illegal...go read the terminology.....
b) abandonware and piracy are totally different things (not ideas or principles, things)
ignorants will tell you that they are the same....simple ignorants

a pc magazine (which qualifies as PRESS), would never encourage piracy....neither promote it....

around 1995, games from 1975 were like dinosaurs....nowhere to locate....
all game history was going extinct....even companies/publishers/developers, instead of
protecting a product to survive through ages, they would let it go extinct.....
nowadays, over 90% of (pc-game) publishers don't have a working version of every game they ever published....
that was the main principle of abandonware....SAVE THE CONTENT THROUGH TIME
ps: even if you were willing to buy a 20 year old pc-game, it was nowhere to be found.....

piracy's main principles are:
-sharing
-freedom of information blah blah (noble cause crap here)
-testing something as a customer, since no customer care was considered back in the days
e.g. Multi-millions companies selling crappy/buggy material to you (the customer) at X cost that the Money-making company specified the price
by testing, you get to test a product, see if it worth the money, and then pay to get it.....

I need the trreasure map to monkey issland!!
I don't mind if it is abandoned by pirates or cracked by legal deparrtment!

it was stolen by a 3-headed monkey.....

I haven't looked, but the first thing that came to my mind when reading your post was typing "monkey island treasure map" into Google images. No idea if it is there, but any game map or other similar thing I've ever wanted/needed for any game, pops up in 10 seconds in Google images like pure magic. :)

Actually, there was times in Poland when magazines didn't review games - they pretty much wrote an instructions and solutions. why? Because we get copyright protecting laws in 90's, before that there was no such thing here as illegal programs or games. Cassettes or disks with games (packages, aroud 20 games per cassette) for Spectrum, Atari, Commodore was openly sold in shops and as long as shop owner paid his/her taxes, everything was ok. Hell, if you was really desperate you could record a game from the radio. But of course it was different times - having legit copy was a luxury and you needed to import (usually from Germany) to get one. Don't mention it. Even now I have a feeling that publishers care for their games maybe one year after release, up to two at best. After that they already has at least one sequel and don't care about anything else.

I just logged in my GOG account and there was indicated on My Account tab
My Games -> 1 updated

"Nice!", I thought, "They must have sent out my beta codes for Witcher Adventure Game!"

Oh, it wasn't! It was just Dragonsphere that received an update....
:(