Here's a quick question for people visiting the forum.
Have you been interested or are interested in abandonware ? If so, can you explain why you turned to this trend in the first place. Also, what do you think of past attempts to buy out old games just to sue ? Finally, what do you think of GOG and the possibility of (re)owning games legally ?

I've dabbled in it occasionally, largely in an effort to find games I had on my old PC when I was much younger (86-92). I think I still have a lot of my 5.25" floppies, but it's a little hard to get them to play on my iMac...
Needless to say, I'm absolutely willing to repurchase those games - that's why I was so interested in GOG. And hopefully more of those games will show up, particularly the old Sierra ones. The same feeling is why I sprung for the id super pack on Steam when it appeared originally - all the Commander Keen/Wolfenstein/Doom/Hexen games? Yes please!

Huge abandonware enthusiast reporting. I play older games because gameplay is what I value the most, and old games seem to offer more in that respect pretty often, even if with worse graphics. There's a lot of those games that'd be sitting on my shelf, if only I had been a gamer twenty or so years ago. So given a chance to buy them now, I'd get them without second thoughts. Of course, only if it's a fair deal - no matter how great the game is, shelling out a couple hundred dollars on eBay is not something I'd do, especially when the developers (or even the publishers) don't see a dime from that money. GOG would work for that purpose nicely, but I already have most of what they offer currently. I'd like to see them expand their catalog to earlier games as well, '95 and prior. For games that would need a lower price tag (see: the various bundles available), a more flexible pricing scheme would help. Selling games for less than six bucks but not allowing people to check out games that aren't worth at least that much in total, for instance.

I've gotten a few abandonware games. The ones I really want aren't abandonware, and those are Lucasarts titles. Wish I could buy them here...

I would download abandon ware, but if I see the item in the store, I'll just buy it.
I love old thrift stores that sell old pc games.
yes it's risky, but that's what antivirus is for.

Here too. Abandonware geek since god knows when. I have partically the same reason than pkt-zer0 has - I want games which has more value even with less graphics. Like Day of the Tentacle. I started to play it again last evening. :)
Most of you might already know this, but scummVM is pretty good software to play your old point-and-click games with modern computer. You only need original disk set of the game (and 3.5" drive for your disks. :D)

I am a huge abandonware, having a good collection of the titles :) It takes me back to my youth and when games were simple but simply awesome.
I hope GOG soon expands its titles listing to include more and more old games.

I'm abandonware fan since I've got my 'old' computer: It was Pentium 100 MHz, with 16 MB RAM and god-knows-what graphics card. I had this computer till 2003, so there's no wonder I'm into an old games :D

Yeah, I was big into abandonware as well. I tried to own as many games as I could through eBay, but it can get extremely expensive when some rare games can only be found for $50+.
I think it would be great if GOG would be able to get a hold of these. Especially the hard-to-find ones, though I don't know how they'd manage it.
Example: The Hive by Trimark Interactive and Rainbow America; very good, very hard, rail shooter with the twist of being able to pan around yourself in 360º. But the developer and publisher have long since been defunct. How would GOG go about getting rights to release games like this?

Of course - I think the GoG audience and the abandonware audience overlap a lot, pretty much by definition.
As others have said, gameplay over glitz. SMAC may not be as pretty as Civ 4, but it's an infinitely better game. Why abandonware? Because, in most cases, it is (or was) the only way to get copies of those games I missed at the time and/or replace games I bought but have lost the discs/manuals/etc. in the intervening years and/or play games that shipped on 5.25" floppies...my new machine doesn't even have a 3.5" floppy drive, much less a 5.25.
Remind me again who the pirates are, here?
I think it's a thing of beauty and a joy forever, and I'm looking forward to the catalogue expanding to the point that I bankrupt myself ;)

Well, it's a gray area. Technically, the abandonware people are at fault, especially with titles that aren't really abandonware. TheCheese33 is right about Lucas Arts titles in this respect.
The problem was that one or several firms was buying the rights to games that no longer had a publisher. I think some legal threats were made to some abandonware sites.
I'm not sure what was trying to be achieved as I cannot imagine any gain coming out of this. I assume that it's the same mentality that has motivated law firms to acquire patents in order to carry out widescale lawsuits.

-Have you been interested or are interested in abandonware ?
Of course, I've been in these kind games since I played them on my 286 computer fifteen years ago.
-If so, can you explain why you turned to this trend in the first place.
Becuase I like good games and I don't care about graphics or physics.
-Finally, what do you think of GOG and the possibility of (re)owning games legally ?
It's frikin awesome. I was tired of buying high priced old games on eBay...

Through abandonware I've been able to rediscover my love for some of my old favourites that I thought were gone forever ('Star Trek 25th Anniversary', 'Dune II'...) and I will willingly pay money to have these games legally. I turned to abandonware because I wanted to play my childhood favourites and couldn't find them to buy legally anywhere, I'm so pleased that GOG came along because it now means I should be able to add some of my old favourites to my hard drive without worrying about the legality :D

I delved into abandonware to seek out the great games that most people haven't played, and also to revisit games that I used to own, but have a hard time gaining legally at the moment (Magic Carpet 2 and System Shock 2 in my case).
Thankfully, GOG.com came along. While their catalogue could use a bit of a boost, what they do have now is impressive, and the fact that everything is generally made to work on modern machines with no fuss is rather convenient. Furthermore, most games only cost 5.99 US$ with the occasional 9.99 title, and you get documentation, soundtracks, art, etc. with your purchase as well. How can I NOT spend my money here (other than when I don't have it from buying too many games here, of course)?

Great Question and Great Topic!
I used to joke to my younger gaming friends that after spending countless hours configuring your Boot drive with a boot disk or your Bat to get a game to work that it made the game so much more rewarding when you did get to actually play it! Damn! I think it was Ultima Pagan IV or something that took me almost 2 hours to configure the boot disk to get it to run and I swore that after all that time that I would give it my all.....now that I mention it, I would love to see that old RPGs from Lord British again..........
Nonetheless, I found that playing those old games seem to satisfy me so much better then other newer games that come out now and mostly we se very few RPGs made for the PC now (besides The Witcher and it's EE version which I love to peices!) we see very few of those come out but in the hey-days of computer gaming, there were at least 1 or 2 out per month or so....