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Places to buy DOS floppy disc era games


Tanooki

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I know the one obvious answer here is ebay, but if you wanted to avoid people getting into that kind of shoving match where are some other decent spots to look for old PC games that have failed to materialize and likely never will on the realms of GoG.com?

 

A month or so ago I found a really nice external USB 3.5" Floppy Drive and discovered my 25~? year old MS Return of Arcade 3 disks still worked, can't use them in 64bit but they do access and the rest fine. It got me thinking about a few games I used to like and know I could just fire them up and install them too within DOSBox.

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I've been checking local thrift so far and rarely stuff appears. A month back I found Revenge of Arcade for windows complete in the big box for like $2 which was nice since it's mindless quick fun to click on. I'm figuring maybe flea markets but I don't remember seeing those much and it's often just disc games and I'm thinking older for floppies. I used to have that Links setup back in the earlier 90s and that was a lot of fun. In an era of basic low color stuff that game really stood out as fantastic.

 

I'm thinking it would be really nice to find like some of my original old games on disc like the old gray floppy that had ep1 of Wolfenstein3D, the boxed up Simpson's Arcade Game I used to really enjoy, and other oldies like that.

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At this point in time, if a developer isn't able to put their stuff on GOG.com, I'd feel okay about downloading from abandonware sites rather than messing with old media.

 

I also like the archive.org collection for super casual farting around. You won't be completing a game here (can't save progress), but it's fun for a quick blast. https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games

 

Not that I have enough time to even enjoy the gazillions of purchased games I already have. :-(

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I don't either so I was thinking that a boxed or at least with the paper work+disk(s) copy of a game here or there would be fun. Nothing serious. I have enough trouble playing what I have consistently as my motivation sucks. Once the game is going I'm fine but I'm easy to drop off and go to something else after a few days which is bad. It's a good reason why I've let and still let so much go while scooping up kits or stuff to lessen the purchases.

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I know the one obvious answer here is ebay, but if you wanted to avoid people getting into that kind of shoving match where are some other decent spots to look for old PC games that have failed to materialize and likely never will on the realms of GoG.com?

 

A month or so ago I found a really nice external USB 3.5" Floppy Drive and discovered my 25~? year old MS Return of Arcade 3 disks still worked, can't use them in 64bit but they do access and the rest fine. It got me thinking about a few games I used to like and know I could just fire them up and install them too within DOSBox.

 

Gaming/anime/comicbook Conventions, flea markets, yard sales, estate sales, etc.

 

I'd suggest not spending money on loose floppy disks. They are almost certainly to be in non-working order unless they come in the original game box. Floppy disks do not survive being shipped because of the amount of magnetic fields they encounter during the shipping process.

 

I don't like to advocate for piracy at all, but in all fairness, if you can't find a floppy disk of something, (eg let's say you have disk 2, 3, 4 and 7 of a game that has 8 disks) just find obtain the rest through whatever means makes you happy. In many cases even if you can get all the disks, they won't be for the same version (eg mac/pc/amiga, 5.25" vs 3.25", EGA or VGA version, version 3.001, version 3.20) and thus the disks end up being worthless as an install medium.

 

Case in point, the game "Starflight" is available on gog, but it originally came on two or one floppy disks, that you had to make a copy of. The game is self-modifying, so you can not play from the original disk, and if you fail to save the game, the game is destroyed and you have to start over.

 

Another example, many BASIC and early assembly-code games will not be on commercially produced disks, but rather they will be on hand-written floppy disks. So if you pass over every box of junk disks, you may also miss some commercial (pirated or not) games that didn't have wide distribution before the era of the BBS. This is how people find prototypes.

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