Crosmando: How about you go back to whatever casual hole you crawled out from, scum?
How about not being needlessly hostile towards newcomers, eh? Everyone has to start somewhere...
PHARROUS: wow flash backs to 486 days and ultima 2...
-_-
i know the strategy/sci-fi games are a niche market
but the majority of the games here you could have snatched up in the late 90s from EB or such
for just dollars on the "nerd" game rack. I know waking mars and some are newer games.
but many games are not challenging and as many people post games for $20 or so
could be more fair priced about $4.99. The modern era of IAP and freemium, many old
school or "classic" games are just not really worth the $10 dollars they were in the 90s.
-_- $20 for the new ios X-Com was a crock of poop... and some titles should be evaluated
for cost effectiveness. What are you thoughts? sorry if seems like a rant but many games
like "60 second hero" and PvZ 1 and Richocet infinity are only a few bucks but provide
great replay value.
For starters, as it was already mentioned, GOG started off as a DD service that specialised in classic PC games (hence why it used to be called Good Old Games). It was only relatively recently that they rebranded themselves to GOG and started selling modern games as well. That's why there are so many old school titles within the catalogue.
Second, even if some of these titles were (or still are) available at retail, that's not always the case. Some games aren't big enough to warrant a reprint and some never got a reprint period, making them very expensive to obtain. On top of that, a lot of these games were made for older operating systems, making compatibility an issue, and that's assuming the CD/DVD is in good condition. Heck, depending on the age of the game, it might even come on diskettes rather than optical media, which is a problem in an age where desktop computers with disk drives haven't been available for many years.
Third, the existence of freemium or cheap downloadable games doesn't inherently imply that all the classic games don't justify the $10 price tag. In fact, I think you'll find many people who would be willing to argue that many of the classics in the GOG catalogue offer a lot more bang for your buck than many of the freemium or downloadable titles that are available out there, partially beacuse they were originally built to offer value for a lot more money than what they are sold for today. It's funny that you mention
Ultima II; back when it was released, that game was being sold for $60 (in 1982 dollars; that's almost $150 today!).
If anything, it's many of the iOS game apps that tend to have trouble justifying their price tag. Even though there are plenty of games that are sold for only 99 cents, some of those aren't even worth that, especially since some of them are copies or even blatant ripoffs of flash games that you can play for free on the Internet.
Plus, some of the games you mention don't really fulfill the same role as some of the classics. PvZ is a good game, but it's best played in short bursts; it's not a game that will manage to hold your interest for hours on end. By comparison, strategy or RPG games are exactly the kinds of games you can spend a lot of time on.
One more thing. Even if you're not happy with some of the prices, GOG does sales on a preety regular basis, offering games for 50-80% less. If nothing else, you can wait until the Summer/Christmas sales where GOG offers nearly all of the games in their catalogue 50% off.
Games don't automatically become worthless due to age, so give some of them (at least the better ones) a shot. Who knows? You just might find yourself pleasantly surprised.
