Correct. The copyright owner controls the rights related to copying.

Unless the copyright holder specifically grants free distribution rights (e.g. releasing as a public domain work such as with a CC0 licence) then they can decide to do what they want. That includes choosing not to distribute the work in any way.

So no, Championship Manager 01/02 is not available legally for free. It’s no more legal than downloading ROMs. No one will stop you but that’s not the same as legal.

I’m not defending this approach. I think IP law is a fucking shambles and needs massive reform for a number of reasons. The duration is ludicrous and it’s horrendously restrictive in a way that chokes the life out of human culture. I see someone downvoted me, which is pretty funny in and of itself. Sorry for pointing out how IP law works…?

They took out H264 hardware support?

Reading the instructions, no, it’s not. It was given away for free by Eidos and no longer is. Unless they granted distribution rights to someone back in the day then whoever is distributing the files is doing so illegally.

I don’t really care, I just find it funny that it’s touted as legally when that’s absolutely not how copyright law works at all.

For me this is more about open world games losing cool features than wanting to play a game with that feature. In GTA 4 it affected the choices I’d make whilst driving as it was entirely possible to make a vehicle nearly impossible to drive without coming close to blowing it up.

I couldn’t be bothered to come up with a neat way to say “GTA-like games” and decided to hope that the reader could intuit that context.

The vehicle damage modelling from GTA 4. The fact that it hasn’t been surpassed is tremendously disappointing to me.

Because hardware, software, culture, incomes, demand, supply, and many, many other factors have all changed since the 1980s. It’s not a straight comparison. Inflation is a factor but it is not the only factor.

I think it’s a little more complex than that.

They can set the asking price to whatever they like but a lot of us cannot justify those amounts for what amounts to a toy. By this stage in a console generation I would expect a lot more games and a lot cheaper hardware. The reasons that haven’t happened aren’t of interest to me as a consumer (they’re of interest to me as a nerd!).

No, but the price points of the current consoles are hilariously optimistic.

Eventually I plan on playing Spaghetti Kart - partly for that reason!

I would agree that the sprawling roster and tracklist are a bit much.

That’s the thing I find amusing in this thread. Consoles are a known quantity and it needs to either compete or undercut them. I have a Steam Deck that I paid £320 for (brought up to £400 by the SSD I added). I would most definitely not pay more than £450 for a Steam Box. It may well cost more than that but it is a luxury and I would seriously struggle to justify more than that.

s/backlog/library/g

…and those are just flying off the shelves!

Whilst I didn’t enjoy the mechanics of Control, I was very impressed at the settings it offered. I could essentially turn off combat if I wanted. Yes, it won’t be the same game experience, but if I choose to play that way - let me!

In the old days we had cheat codes for this stuff. I cheated my way through a lot of games and then revisited later without cheats. Some of those became my favourite games of all time (Theme Hospital and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 both spring to mind).

I’ve not played a newer or older Mario Kart game with better fundamentals. I’d like more tracks for it but other than that it’s perfect. The newer ones are pretty but there’s too much going on in many of the tracks (and I’m really not fond of the flying/water thing they do either).

I never encountered a single Windows 9x game that wouldn’t run on Windows 2000 Pro. It was my primary OS in 2003 or so, having moved from Windows 98 SE.

Is this a case of confidently incorrect?

XP? The bloated offspring of Windows 2000?

I ran loads of normal (Windows 9x) games on Windows 2000 Pro.

To be fair, Red Alert came out in 1996 and was available for DOS.

Red Alert 2, not so much. DOS ports fell off hard by about '98, so this headline is weird.