The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
It's time to really show your age. Do you remember playing games like Missile Command or Space Invaders in the original arcade form? What about paying $250 for an Atari game console to play games like Pac-Man and Frogger? Games like these were the first arcade hits and are big business once again. This year, 2,500 Space Invaders games are being released in the original arcade console format to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the game. Over Christmas I also managed to find CD versions of both Missile Command and Frogger for around $10 in computer store bargain bins. There is a current rage for games and pieces of software like these that have disappeared for years. Cheap prices, large hard drives on home computers, and more flexible computer operating systems able to handle different types of computer code easily are driving the rage in abandonware. A quick search on eBay for games such as Space Invaders, Missile Command, Donkey Kong and Frogger comes up with all types of options. Original games and original consoles such as Intellivision and Colecovision abound. T-shirts, action figures, and posters are posted for sale as well. It is important to remember that these games are still under copyright and still owned by a company somewhere even if they are no longer being produced or supported. But the fact is that a quick Google search will find many sites willing to let you download many of these old games for free. The amount of available abandonware is growing quickly. As technology changes at an increasing pace, companies leave software behind more quickly then they used to. Software which is several years old does not make much money. Games that are six months old have mostly completed their sales run and companies are often reluctant to continue supporting them by designing patches to solve glitches which crop up over time. Companies would much rather spend money developing completely new products or upgrades which they can then sell to consumers. Even operating systems are turning over at a faster rate. Just before Christmas, Microsoft announced that beginning this spring it would no longer be issuing security upgrades and patches for Windows 95 or 98. This means that users of these systems will be much more likely to fall prey to viruses and technical trouble. When these systems are abandoned, over 60% of PC users running Windows as an operating system will be forced to either work out their own problems, or upgrade their machines to Windows XP at $149 each. The movement towards constantly upgrading software has caused computer owners to have little choice but to follow along. Games need patches to work properly, operating systems need security upgrades to ensure they are safe from viruses, and programs are given new features which we just have to have. All of these things together leave a lot of software hanging around in cyberspace, looking for computers to call their home. ([email protected])
