LucasArts PC classics rumoured for GoG.com!

[Guts]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-10-28-star-wars-x-wing-and-tie-fighter-re-releasing-on-pc

This news was leaked by the GoG community.

In just little over 2 hours a new publisher will be added to the GoG.com roster, leak says it will be LucasArts.

The following classic titles are rumoured to be among the first released:

-Sam & Max: Hit the Road
-Indiana Jones & The Fate of Atlantis
-Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
-Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
-Star Wars: X-Wing
-Star Wars: TIE Fighter

This is great news as some of these titles aren't available anywhere online (legally), unless I'm mistaken.

[briareos_kerensky]

I've still got X-Wing and TIE Fighters (including expansions for both) but I'll gladly buy them again for hassle-free install and play under Win7 and 8. Maybe they fixed the joystick out-of-calibration problem while they were at it ?

[Digfox]

Great news all round, although keen to see what Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic turns out to be like. On Steam (like a lot of releases) it's simply the original game with no reworking for modern computers which results in all kinds of issues when attempting to run (even on a Windows 7 machine).

When I last tried none of the guides I followed would allow you to run at a proper Widescreen resolution, with working GUI or FMV. Something would always be broken. It isn't helped by the fact that the game and FMV sequences can crash on multi-core CPU's. It's a game I've loved to return to so the fact that it's difficult to play anything other than the vanilla PC game is annoying. GOG games I've tried are often worked on to work on latest OS's so at the very least they are stable.

Ideal world they add 1080p or widescreen support, much like the recent WCIII patch a few years ago.

[Dogg Thang]

Yep, I got Knights of the Old Republic a good while ago on Steam and it was barely playable, which made it all the weirder that they seemed to be heavily promoting it.

[Guts]

The rumours were true and the games are out now.

Sam & Max and Indy are $5.99 the others are $9.99

[Deuteros]

GOG.com is one of the few digital distributors that tweaks and tests these older games to ensure their compatibility with newer operating systems and hardware configurations. Since the publisher fully owns the rights to the game, they're free to put GOG's build on other platforms, such as Steam, later on.

Besides the obvious titles (i.e., LucasArts' catalogue), I hope Disney's arrival on GOG.com will allow the republishing of The Black Cauldron.

From the official announcement:

We're proud to announce our team-up with ?Disney Interactive that allows for the DRM-free release of 20+ classic titles from the cult-classic developer.

[EJG1980]

Brilliant, I'm buying Tie Fighter ASAP. Absolutely loved that game back when I was a teenager, I hope it's still as good as I remember it! Spent many a night sat up into the small hours on a school night because I just HAD to finish one more mission.

[Asura]

Are the X-Wing and TIE Fighter re-releases ports of the original games, or the 3DFX versions?

For those unaware, X-Wing (for example) has 3 versions of the game:

>> The original on floppy
>> The CD version, with reworked music, some visual changes and difficulty changes
>> The 3DFX version

It also has an expansion.

Hopefully it's the 3DFX version that's been ported.

[kryss]

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The Windows version of STAR WARS?: TIE Fighter (1998) requires a controller or joystick. STAR WARS?: TIE Fighter (1994) can be played with a mouse and keyboard.

But which version are we buying!? It says released 1994 but then why talk about the 1998 version?

[Guts]

It's there in the description if you press "show more":

Includes STAR WARS™: TIE Fighter and STAR WARS™: TIE Fighter - Defender of the Empire, both 1994 (DOS) and 1998 (Windows) versions, and STAR WARS™: TIE Fighter - Enemies of the Empire 1998 (Windows).

So you get both.

[Asura]

Thing is, X-Wing and TIE Fighter were both playable with a mouse, but you wouldn't want to play them that way.

How things have changed; no PC gamer would've not had a joystick back then. Half the games on the PC were flight sims.

[MartyG]

Great news all round, although keen to see what Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic turns out to be like. On Steam (like a lot of releases) it's simply the original game with no reworking for modern computers which results in all kinds of issues when attempting to run (even on a Windows 7 machine)..

It runs at 4:3 at a max of 1280x1024, although the interactions with NPCs go to a 16:9 in the middle of the 4:3 so you end up with massive black borders on all sides with just a rectangle in the middle. No joypad support via the game although there are workarounds for that.

Other than those issues and some terrible voice acting it seems to install and play on a Windows 8.1 machine without any problems, at least in the first ten mins I had to check it ran okay.

[Digfox]

It runs at 4:3 at a max of 1280x1024, although the interactions with NPCs go to a 16:9 in the middle of the 4:3 so you end up with massive black borders on all sides with just a rectangle in the middle. No joypad support via the game although there are workarounds for that.

Other than those issues and some terrible voice acting it seems to install and play on a Windows 8.1 machine without any problems, at least in the first ten mins I had to check it ran okay.

I last tried just as SW:TOR was coming out (so very late 2011). I only remember as it was that game that prompted me to try SW:KOTOR again (I've never been able to get that far in it despite having owned it on Xbox, Steam and PC Disc).

I remember even in vanilla the game was crashing on start-up when attempting to play the FMV sequences (the multi-core issue). In the end I could run it at 1920x1080 with working GUI but the movies would not run. I followed certain guides to the letter and used the methods from wsgf.org. I also remember you had to download a hacked .exe file for the game to run with the widescreen fix. In the end I gave up becuase I wasn't prepared to play the game without the FMV sequences. I also tried the game on both an old C2D and my current (old) i7 920 PC but it wasn't working well on either.

You can see from the Steam forums that as an old game lots of people have problems running it on Windows 7 and above. Some of the fixes to try and get the game to run, particularly for widescreen support, are very elaborate. It was very lazy of LucasArts to release the game on Steam without adding in support for Windows 7 in my opinion.

Maybe some of the fixes are better now so I should try again some time.

[MartyG]

Nothing needs to be patched with the GoG versions it runs from install - the FMV appears to switch my screen to 640x480 when it plays and back to 1280x1024 when it finishes - other than the OSD popping up in the corner to tell you it's happened it doesn't seem too vexatious, at least on my set up.

[speedlolita]

1280x1024 is 5:4 so you'll probably be facing some slight aspect warping.