It's Here: Wing Commander IV GameTap (July 5, 2007)

[Bandit LOAF]

As promised, the GameTap service has added Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom to their amazing library of classic and modern video games! The game is the original PC CD-ROM version and it requires a hefty one-time 1.5 gigabyte download and a 4.1 gigabyte slice of your hard drive... a shock to those who remember when the game's thirty megabyte demo took days of waiting and a lot of floppy disks. As with the original Wing Commander, the service has done right by the game by offering a bit of 'bonus materials' (pictured below), an online control guide and even scans of the game's manual (PDF) -- even though it's just an excerpt from the novelization!

GameTap is a pay service which allows players access to over 900 games (emulated to run on modern systems where necessary), including the original Wing Commander and the first six Ultima titles. An advertising-supported 'Lite' player also exists allowing players access to a rotation of games for free (as of this time WCIV is not available in this format). Subscriptions are available for as low as $6.95 a month... and a trial membership can be purchased for only 99 cents for the first month! It's a good bet more Wing Commander titles are on the way... the future of legal classic gaming looks bright.

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Original update published on July 5, 2007

 

[Shipgate]

I have to be totally honest that I'm not positive what Gametap is and how it works. I've seen commercials for it on and off. I think I get the general idea behind it: you pay a monthly fee and you get to play all these games. What I'm really wondering is do many of you use it? And is it worth the subscription?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I'm not sure if there's any better way to explain it than the post you're responding to does. GameTap is a subscription based service for playing classic (and modern) games. You pay a monthly (or yearly) fee and access the games through a central client. For instance, if I want to play Wing Commander (and I do!) I hit the GameTap icon on my desktop and then access the game through an internal menu. The folks at GameTap set up all the emulation in advance, so there's no fiddling with settings... your game runs off a virtual drive and plays like it's supposed to.

The service has just over 900 games right now and several new games are added every Thursday. Your fee lets you play everything from arcade games (Burger Time, 1942) to adventure games (Space Quest, Kings Quest) to MMP games (Myst Uru) to 1990s games (FreeSpace, Thief) to brand new games like the new Sam and Max episodes and Tomb Raider Anniversary. Most importantly for our purposes, GameTap has a licensing agreement with Electronic Arts which is letting them add classic Origin games.

The service is owned by Turner Broadcasting, which lets them release a lot of television material too -- Cartoon Network Adult Swim episodes, game-relevant shows (like the old Sam and Max animated series) and a bunch of other things are offered through the client. They also produce their own game-relevant video material... including news shows and 'making of' specials (they did this for Ultima). This seems to be getting bigger and bigger - they just released a very large Tomb Raider documentary and are getting ready to start showing an original Tomb Raider animated series (I can't believe no one has done this yet).

I really love the service. Being able to play a few Wing Commander games wherever I go is worth the couple of dollars a month I spend (one less fast food meal), and it also gives me access to more games than I could ever have bought when they were new (more than I can even play now, really). I think most of the American CIC staff pay for and enjoy the service quite a bit (it isn't available in Europe or for Macs yet). Finally, I love the morality of the thing - I am so happy to be able to pay to play these games instead of having to steal them and pretend they're "abandonware".

 

[Delance]

Finally, I love the morality of the thing - I am so happy to be able to pay to play these games instead of having to steal them and pretend they're "abandonware".

That's a good point. Gametap, in a large way, is a response to the increasing demand for classic games. It's a good thing in a lot of ways: it generates money to the copyright holders (unlike buying old games on ebay), it's legal (unlike abandonware) and it's easy to anyone (unlike emulation). I hope the service becomes a success and expands to other areas of the world. I’d probably use it myself if it were to become available in my country for a proportional price.

 

[Shipgate]

It sounds fun. I've been browsing some of the games they have too and I think I'm gonna sign up. How does saving your game work? Does the account save it for you? Or does it go on your harddrive or something like that?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Hmm, I'm not sure where it actually stores your game (I think it's on your hard drive, encrypted) - but it does save them. Older games (ie, Asteroids or Galaga) have emulator save-states which allow you to save anywhere.

 

[Delance]

If you delete the game, can you keep the save games?

 

[Vinman]

I don't know, I like having disks, a box and a manual, and I'm kind of worried that things like GameTap and Steam will make those disappear.

I would probably get on GameTap, but I have the same internet connection I had in 1996 and these things, even though they appeal to old-school gamers, probably take up more resources than they used to, and that kind of defeats the purpose for people who have let technology pass them by for most of a decade.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I believe your saved games survive removing the game from your local cache.

 

[ChrisReid]

I don't know, I like having disks, a box and a manual, and I'm kind of worried that things like GameTap and Steam will make those disappear.

In the case of GameTap, while there are a few brand new games, it's mostly old great classics like Wing Commander. Boxes are great, but looking at things practically, I'd much rather a future with no boxes and the ability to easily play several decades of past games. But that's not a choice anyone has to make. Retail games aren't at any risk of disappearing. And you don't have to look any further than WC Arena to be assured that awesome manuals are still out there (and GameTap offers up downloads of Claw Marks, Reference Cards, the WC1 Blueprints, etc).

I would probably get on GameTap, but I have the same internet connection I had in 1996 and these things, even though they appeal to old-school gamers, probably take up more resources than they used to, and that kind of defeats the purpose for people who have let technology pass them by for most of a decade.

Once you have the game downloaded, you shouldn't have to worry about the connection at all. You do log in and such each time, but this is mainly to verify you have an active subscription. Most games are much much smaller than WC4's download.

 

[VGS_Phantasm]

Once you have the game downloaded, you shouldn't have to worry about the connection at all. You do log in and such each time, but this is mainly to verify you have an active subscription. Most games are much much smaller than WC4's download.

Actually, that's not entirely true. The 1.5gb download is not actually the entire game, it's basically just enough to get you started, and it continues to stream in the background while you play. I never knew this until WC4 stopped working about half way through please refer to this thread on the Gametap Tech Support forums for more info:

http://www.gametap.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=3143&tstart=45

Note that GameTapID: DireEnthroned is me, and applying the advice of this I left loaded my latest Save Game and left WC4 idling over night. Problem solved, beat the game the next day, but I have a cable modem, dial-up may be a problem. This isn't to say it wouldn't work eventually if you where patiant however.

Wing Commander IV is deffinately the biggest thing I've gotten off of GameTap. The next biggest things I've gotten are probably Freespace2 and both Homeworlds, but they don't come close.