Win Scrabble, Snooker, Pool, etc

[679a8d17eb134JDoran]

[Edit: Sorry, wrong forum, can a moderator please move this to the Free Games forum? Thanks]


I wanted to post a good, old game for others to download, but since I never saw a PC game until around 1993 (the first PC game I remember seeing was Doom) that means I can't surprise you all with a great but almost unknown game from the PC's past.

Instead, here are some old games that I like that originally played on other machines (other than Detective Chess), though all of the links here are for the PC versions.

Image: http://homeoftheunderdogs.net/games/s/scrabblewin/scrabblewin.jpg

Scrabble for Windows is an excellent version of (guess what!) Scrabble, which even has a built in dictionary to tell you the meaning of any words you don't recognise (yes, Scrabble for Windows is an educational game, but don't let that put you off!). Sadly, this is a Windows game (the game's title is very imaginitive, isn't it  ) that doesn't run on 64bit Windows, but works fine on XP 32bit.

You can read about it here:

http://homeoftheunderdogs.net/game.php?id=4028  (note: when is says "on-line dictionary, it means 'on-line' in the old sense, as in connected to the program, it doesn't mean (or use) the internet at all, the game uses it's own built in dictionary file),

and download it from:

http://www.old-games.com/download/5540/scrabble-for-windows



Image: http://homeoftheunderdogs.net/games/j/jimmywhite/jimmywhite.jpg

Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker is an excellent football management simulator. At least it is if you download the wrong game. If you download the right game then it's a very good snooker game, in full 3D, with precise controls and lots of playability. It's a DOS game so you'll probably have to use DOSBox to play it. Read about it at:

http://homeoftheunderdogs.net/game.php?id=2908

I can't remember where I initially downloaded it from (I bought it for the Atari ST, that's how old the game is) but it's available from:

http://www.bestoldgames.net/eng/old-games/jimmy-whites-whirlwind-snooker.php






Archer Mclean's Pool is more or less the same game engine, controls, etc, but this time playing darts. Alright, it's pool, but you can play darts in a Jimmy White's Cueball (seriously), but I can't find a download for that game), which Archer McClean later wrote.  Virtual Pool 3 is another game I couldn't find a link to, or I'd have recommended that in this post, as that's better than these two games (but to be fair, these two are older, and are still very good). Again, you'll probably need DOSBox to run this, and you can read about Archer Mclean's Pool at:

http://homeoftheunderdogs.net/game.php?name=Archer%20Maclean's%20Pool





Image: http://bindweed.com/det/detpuz1.gif

Detective Chess is a browser based game where you have to determine where a number of Chess pieces should be on a board, according to how many other pieces are in how many paths where they can be taken. It's easier to play than to explain, though you do need to understand the movement of each Chess piece to play the game. It's a very good game, with a novel (and not too taxing) idea behind it, and you can play it for free at:

http://embedgames.ru/detective-chess/

[679a8d17eb34aKolya]

I had to remove some links to the known scammer site mosw.com from your post. I'm sure you had no bad intentions.
You can see the changes by checking your post's history. (Click on the last edit link.)

[679a8d17eb48fBriareos H]

I really like Detective Chess, although I wish it had a few harder levels.

[679a8d17eb7e5JDoran]

I had to remove some links to the known scammer site mosw.com from your post. I'm sure you had no bad intentions.
You can see the changes by checking your post's history. (Click on the last edit link.)

Sorry, I really had no idea about that. In what way was it a scam, though? I found the links for both text and download via Google, I have them all already so I didn't download them from those sites (well, maybe I did, but it was many years ago and so if I found the same site now then it was coincidence). I tried to find links for Virtual Pool 3, but the links I could find were either for the demo, despite looking like the full game for download, or for sites that I thought might be dodgy, so I didn't post any links for that.

Thanks for not assuming I was just a spamming ****head, I hate people who spam forums .

[679a8d17eb9bdKolya]

Mosw.com is well known in the abandonware/shareware/freeware game circle for taking game downloads, reviews, walkthroughs, images, manuals, etc from other websites that usually offer these for free and putting them on their site for money. By now there's page on mosw for pretty much any old game you might look for, which gives them a pretty good google pagerank for lots of searches.

When you click one of their download links you will get a message citing maintenance costs and offering you various subscription plans. In short they are selling these old games. Of course they don't have licenses to sell them, so they don't sell the games directly but they force you to pay for the games nevertheless.

As a daytime webdeveloper who's been running websites for years I know how much a server costs per month. It's little more than mosw.com charges one user for a one day subscription. From that and their pagerank it is obvious that they are making a lot of money, all with stuff they don't own and never put any work into. And that makes mosw.com a scam.

[679a8d17ebf58JDoran]

Mosw.com is well known in the abandonware/shareware/freeware game circle for taking game downloads, reviews, walkthroughs, images, manuals, etc from other websites that usually offer these for free and putting them on their site for money. By now there's page on mosw for pretty much any old game you might look for, which gives them a pretty good google pagerank for lots of searches.

When you click one of their download links you will get a message citing maintenance costs and offering you various subscription plans. In short they are selling these old games. Of course they don't have licenses to sell them, so they don't sell the games directly but they force you to pay for the games nevertheless.

As a daytime webdeveloper who's been running websites for years I know how much a server costs per month. It's little more than mosw.com charges one user for a one day subscription. From that and their pagerank it is obvious that they are making a lot of money, all with stuff they don't own and never put any work into. And that makes mosw.com a scam.

I see. That is wrong, morally and legally (and it's the morally that's the really bad part, granted distributing software you don't have a right to (and that isn't freeware or a demo or whatever) is legally wrong, but if the game hasn't been commercially available for years then there's sort of a grey area about distributing it as the makers aren't losing money since no one could have legally bought it from the company now anyway. But for a third party to distribute the software and make money from it is just plain wrong). It is a pity that lots more old games aren't sold through Good Old Games, Steam, etc, as the original makers would get money from them. The market per game wouldn't be huge, but it would bring in some income for the companies, and if the manual and box art etc were scanned in and included then for most users it would be as good as getting the whole physical package. Some people would still want the orignal box, disc, etc, and would have to resort to ebay, used game market stalls, and so on, but for most people I think the digital downloads would be acceptable.

You'd think software houses would understand this, especially since probably every game (or film, or album, etc) is available to download for free via pirate torrent sites, or abandonware sites (if it's an old game), or various forums, and if it's available anyway (and these downloads are almost impossible to stop, as when one site closes another opens), then why not offer an official download for a reasonable price?

[679a8d17ec141voodoo47]

because for them, it's not worth (even thinking about) it. there is only very small (or none at all) potential for profit there, and always a chance of legal (or other) complications. it's just easier to do nothing.