What is a good site for PC game collecting?

[Technosis]

I tend to see lots of PC games out there, even when the console games have been picked over. Does anyone know of a web resource that gives rarity or ratings info on PC games? Are there many users on this board that are classic PC gaming fans?

[Jorpho]

Every now and then someone asks this question, and the response always seems to be that no, there is no such place tracking rarity, and PC games tend not to be quite so collectable.

Then I usually say that some of the rarer adventure games might fetch a good price, often linking to the "out of print" catalog section of http://www.playinggamesinteractive.com/ .

Here we are:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60500
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25836
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19504
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16071

As for ratings, the reviews at Gamespot.com go pretty far back. Gamesdomain.co.uk used to be even better, but ever since it got bought out by Yahoo, the only way to access the old reviews has been through archive.org , and that's a pain.

[norkusa]

Home Of The Underdogs is a pretty good site for classic PC stuff. There isn't a rarity list but they have user ratings and the forums are pretty active.

[DefaultGen]

.....

[-hellvin-]

I tend to see lots of PC games out there, even when the console games have been picked over. Does anyone know of a web resource that gives rarity or ratings info on PC games? Are there many users on this board that are classic PC gaming fans?

I'm a longtime pc games fan since the adventure gaming days of old. There really isn't much out there to tell ya the truth. Try Home of the Underdogs, the dosbox.sourceforge.net site and that's about it. There's some pretty good discussions of old dos games in the dosbox forums.

[Trebuken]

You can have some luck searching if you go by genre instead.

Mech games, or RPG's, or adventure games. Tryi searching by categories. That's the only luck I've had.

[calthaer]

The mythical site of which you speak has never been found on the intarwebs - yet another piece of evidence that its full potential has not yet been realized. Part of the difficulty of such a challenge is the fact that there are so many really minor titles out there for PC - dorky little games that time forgot, like Moonbase Commander and Spellcraft: Aspects of Valor and Twinsen's Odyssey and all these other non-blockbusters.

Home of the Underdogs is great for those little games, but it's hardly comprehensive. There is no master database out there - even Mobygames doesn't have it all, I don't think.

[Ed Oscuro]

Man, I was at the thrift today, saw some old "PC/Tandy in the same box" era game...not only can I not remember what it was, exactly, but I'm sure it's not worth much. They had a Mac Plus version of Oregon Trail and a Mac Lemmings as well as a copy of Battle Isle that's been sitting there for a while...and I don't think it'd be worth the time. Not to say that there weren't some good classic PC finds from there recently, but it's depressing to see great condition PC games like that end up seeming worthless.

I'm not sure what it is that makes older PC games not worth so much, but I don't think it has anything to do with the medium (magnetic disks). Probably most people think that anything you can find in an old PC game is done better in today's games.

[Jorpho]

I'm not sure what it is that makes older PC games not worth so much, but I don't think it has anything to do with the medium (magnetic disks). Probably most people think that anything you can find in an old PC game is done better in today's games.

Well, there is the fact that older games (and even not-so-old games) have never been particularly easy to get running on recent hardware. Even DOSBox can sometimes pose a challenge (provided someone tells you about it first).

[Ed Oscuro]

I see the point, but people will jump through hoops for some crazy obscure stuff, though!

[YoshiM]

The mythical site of which you speak has never been found on the intarwebs - yet another piece of evidence that its full potential has not yet been realized. Part of the difficulty of such a challenge is the fact that there are so many really minor titles out there for PC - dorky little games that time forgot, like Moonbase Commander and Spellcraft: Aspects of Valor and Twinsen's Odyssey and all these other non-blockbusters.


Not only that but there's also trying to track down the versions: number of individual releases, "variety pack" game collections, computer pack ins, "multimedia upgrade" pack-ins, etc. Another bit of difficulty would be figuring out where to draw the software line: do you include shareware titles in your collection lists? That opens up another can of worms as there was a bunch of distributors that sold the shareware titles and later on full versions, not to mention the "software of the month" clubs that existed years back.

It would be an interesting challenge to round up this data but I think it would be next to impossible to have a fairly reliable "rarity" rating.

[Griking]

You'll never have a complete and accurate listing and rarity guide for PC (or other computer) games. As was said, there are just too many variations out there.

That being said, I'm sure the same was said at one time about Atari or Nintendo games and yet here we are.

If someone would just create a site and start with the basics, the most popular & desirable titles it would be a large step forward from what we currently have now.

[hbkprm]

ebay of course

[Jorpho]

If someone would just create a site and start with the basics, the most popular & desirable titles it would be a large step forward from what we currently have now.

There are already sites which feature extensive collection information for Ultima, Sierra, and Infocom. (Google should find them pretty quickly.)

[cyberfluxor]

I tend to see lots of PC games out there, even when the console games have been picked over. Does anyone know of a web resource that gives rarity or ratings info on PC games? Are there many users on this board that are classic PC gaming fans?

Since throughout the 90's my PC was my gaming platform, it's what I enjoy a lot even today. Whenever I find a great game I pick it up but due to the market I limit how much I'll spend on most of these titles. This is of course because there's that horrible resale market, so most games are worth it to just wait several months to find them for $5 or less. If it's a huge blockbuster release I've been waiting on for a good while then I'll gladly pay full retail.

As previously stated, it's all about the hardware it runs on. Most people just don't want to deal with hardware conflicts, configurations, unstable environments and hunting down obscure controllers. Since I'm a CS/IT guy I enjoy toying with all the goodies and it's easy to find cheap systems around here. I still play my older games on my Gateway 2000 mid-tower flawlessly because it was built as a CAD machine for an engineering firm. :D

I've thought of making all types of gaming sites but everytime I try to get going on the projects time kills. With an ever changing schedule in my life and others I know it's rough putting our ideas together. The best method I can think of is searching for other individuals online to help out in the building process and it'll take a lot of work and spare time. I can offer local rarities for games with general ease but it'll take more than just a few people from different geographic regions to discover a more accurate overall rarity. If enough people were interested I'd be all for it.

[j_factor]

How 'classic' are we talking? Because I think part of the issue is that back in the 80s, IBM/DOS wasn't much of a gaming platform at all, compared to Commodore and Atari. Although a large number of DOS games were released, it wasn't that big back then. Commodore and Atari had the gaming computers; IBM's were more for businesses and stuff.

[James8BitStar]

I tend to see lots of PC games out there, even when the console games have been picked over. Does anyone know of a web resource that gives rarity or ratings info on PC games? Are there many users on this board that are classic PC gaming fans?

Big PC fan here.

My AMD K-6 500 MHz, with Win98, a Voodoo 3 graphics card and Soundblaster 16, is my best friend. It can play every PC game made before 1998 except for Wrath of Earth (which has some weird coding issue that makes it unable to run on anything that doesn't use an Intel processor).

I had once written a guide to getting any game to run on this setup. Dunno what I did with that. Probably moot now since everyone uses DOSbox.

[cyberfluxor]

Probably moot now since everyone uses DOSbox.
I never cared for DOSbox because it seems so pointless. I can go to a number of pawn shops and thrift stores finding lots of P1->P3 systems for $3-20. Windows 95 and 98 are rough finding a lincense for since Microsoft doesn't support either one anymore but you can stumble across discs in the wild or online for cheap. I just prefer having a dedicated system for classic PC just as I do consoles.

[Jorpho]

I never cared for DOSbox because it seems so pointless. I can go to a number of pawn shops and thrift stores finding lots of P1->P3 systems for $3-20.

Sure, that sounds like a good idea, but after having spent considerable time and money over the years trying to perfect such a dedicated system (or even to make it conveniently usable), I regard DOSBox as a panacea.

[BitWraith]

Whew, I know this is an old thread, but I found it via a Google search. PC game collecting has gotten pretty organized in the last year or so. We were always out there, but we only recently started to get together as a group. You can find us on facebook in the Big Box PC Game Collectors group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/311204112360601/ or at our website at http://bigboxpcgamecollectors.com/

If you even have just a passing interest in pc game collecting, we'd love to hear from you.

[Gameguy]

Wow, it's been awhile since I've seen this thread. RIP Technosis.