I blogged before about Good Old Games, a company launching next month that will permit legitimate downloads of new-OS-optimized classic games. As a fan of the classics, I'm psyched. Via Scorpia, here is a Beta impression from ugo.com. Though the current stable of games is quite limited, the concept and execution show promise and the price is right. The aspect that most concerned me was whether Good Old Games could make older games work on newer systems. It appears that they can:

Installation is similarly easy. The entire game’s contents are contained within a single setup executable. A GOG-branded frontend replaces the original install screens and any software copy protections are done away with, though the games are otherwise unchanged. Setup files can of course be saved for repeated use, though the option to download them an unlimited number of times at no extra cost eliminates the need to use that added storage space.

Functionally, the two games we played with performed well. Fallout and Giants both experienced occasional visual hiccups, though there were no outright crashes or freezes. According to GOG’s support team – who responded in less than 24 hours with a clearly non-canned solution – these glitches are common, the result of pop-ups from programs running in the background. Exiting out of other applications quickly solved the problem for us in both games.

Fantastic.

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