GameTap adds Deus Ex

[Yegolev]

Just sayin'.  You can now investigate Uru and lie to your friends that you really subscribed for Sam + Max and Deus Ex.

[schild]

Why hello thar.

One of my favorite indie games ever just got added to Gametap like 5 minutes ago.

Startopia.

ROCK.

[Nonentity]

Startopia... why is that ringing a bell?

[Morat20]

Startopia... why is that ringing a bell?

Space station sim-city like thing. I have it at home -- never did get a chance to play it for more than 20 minutes.

[Kail]

I believe the company that made it was founded by ex-Bullfrog members.  It's kind of like Dungeon Keeper, or Evil Genius, one of those "build a sickbay to attract more aliens" kind of games.  I thought it was pretty cool.  Combat sucked, but the rest of it was pretty fun stuff.

[Trippy]

Hmm...I loved Theme Hospital (didn't like Theme Park as much). May try to find a copy of this.

[Yegolev]

Or play it on GameTap?  Why get out of your chair?

[Trippy]

For $9.99 a month when I can buy it for like $7 on Amazon?

[Yegolev]

/shrug

This is clearly well within the realm of personal preference.

[Trippy]

If I was playing other games on GameTap on a regular basis I would do it. But since this would be the only game and I tend to play games on and off, it would end up costing me $50 or more just to play that game.

[Yegolev]

I assumed so; if you look at the base economics you will note a relatively large surcharge on a per-game basis.  Me, I have several things on GameTap that interest me (whether I play them or not), such as Sam & Max, Planescape, maybe even X-COM, and of course the JumpStart games which are easily worth $10 a month to avoid the terrible disc-read performance you encounter from the CD version... this is with any children's edutainment, from my experience, so I'm not singling out that series.  I will agree that it isn't the most economical way to enjoy these games, but I am willing to pay the surcharge for convenience due to the high value of my time.

[Morat20]

I assumed so; if you look at the base economics you will note a relatively large surcharge on a per-game basis.  Me, I have several things on GameTap that interest me (whether I play them or not), such as Sam & Max, Planescape, maybe even X-COM, and of course the JumpStart games which are easily worth $10 a month to avoid the terrible disc-read performance you encounter from the CD version... this is with any children's edutainment, from my experience, so I'm not singling out that series.  I will agree that it isn't the most economical way to enjoy these games, but I am willing to pay the surcharge for convenience due to the high value of my time.

If Gametap's version of X-Com works on modern PC's, I'd probably pay just to get access to that.

[Yegolev]

Of course it does.  Works fine on my XP SP2 install.  They even have manuals in PDF form for most retro games.  I have not found anything that failed to work properly.  Even Space Quest runs fine, and at normal speed, too.

[Morat20]

Of course it does.  Works fine on my XP SP2 install.  They even have manuals in PDF form for most retro games.  I have not found anything that failed to work properly.  Even Space Quest runs fine, and at normal speed, too.

By "works fine" I mean "plays at a normal speed". I have XCom, and I hate using CPU-throttlers to play it.

Still...Space Quest makes my ears perk up. Too bad they don't have Star Flight and Star Flight 2.

[Yegolev]

I don't recall the exact speed of gameplay, but it's not at all like when you run something raw in DOSBox.  Space Quest, I do recall that works at just the right speed, or perhaps agonizingly slow depending on how you look at it.  Avatars back then were slooooooow.

If you want, I can do some actual research, like play the X-COM for a little bit.