Let me be clear, I have known of the group for a little while. However amongst fully sitting down to finally browse their catalog. I will say, they have a lot of great niche games. As well as the usual known titles. With a little handful of indie titles to. I sorted through their listings to see everything through the site was fairly priced. One thing that is a double edged sword with any digital distribution site is what feels like shovel-ware. Sometimes, without a second glance you see more of hentai games that copy-paste the same literal elements. Like those slide tile ones on the store front. So for some that is not a problem and they just buy them up to collect the themes. For whatever reason. Other places like GOG. We see a lot of indie titles. Which usually is not a issue. As yesterdays’ games were today’s indie distributed titles. However for the longest besides Steam’s lackluster handling of retro lacked quality control much like GOG’s pretty solid handling. As it was/is their bread and butter. This came up more recently when the platform it was a gamble due to certain games act wonky without certain DRM(for some silly reason). So with that GOG offered a more then generous refund policy.
Over the years I have supported GOG for the longest. So much so I promote whenever I see a genuinely a solid deal still. However I personally feel that GOG needs competition. Not to shot a fire under them, just a alternative. A company who also loves and adores the classics like anyone else. Offering exclusives, or hard to find titles. Some so niche you would not expect to see them surface to the light again. I am a huge follower of the DRM-free practice. As well as any company whom respectfully offers Freeware, when a game is legit Free-ware and not “profit-a-terr” off of something that was given free a while ago.I provided a list below of their free offerings currently as a nice incentive to check out the site. As the games are DRM-Free, smooth and easy downloads with fully wrapped dos-box titles. Some of these games are also provided on GOG. However a few aren’t. The site offers some nice indie titles like Dread Templar, and FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage.
Arguments of how retro games should just be free always spew from the mouths of people whom for whatever reason think maintaining games is a process that is free for those whom have to do this sort of thing as a living. That magically those servers of sites that store the games isos, or files is free. Some point or another they need money, and sometimes people do pay. So if those persons whom use those sites often do help support a bootleg site, then why can they not pay a couple of bucks for a few games off and on that they want to play and just keep? a vicious cycle. Then argue that they should not have to pay for something, when no matter what, a price is paid. Silly right? With rights holders still wishing to make money off of their art/works. I tend to personally lean towards if a artist wants to express their right to want to eat. Or make profit off of a minimal profit. Then feed those digital Andy Warhol or Pablo Picasso.
Prices range from 2.99 USD, all the way up to 19.99 regularly for certain indie titles. Which to me is fine. The whole “Abandonware” thing to me was always bogus as it was more so a name pirates gave to games which they deemed or just made up as “abandoned works”. Which really the term of Freeware is the right name, I guess it does not sound as cool to them. I respect and hype up more sites like Zoom+GOG for actually understanding how important it is to ACTUALLY preserve works. Which was always protecting the works, making sure they work 100% for a consumer to enjoy. Whether you are more so just paying for someone’s time to make sure it just works on your Linux, Windows, or iOS device. Sure, there plenty of community members in the emulation scene who do this sort of thing out of their spare time for whatever platform. Ironically a margin line bit better then those whom do the work on Steam’s side(plus some of GOG’s recent releases with a few titles sadly just not working correctly on or with Windows 10). With a few exceptions of titles off and on just working on there. It is a work of labor whether you choose to do this sort of thing as a weekend warrior or as a company which offers it all for a fair price, and gives you a nice means to store your copies YOU own. Personally, I prefer supporting others who did the work for me, as I am a lazy jerk, who just wants to play the games offered, not have to set up DGVooDoo2, then find a wrapper, then load up some darn thumb drive for my Firestick. It is all tiring. When I just can click, download, and play it with it all wrapped and nicely packaged. I digress.
You can check out the games through the links I nicely prepared for you below. A big thank you to the email staff for providing me a wonderfully nice list of their current free titles on the site. Which I ran through real quick and make sure I could provide those to allow you to check out the site.
Free Games:
Alien Carnage – Halloween Harry
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/alien-carnage-halloween-harry
Arctic Adventure
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/arctic-adventure
Bio Menace
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/bio-menace
Dark Ages
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/dark-ages
Death Rally
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/death-rally
Major Stryker
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/major-stryker
Monuments of Mars
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/monuments-of-mars
Pharaoh’s Tomb
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/pharaohs-tomb
POSTAL: Classic and Uncut
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/postal-classic-and-uncut
Shadow Warrior: Classic and Complete
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/shadow-warrior-classic-and-complete
StarGunner
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/stargunner
Warzone 2100
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/warzone-2100
Xenophage: Alien Bloodsport
https://www.zoom-platform.com/product/xenophage-alien-bloodsport
In Closing, I can not wait to see what else they can add to the site in the future. As It is a nice alternative to other sites. Which now seem to be focused more on indie titles then retro at the moment. Which is fine, but for myself I tend to lean towards retro digital games.
