So you are interested in how our project came to be? Well, we are glad you are here and interested in our work. We want to lay down in very detail the aims, goals as well as our thought process behind this site, so it´s probably best to take a coffee and read this page well.
TLTR; Short Version for the lazy ones:
The goal of this project is to preserve old games by removing unnecessary copy protection, teach you about useful tools, and bring you game reviews in the future. Our patches are small, quick to download, and integrate seamlessly with existing games. Importantly, they contain no copyrighted content, ensuring full legal compliance. Users must own the original game to apply the patches, maintaining respect for intellectual property laws.
Our Incentive:
As gamers at heart we see every game as a unique piece of art, no matter if the game itself is bad or good. Every game is the output of creative work from individual people at the time of its creation. We believe that art deserves to be preserved and protected, as this enables future generations to enjoy it as much as we did back then when those titles first appeared on the market. Many of these games can still be enjoyed with your children. Such quality games deserve your time as much as they did deserve it back then.
The Copy Protection of these games is a statement of their time. Most games asked the player some word from the manual or from another item shipped with the game box. This form of Copy Protection was very effective back then, because printers and photo copiers have mostly been unavailable to the general public at large. Nowadays however, every school kid possesses his or her own cell phone, we have the Internet and a manual can easily be shared as a PDF File. Because of this, these protection checks do not effectively protect the game anymore – they became more of an annoyance hindering people from getting into DOS Games in the first place. By removing these checks, we free the games from this burden so that they can be enjoyed again by a new audience of gamers.
We designed our patches in a way that no copyrighted material is included. We do this by using xDelta Differantial Patches. Only the changes we made to the game are included in the file – nothing else. Without you owning a copy of the game, each and every one of our patches is 100% useless. We do not believe in Abandonware and Freeloaders. We fully expect you to purchase titles from EBay as we ourselves do too and then apply our Patches for Original Games to the game. In some cases the Original Game might not be available for purchase anymore. In such a case an Abandonware Site can proof useful, but we suggest to still rather check archive.org for a Floppy Image first.
The second option is you digitally purchase your Game from GOG and then apply our patch on it. We handcrafted these GOG Patches for the corresponding Version GOG is selling – you find them in our GOG Games Patches Section.
Our Goal – Filling the Gap:
We are not an army and we for sure can not patch each and every game out there. The good thing is: That is not even necessary! As you might know, the Scene cracked most games back in the day and a patch for your game can most of the time easily be found online somewhere. But they sure did not crack all games due to multiple reasons which are not necessary to explain in detail in this place.
Thus, we follow a Patching Strategy which we want to lay down below:
A proper Crack for the game is available in public and is easily accessible | We will not release a patch if we catch the crack before we conduct our reversing. |
The game is being sold on GOG but has the Copy Protection still intact | We will only release a GOG Patch for the corresponding Version GOG is selling. We will usually not do an “Original Game” Patch in this case, as we want you to conduct the Digital Purchase Option that is being made available to you. |
A proper Crack for the game is only available as a TSR Loader | We will replace the TSR Loader by a proper File Crack to ensure compatibility with DOSBox. |
A proper Crack for the game exists but its for an older Version | We will attempt to patch the latest Version. |
A Crack for the game exists but it is bogus | We will attempt to release a properly patched Version. |
A proper Crack for the game exists but can hardly be found on the internet anymore | We will release the Crack as an xDelta Differential Patch and Credit the Cracker. |
Please expect the Patching Strategy to be adapted and changed as we go along.
We honor game collectors not pirates and our patches are designed exactly in such a way that we believe this speaks for itself.
If you are a Copyright Owner and still have a problem with an xDelta Patch of your Game being available – fire us an E-Mail and we will remove it immediately – no questions asked. It is your art, you decide what to do with it. But we honestly believe you agree that our way is a good one to go forward. After all, besides money, what you want as a developer is taking pride in your work. You take pride in your work if people enjoy it. Easy math, right?
Our Vision:
The Patches are only the groundwork for the page. We plan to add a multitude of content, such as Game Reviews (maybe even in the form of Videos), useful stuff to know in DOS as well as explaining the usage of useful tools and more. Because we do this in our free time, it might take a while – but we are just starting out. :)
There will even more be added to this About Page in the coming weeks, but we wanted to have the base facts layed out as fast as possible.
I hope you enjoy the visit on our site
Eric