Buying old video games - Jill of the Jungle and Commander Keen

Submitted by Patrick Grote on Tue, 06/20/2006 - 2:40pm.

Why do people make it hard to buy things on the internet? Seriously. Buying something from a website, especially digital only material, should be a 4 step process.

Step One: Go to the website.

Step Two: Pick what you want.

Step Three: Pay for it.

Step Four: Download it.

Notice no where in the list is sign up. No where in that list is send money through the postal system. Make something available and people will buy it. Make it hard to buy and people will steal it.

I started on this rant by looking for older shareware games. Somewhere in my browsing I came across an article talking about shareware and it's development, particularly with games. Earlier in my life I reviewed shareware and had a good following. The concept of setting something adrift and teasing people into paying for more was great.

The article brought back memories of old Epic and Apogee games such as Jill of the Jungle and Commander Keen. I wanted to buy them and play them again. Since they're so old and not on the cutting edge I thought it would be a no brainer. I was wrong.

First up was finding where they sold Jill of the Jungle by Epic Games. I found the site and was surprised to see I had to place a postal order for the programs. The page itself is copyrighted 2000, but come on. I should be able to lay down the cash and download them right now. To add insult to injury they want $25.00 for a CD. Forget about buying Kiloblaster you can use. They only sell it on 3.5 inch diskettes.

Next was the search for Commander Keen from Apogee or 3DRealms. This was much easier to find and the page looks newer. Still, I saw the order form and was hopeful since they didn't want to charge me a ton of money for very old games. It says some of their products are available online, but the domain is dead. So, I am now 0 for 2 on products I want to buy and use now. Very frustrating.

Looking over the order forms for each product I can tell you I'd probably by three or four games, because today's games lack the arcade type fun those games have. Alas, I cannot.