Saturday Morning Gaming: The Steam and GoG Black Friday Sales!

When I was a kid, there were only but so many ways to get a game. You went to the mall. You looked at the boxes. Maybe you went to Best Buy or Mediaplay and looked at the boxes. “This looks like a cool game…”, you might think. “But it’s $40! That’s more than $70 in inflation adjusted 2020 dollars!” And then, one day, you’d go in and they wouldn’t have the box there anymore. You could ask the guy behind the counter about it, but maybe he’d not be able to get it again.

That game you wanted? It’s gone. When it came to consoles, this wasn’t *THAT* bad because there were (and are) a lot of used stores out there and so if you absolutely positively had to have Super Castlevania IV you could probably find a copy but if you missed Space Quest IV, welp, you were out of luck.

Which brings me to GoG.com and Steam.com. Good Old Games. If you missed Dungeon Keeper, the first one, because… jeez, it was $50! Welp, it’s on sale, 75% off. Get it for $1.49. And play it and say “holy cow, these graphics would have been *AMAZING* in 1997! And… yeah, they were. The gameplay was even better (still holds up, if you ask me). And even if you play it and say “I wish I could play something like this only with graphics that would be good in, oh, 2015”, you can get yourself over to Steam and pick up War for the Overworld for 90% off and pay $3 for it.

Part of the problem, of course, is that when you go back and play something like Space Quest, you find yourself realizing “holy cow, they were doing what they could do with the equipment they had and their choices involved a *LOT* of limitation workarounds.” I mean, if you shell out $2.49 for Space Quest 1+2+3, you will start to play and quickly get frustrated. Wait. Where do I go? What do I do? Is that a countdown timer? Is it real? I need to pause it! I don’t know what to do! CRAP! I’M DEAD!

And while that was an amazing experience when one is a teenager, it’s not that much fun compared to a lot of the more refined gaming experiences we’ve had decades to work on since 1989.

But it might be worth $2.50 to play the game you couldn’t get way back then. Finally. Get it out of your system.

But maybe you’re saying “I don’t want to play something I missed when I was a kid, I just want to play something that I missed because I was very busy in 2015.” If you loved playing Diablo (and the Hellfire expansion!) back in the late 90’s, but don’t think you could go back to it (even if it was only $7.50 to do so), you should check out Grim Dawn (for 75% off) and play the game that makes you feel like you’re playing the Diablo III that Diablo II made you imagine.

Pick up Morrowind for for 75% off (only $3.74!) or Skyrim for 60% off (only $15.99).

GoG does this thing where you buy any Bethesda game, and they’ll throw in Daggerfall for free. I installed it and booted it up last night and thought “holy cow… this is the most amazing character creation ever…” The game does stuff like ask you “in gratitude for services rendered, the emperor gave you a…” and then you pick. Do you want a suit of armor (not a very good one, but, as starting equipment goes, it’s pretty awesome)? Do you want an ebony dagger? A ruby? An amulet? Pick! And you start the game with that. More games should do that!

Anyway, this weekend is the Black Friday sale at Steam and GoG.com and it’s a great opportunity to get the stuff that you miss from your youth (or just stuff that flew under your radar from a few years back) for a deep discount. Check them out and share what games you’ve forgotten you always wanted!

So… what are you playing?