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gtsgreece

id software Doom retail version anniversary re-release

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Here's what bugs me about the gaming industry:

Why is it that I can still buy a Led Zeppelin vinyl record repress yet id Software aren't keeping their old games in print?

Would you love to own a cardboard box replica of the original Doom games? Should we petition? What do you think?

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Digital distribution has eaten away the physical games copy market anyway, of which Doom is available on both Steam and GOG.

 

FWIW, digital distribution has eaten away from physical music (and movies) markets too, so... that's just the way things go.

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Why is it I can buy a shirt promoting a 20+ year old game, but not the game?

 

Different industry that requires hardware to play it. In the case of vinyl, I'd wager its more a piece of art like a mini poster that promotes the band rather than the record. Plus Led Zeppelin fans are old enough to still have their record players.

 

DOOM had a trilogy pack, then had a DOOM 3 Master collection, now its just sold on Steam. It saves money having to press and release it. GTA had a trilogy pack and Sony had rereleases. Even the music industry scales back the decade old rereleases unless they were the biggest albums in favor of the "best ofs." Even movies have two and four packs. My aunt was complaining she couldn't find "Home Alone" just some quad pack with "Home Alone." She refused to buy the Home Alone quad pack for $5 and would have rather paid $15 for the single movie.

 

I miss the PS2 era anthology packs from Capcom, Midway, NeoGeo and Sonic. Now what used to be $20+ all games in 1 pack is now $5 each game online. Although there are $20 sales for a lot of the games.

 

If a retailer had a choice of $60 game that's being actively marketed on TV or a $10 jewel case with zero promotion as the game had its time in the limelight, they'll chose the $60 game. My Walmart still has $20 PS2 games on shelves, I guarantee those aren't rereleases, they're just stuck with it because it never sold.

 

I still remember the Doom screensaver at my local K-Mart was $25 new... then a few months later it was $1. It was an entire shelf of them. I wish I had a picture.

Edited by geo

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31 minutes ago, chungy said:

Digital distribution has eaten away the physical games copy market anyway, of which Doom is available on both Steam and GOG.

 

FWIW, digital distribution has eaten away from physical music (and movies) markets too, so... that's just the way things go.

^ Basically this. Things have simply changed, we live in different times now.

 

But, as a CD music albums collector I must say that if something will probably never be fully replaced by digital distribution is probably going to be this. No digital download will ever be able to replace a glorious CD shelf and especially what you can find inside them in the booklet. But then, perhaps you could say the same for games, I don't know, I just don't feel the same when it comes to games. In their case, I think it was an inevitable change that was for the best ultimately.

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7 hours ago, gtsgreece said:

Here's what bugs me about the gaming industry:

Why is it that I can still buy a Led Zeppelin vinyl record repress yet id Software aren't keeping their old games in print?

Would you love to own a cardboard box replica of the original Doom games? Should we petition? What do you think?

They have done and you can, both in digital and physical forms.

  • Original Doom was mail order, but was then re-released in retail form as Ultimate Doom. Then both Ultimate Doom and Doom II were re-released on CD-ROM for Doom 95.
  • The Id Anthology was released in 1996 containing all the Dooms plus all their other games.
  • The Windows 95 versions were re-released as the Depths of Doom trilogy (1997). Okay, we're still not out of the '90s yet.
  • The Collector's Edition came out in 2001 and then was re-released in 2003.
  • Doom 3 Collector's Edition came out  for Xbox in 2005. Sure, it's a console release, but it did come in a pretty nice box as I recall.
  • Since then we've had a bunch of digital releases, some of which have been obviously targeted at collectors. I'd cite the Id Super Pack as one example. Sure, it's just a digital release, but they made an effort to put something out at least.
  • The BFG Edition (2015) is the latest physical release of the classic games. There's your "Led Zeppelin repress", or at least the closest thing you'll get. Sure, it had a bunch of criticisms because of some of the changes, but it did happen at least. They're still doing physical releases of the original games.

I do think there's probably something to be said for the idea of a true retro re-release. There's a bunch of collectors out there who would probably love something like that - I certainly would. If they were to do anything, putting out a re-release of the id Anthology would be the obvious move. That thing is legendary at this point, and has been for a while.

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18 minutes ago, fraggle said:
  • The BFG Edition (2015) is the latest physical release of the classic games. There's your "Led Zeppelin repress", or at least the closest thing you'll get. Sure, it had a bunch of criticisms because of some of the changes, but it did happen at least. They're still doing physical releases of the original games.

I do think there's probably something to be said for the idea of a true retro re-release. There's a bunch of collectors out there who would probably love something like that - I certainly would. If they were to do anything, putting out a re-release of the id Anthology would be the obvious move. That thing is legendary at this point, and has been for a while.

The BFG Edition is also effectively console-only if you want a physical release. One technically exists for PC, but the disc is nothing more than the Steam installer and you can input a product key so that Steam will allow you to download the game.

 

I actually do like physical releases for collection too, it's a shame that it's becoming rare. Perhaps not so rare in music, but even then, most stuff is available in DRM-free lossless so I don't usually reach for buying a CD unless either it's for a collector's item (especially signed copies), or the DRM-free lossless version doesn't exist.

 

PC games frequently have a joke of a retail box. The discs containing only the Steam installer is distressingly common.

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11 minutes ago, chungy said:

The BFG Edition is also effectively console-only if you want a physical release. One technically exists for PC, but the disc is nothing more than the Steam installer and you can input a product key so that Steam will allow you to download the game.

 

I actually do like physical releases for collection too, it's a shame that it's becoming rare. Perhaps not so rare in music, but even then, most stuff is available in DRM-free lossless so I don't usually reach for buying a CD unless either it's for a collector's item (especially signed copies), or the DRM-free lossless version doesn't exist.

 

PC games frequently have a joke of a retail box. The discs containing only the Steam installer is distressingly common.

Nope, it has the game packaged on the disc. Please stop spreading misinformation about how Steam installers work.

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In both console and pc games now, even if there's a game on the disc you end up downloading a new one in patches soon afterwards

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Yes and no. Game patches on all current systems are delta encoded in some form on transfer, so you only download the difference after install. Some games don't handle this particularly well, however, depending on how their assets work.

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52 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Yes and no. Game patches on all current systems are delta encoded in some form on transfer, so you only download the difference after install. Some games don't handle this particularly well, however, depending on how their assets work.

And then some physical PC games contain literally just a 5mb executable that launches Steam. Metal Gear Solid 5 is the first that comes to mind.

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7 minutes ago, cybdmn said:

In germany there was a release on CD in a gaming mag in 2016.

 

http://ogdb.eu/index.php?section=compilation&compid=4266

 

It contains Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 on disc. Only thing is, you need a password to install, which you could just get for a limited time. But according to the password i got, and the process to get it, i think there is only one password for all.

 

That's pretty cool. Was it censored for Germany? 

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My point is.. I just want these boxes on my bookshelf. Would it cost id software so much to replicate them, cds floppies booklets cards et all?

image.jpg

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5 hours ago, Jon said:

 

That's pretty cool. Was it censored for Germany? 

According to the infos in the OGDB not especially for germany. From what it says there, these are the BFG edition cuts. But i will check that later by myself.

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I checked both files, the infos on the OGDB are correct. Both WADs have the BFG edition cuts. But these are not the BFG edition WADS.

 

These are the hashes:

 

DOOM.WAD

SHA-1:    117015379C529573510BE08CF59810AA10BB934E

SHA-256: 76A22247D76EE9710595F7EE2D8DDED2CE9785FB49287A9AC6348544B858E6F9

 

DOOM2.WAD

SHA-1:    97573AAF26957099ED45E61D81A0A1A3

SHA-256: F1B6BA94352D53F646B67C01D2DA88C5C40E3179

 

I just compared them to the BFG IWADs, had no chance to compare them with the GOG release IWADs atm, for i had no windows machine to install them. Will check that maybe later.

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GOG releases are just the final DOS versions, unmodified.

 

And that's interesting, doesn't match any of the IWADs I knew about.

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This sounds very interesting. Is anyone more familiar with this particular DVD? I wonder how these versions of WAD's differs. Besides the WAD's, what other files does it contain? Any change of finding a copy of the disc today?

 

I found a couple of links related to it:

 

An article about the discs contained with the mag on the official website where it's also possible to download a DVD inlay: http://www.pcgames.de/PC-Games-Brands-19921/News/PC-Games-02-16-mit-Titelstory-Doom-XXL-Poster-Doom-1-und-2-als-Vollversion-1184053/

 

And a website where you can preview the first five pages of the mag: http://epaper.pcgames.de/de/profiles/5c3b36d592b7/editions/1f2c209ae0d26cfc4451/preview_pages

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People like vinyl because either they like to hunt down an album they like in the record store (something that one could do with old games on Ebay, or if any still exist, a used software store) or because they believe the analog sound of a re-release on vinyl is subjectively better or more exciting. Games never really benefited from the "analogue-ness" of the media they were stored on. If anything, the more analog the media, the worse shape you'd potentially be in if you didn't store the game right. And the game wouldn't play "warmer" it would just be corrupted bits on a scratched CD or de-magnetized floppy.

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They won't release a 1:1 copy of the old games because they could not sell enough quantities.
- Newcomer are not attracted by a DOS Game (And as a replica, any re-release MUST be the DOS version...)

- every -at least- semi-hardcore-doomer i know already has a copy of the original and/or CE etc...

I agree with Fraggle: Anthology Re-Release would be nice , but I am afraid that Bethseda would spoil it and
mix it with some of their new shit...:-)

 

BTW and a little bit OT: modern vinyl does not sound as good as it could because it is  a copy from a
digital master. To make a good vinyl, it is crucial to have analogue technologies all the way from recording, mixing to
mastering (AAA recording). Nobody does that nowadays.

 

BTW2 and even more OT: [FeedingTheTrollMode] Bob Ludwig and Bob Clearmountain clearly stated, that the CD
is by far the better sounding, superior medium.[/FeedingTheTrollMode]

 

 

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On 3/2/2018 at 6:22 AM, insertwackynamehere said:

People like vinyl because either they like to hunt down an album they like in the record store (something that one could do with old games on Ebay, or if any still exist, a used software store) or because they believe the analog sound of a re-release on vinyl is subjectively better or more exciting.

 

Well there obviously is a difference in sound. Vinyls are particularly amazing for various classic reissues, they do the sound more justice than CDs (also talking from my experience here).

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vinyls doesn't have better sound quality than CDs do, per se (in fact, it's a very easily degradable format, because everytime it's played, the needle wears down the grooves), but it is an analog medium as opposed to CD being a digital medium, which means that the master tracks that goes on the records are different and, most importantly, cannot exceed a certain level of volume.

 

CDs and pretty much any digital medium released by record companies nowadays have very loud masters, because a CD and media player doesn't care how loud the tracks are, they can play the files just fine. vinyls, however, cannot, so the masters on the records can be seen as objectively better than what you'd get on iTunes, because they aren't extremely loud and clipping.

 

there's also the "feel" of vinyl records. tiny CDs in their plastic cases just aren't as exciting as huge, beautifully printed vinyl covers are, and it definitely looks more impressive to have a shelf filled with vinyls than it is with CDs, even though vinyls are much more brittle things than CDs are, as the covers can very easily get damaged, as well as the discs themselves, by improperly storing them.

 

tl;dr vinyls doesn't sound "better" than CDs, but the analog medium means that it gets better masters than CDs and digital distribution does, and thus sounds better than other forms of distribution because of it.

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Yeah, also the compression wars or whatever regarding CDs’ mastering in which people actually wanted smaller dynamic range and louder sounding music.

 

Anyway my point wasn’t to start an argument about vinyl, I don’t care one way or the other since I like buying vinyl for fun but also just listen to Spotify for convenience. My point was that buying old games is more one dimensional in that the collectibility part is there, but there is pretty much no value in the older mediums themselves on account of games being digital and the more analogue the medium, the more chance the medium just became corrupted which doesn’t make the game have more character, just instead not work.

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Haha here we go into nonsense audiophile land

 

when you talk about loudness what's important is the dynamic range 

 

CDs have a much larger potential dynamic range than vinyl but in practise hardly any of that range is used.

 

its true that the extreme brick wall mastering on some digital releases is not possible on a vinyl pressing, but it doesn't really matter as it's still perfectly possible to make a really bad, loud, low-nuance vinyl master. 

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My point was about the preferences people had regarding CD masters and how there was a loudness war by purposefully over-compressing during the era of CDs, not about the technical capabilities of the CD versus the record. But my real point was that games don't benefit from analogue storage at all objectively whereas vinyl at least has a subjective appeal. Which cuts out half of the reason to want an old release of a game in the physical sense.

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Yes. And yes. Doom was never in analog 

 

honestly those pining for the deICE installer... 

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While it was never in analog, a floppy disk is a very analog method of digital data distribution compared to a downloadable copy, however the antiquity of the medium offers nothing except more potential for data loss. Doom and other video games are digital data which has to be reproduced without error, whereas magnetic mediums are analog which offers only shortcomings compared to purely digital distribution methods for things that have zero error tolerance and no subjective difference in quality based on storage medium.

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The pits on a CD are roughly as "analog" as the tracks on a floppy; just much smaller. But analog is really the wrong word here. In both cases they encode a 1 or a 0,  if a reading isn't clearly one or the other you don't have another value, you just have uncertainty about the value.

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Yeah, you know I guess you are right. Everything is going to be an error-prone physical process at some point and I'm conflating the use of magnetic tape for analog storage in certain instances with the notion that all magnetic tape storage is analog. Still my main point stands which is that older media is not useful beyond collectability for games or software.

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On 2/26/2018 at 8:45 PM, cybdmn said:

I checked both files, the infos on the OGDB are correct. Both WADs have the BFG edition cuts. But these are not the BFG edition WADS.

 

These are the hashes:

 

DOOM.WAD

SHA-1:    117015379C529573510BE08CF59810AA10BB934E

SHA-256: 76A22247D76EE9710595F7EE2D8DDED2CE9785FB49287A9AC6348544B858E6F9

 

DOOM2.WAD

SHA-1:    97573AAF26957099ED45E61D81A0A1A3

SHA-256: F1B6BA94352D53F646B67C01D2DA88C5C40E3179

 

I just compared them to the BFG IWADs, had no chance to compare them with the GOG release IWADs atm, for i had no windows machine to install them. Will check that maybe later.

The DOOM.WAD looks to be PSN version https://doomwiki.org/wiki/DOOM.WAD . For the DOOM2.WAD you should generate a patch to be included in https://github.com/Doom-Utils/iwad-patches 

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Yeah, I find it highly irrational to prefer buying CD copies, especially now that computers lack CD drives, or are extremely unreliable. Just buy the games from GOG or (failing that, for example see Doom 3) from Steam.

 

I consider it much better to praise the game and its authors by buying merchandise. T-shirts, figurines, books seem more useful than oversized boxes holding an unusable CD, a registration form, a warranty notice and a thinner and thinner booklet.

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