r/todayilearned • u/DueNeedleworker5036 • 4h ago

TIL that the Civilizations games (and others) include creator Sid Meier's name in the title because Robin Williams joked that it would help sell more copies of 1987's Sid Meier's Pirates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier#MicroProse

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98% Upvoted

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I spent so many hours raking leaves and shoveling snow to make Civ II the first game I bought with my own money decades ago, I wish it wasn't just abandonware at this point. I wanna see native 5760 x 1080 support on Steam, that would make me so happy

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u/IcyYachtClub 4h ago edited 3h ago

Check out classic reload. You can find it there friend.

Edit to provide the link. It’s a free site

https://classicreload.com/win3x-sid-meiers-civilization-ii.html

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u/johan851 4h ago

This was also the first game I bought. So many hours and so good. The feel of a new world just starting out...

If you search around there is a small community with a few patches. You can find the iso, and patches will fix issues with later versions of Windows, performance, Ghandi aggression, etc.

But yeah, unfortunately not a full remaster.

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u/Pfandfreies_konto 3h ago

I think it was my first pirated game for the original PS1. My dad bought it on a polish basar of all places. (They sold so much pirated stuff back then!)

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u/Taolan13 2h ago

Can we not with referring to finished games as "abandonware"?

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u/Agitated-Acctant 2h ago

Show me where we can buy a new copy and then we'll talk

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u/Taolan13 2h ago

No, we're talking now.

"Abandonware" is unfinished games no longer receiving development or support, most commonly pump and dump "early access" titles. Whether they are still available for sale or not is irrelevant. Edit: Thanks to digital distribution platforms, a huge amount of abandonware is still avaiable for purchase and download.

Old games are not "abandonware" just because you can't buy a new copy.

Civ 2 came out thirty fucking years ago. It got two expansion packs and was even re-released as a bundle twice. That is not "abandonware".

If you really must play it today, emulated and cracked versions exist aplenty. Freeciv, an open source game based on the old civ games, has a ruleset that is identical to civ 2 with both expansions. The full game is also available to play in your web browser via playclassic.games

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u/FoldedDice 2h ago

"Abandonware" is unfinished games no longer receiving development or support, most commonly pump and dump "early access" titles.

This is not the original meaning of the term. At the time when it was coined games received maybe one or two updates if at all and early access didn't even exist yet. Many games were effectively "finished" as soon as they hit the store shelf.

Old games are not "abandonware" just because you can't buy a new copy.

This literally is what it meant, though perhaps the definition has shifted. Originally it referred to a game that was no longer offered for sale by the publisher, which enabled people to claim that it wasn't immoral to redistribute it.

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u/EssexOnAStick 1h ago

"Abandonware" is unfinished games no longer receiving development or support, most commonly pump and dump "early access" titles. Whether they are still available for sale or not is irrelevant.

You may want to consult a dictionary on that one, i.e. Merriam Webster defines it as

software that is no longer sold or supported by its creator

Cambridge dictionary:

software that is no longer produced or supported by the company that originally made it

And I could go on with others.

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u/aldeayeah 1h ago

When the term abandonware was coined (somewhere in the late 90s to early 2000s), it referred to old software that wasn't being distributed and therefore was OK to pirate.

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u/Agitated-Acctant 1h ago

If you really must play it today, emulated and cracked versions exist aplenty. Freeciv, an open source game based on the old civ games, has a ruleset that is identical to civ 2 with both expansions. The full game is also available to play in your web browser via playclassic.games

So what you're saying is the publisher abandoned it? That's compelling

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u/ShittyDBZGuitarRiffs 24m ago

Oh cool where can I buy a new copy?