[Dais]

One of the niftier things that has come of the internet and the natural progression of time is that certain game companies have started to release their older titles (often the most classic ones) for free on the internet, such as Rockstar released GTA 1 & 2 for PC (and Wild Metal Country), or Origin releasing Ultima IV, or Bethesda releasing TES: Arena. There's even a site dedicated to these (Liberated Games), where you can find other neat stuff like Inner Worlds and HOLY SHIT, God of Thunder! Whoa! DOSBox, here I come!

...uh, anyways. Not too long ago, I realized that I've seen a few Japanese companies do the same thing - specifically, Zoom has it's entire (?) X68000 library available for download, and Alice Soft (*cough* *cough*) has released a whole bunch of their older "classics" for free, such as the first four or five games in the Rance series (which includes, and I choicely quote a random poster from the Megatokyo boards: "Kichikuou Rance (which) is quite an epical classic to Ero Games like what FF VII is to RPGs today.")

(There's also Falcom's Vantage Master Online, but I have no idea if that was ever a commercial product)

So the question I've been thinking of asking - one which talented journalist exodus suggested I try posting here - is this: "Does anybody here know of any other Japanese game companies who have released some of their games as free downloads?"

You may see me asking this at several other game sites - it's not exactly a subject on which information would benefit me, but I'm still rather curious about it.



(I found the Megatokyo quote through Google, I swear)

[Carnivol]

[Dais]

That kind of leaves out Falcom's various RPG contributions, dunnit? Although I suppose you left enough wiggle room in the way you stated it, heh.

Man, I wish I could send a message back in time to my eight or nine year old self: "Start learning Japanese, because you're going to end up a [horribly unflattering description of myself] who obsesses about videogames endlessly".

So, uh....since there haven't been a lot of answers here, can anyone point me towards a place there might be answers? A forum where people do importing of PC games or anything like that?