to this end there’s a really nice genesis port of cave story that mostly seems 1:1 with the pc original
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Cave Story was the game that taught me how to apply a translation patch 
it was and still is an incredible labor of love by one person, given to the world for free fuck nicalis HUZZAH
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Friday Night Funkin was pretty huge amongst youth who do not know they yearn for DDR
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I liked Iji too.
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this is interesting. what makes Deltarune shareware? the fact that chapter 1&2 are labeled a “demo” on steam? i’m extremely deep into old mac gaming where shareware is just the de facto standard, and deltarune is pretty unlike any of the shareware i encounter (in its current form).
there’s no option to pay on steam or itch.io. the “upcoming paid release” of chapters 3-5 doesn’t currently exist - and hypothetically, might never exist, or plans to charge for it might change. at any rate, is it even the same game?
i’d say Deltarune chapters 1-2 are freeware. there’s no way to pay for them that i can see, no limited functionality, no persuasion to make you pay, no note to send an envelope with 5 or 10 dollars in it, etc. (or is there? i am not aware of such a pressure in the game or its accompanying documentation)
if you consider chapters 1-5 to be a single game, then if the later chapters do come out and are paid, i’d say maybe that counts as shareware… but how is it shareware now?
edit: the itch.io does say this:
which, hmmm. but the soundtrack is a separate thing. i feel like chapters 1&2 are pretty solidly freeware. but maybe you have a different conception of shareware/freeware than me.
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Two possible stupid answers
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It’s shareware because you’re meant to share it.
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Is freeware even free if it only gets played once a day?
i think as a complete collection of chapters, with a paid chapters 3-5, it makes sense. Doom (1993) provided an episode of the full game as shareware, but the distinction to me there is that the paid version was already available, such that the shareware release was a direct pipeline to a purchase
the temporal logistics at play here complicate that, for me
edit: oh shit apparently the current plan is for there to eventually be 7 chapters
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Also been thinking about this lately. Feels like the spirit of “indie” has been lost long ago. Not fair to make people work for free, but I’m also not sure that venture capital meddling and “who you know” are beacons for what it’s supposed to represent.
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Well, I think shareware sounded more generous than “promotional items” lol. (No hate to Deltarune, I like it, but I can’t help but be put off by the unspecific “free until it won’t be” model.)*
Though weren’t there a good number of shareware coming out well in advance of the full game? I know the Duke 3D shareware was about six months in advance, and I’m sure there are at least a few that ended up never getting a full release.
*
This is how much of the Tigsource crowd ended up like on reflection. Making a name for yourself, getting some networking on before going commercial. I remember feeling a little sore about it.
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I wonder if he scored
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absolutely, although in any case you could care to mention, the games were quite upfront about being shareware and in some way compelling you to purchase the game, Coming Soon, etc. deltarune doesn’t really do this outside of like, calling what’s been released “chapters” and promising later chapters, unless i’m wrong and it does somewhere. but i haven’t seen it…
so, maybe if deltarune self-classified as shareware.
at any rate, there’s two bits (at least) in motion there:
is deltarune chapter 1 (&/or 2) shareware right now?
will deltarune (hypothetical future object) be shareware as a whole?
It’s a figure of speech! But I do think it would be more honest if it called itself a demo or shareware but maybe it will all come out for free and I’ll have egg on my face!
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it’s an interesting proposal regardless of intent, but i don’t mean to irritate. i always post and then make many edits, and i had some in mind addressing your first paragraph, but i should really try and finish what i’m saying before i actually post it lol
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I associate shareware with getting a CD full of demos in the mail via the Mac Addict magazine. Also the shareware version of Escape Velocity Override where a parrot in a spaceship would hunt you down if you never registered your shareware.
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the singing in tower of latria kind of sounding like the opening to space ghost coast to coast
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Whenever I think that exciting new independent/homebrew games may be a thing of the past and all we have aside from tiny experimental things are “indie” games that start with logos for publishers and funding sources, a new release comes along and surprises me.
(Having a publisher or grant or investor or significant crowdfunding doesn’t mean a game isn’t good but it does represent a different category for me and generally indicates that the game is going to be slick, safe, and hold few genuine surprises beyond maybe a clever gimmick that’s communicated from the start.)
I’m somewhat ambivalent about what it means to release a game as freeware/pay what you want/next to nothing in modern times, but many of my favorite games have always been those that don’t seem to have taken into account whether a large (or any) paying audience exists during development, regardless of whether the game is actually released for free.
But there are still great games with significant scope released for free. Here are a couple examples that members of this forum are likely familiar with but that I can’t help mentioning anyway:
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I can’t jump very high…
Cap’n Hector.
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the copy protection for EV: Nova on Mac is so onerous and complicated, it still hasn’t been (100%) cracked - though impressive RE work has been done on the matter https://macintoshgarden.org/forum/someone-figured-out-how-ambrosia-registration-works
there are numerous registration codes and attendant info on the internet, but each registration set is also tied to a specific day (when that code was initially activated), so you have to set the clock on your Mac back to some 2001 date or whenever the person who bought the code you’re using activated it, turn off networking (to prevent the Ambrosia registration software from phoning home… which, i don’t even know what it’d be phoning home to at this point, since Ambrosia is kaput, but i digress…), and then you also have to lock the (insivible, natch) preferences file the registration stashes away in your System Folder because if you try to load the game again after a reboot, it does some kind of additional date check and will actually unregister the game somehow.
andrew welch actually released a crack tool for his former company a few years ago, but it seems to only run on Intel Mac OS X, which i’m not currently able to access whatsoever so I haven’t gotten to test it yet, but i don’t think it’d do anything more that generate new keys… actually now i’m looking for it on Macintosh Garden and having a real bear of a time finding the crack tool. fudge.
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https://macintoshgarden.org/games/decoder-ring
ok finally found it
anyone got an Intel Mac they can try loading this on?
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