As time marches on, GOG’s Preservation Program and Dreamlist are more important than ever

If you’re into retro games or grew up in the 90s or early 2000s, you’re likely intimately familiar with the phenomenon of trying to replay one of your childhood favorites, only to realize that setting it up on a modern PC is not always an entirely straightforward process. And that’s putting it mildly. The first hurdle is usually the simplest one: can the game even be purchased legally in Current Year? These days, plenty of retro oldies are available on both Steam and GOG, but the ocean is vast, and there are plenty of fish in it – by which I mean, this does not apply to every single game out there. For example, are No One Lives Forever and its sequel on Steam? Well, no. But let’s keep going: let’s say you do find the game of your dreams, but then it keeps crashing ad infinitum, provided it even starts up. Or maybe it doesn’t support modern resolutions, because why would it? There’s also a good chance you’ll need a plethora of fan-made tools and mods to fix the darned thing.

So yes, starting up games from 25+ years ago can sometimes feel like a small-scale science project, when deep down, all we want to do is click New Game and take a trip down memory lane.

Oldies but goodies

Which is pretty much what GOG and its Preservation Program attempts to help with. If a title is listed as a “Good Old Game”, it’s guaranteed to be preserved and made compatible so you can play and enjoy it on your fancy new gaming rig as well – GOG claims that such titles will work on most modern Windows PC setups, that they’re the best versions you can buy on PC, and that they provide tech support for them. Looking through the Preservation Program’s own site, I click on the first game that catches my eye: Dungeon Keeper 2, the classic Bullfrog strategy game about managing an evil underground labyrinth. Now, if you scroll down a bit on its store page, you’ll notice the “What improvements we made to this game” section, which lists a host of fixes and improvements, along with some fairly useful features such as, you know, the ability to even run the thing on Windows 10 and 11. Legendary titles are constantly being added to the program, so the list is only going to keep growing – as it should. I mean, have a look: Dino Crisis and its sequel are back, baby. And did you know that the original Resident Evil 3 and Silent Hill 4: The Room are also up on GOG? Well, now you do.

It never hurts to dream big

But here’s another exciting addendum to the above: GOG’s so-called Dreamlist, which is essentially a community-based system that lets you, me and everyone else vote for the games they’d like to see added to the Preservation Program. In fact, you can add games to the list yourself; it pretty much functions as a successor to GOG’s Community Wishlist. Now, I realize this all sounds too good to be true, and obviously the Dreamlist doesn’t mean that forgotten, abandoned games will suddenly start popping up on GOG on a daily basis. However, you may have seen reports of classic oldie JRPG Breath of Fire IV added to the platform semi-recently by courtesy of the Preservation Program, and for me personally, this was a bit of a “what a time to be alive” moment. It was a realization that old classics that I never would’ve expected to resurface could realistically be brought back. Calling it a Dreamlist does seem apt, however, as it pretty much contains whatever the community puts up on it, even if it never had a PC version to begin with: there’s Shadow Hearts, a series which debuted and died on the PlayStation 2, never to be brought to modern systems, let alone PC. The original Silent Hill – similarly a console-exclusive – is also listed, along with Parasite Eve and countless other titles whose PC versions do certainly fall into that “this really would be like a dream come true” category. I’m sure we all have our personal dream picks, and it’s not my intention to simply list my own (we’d be here all day), but you get my point.

So what’s next?

Obviously, I can’t predict what the future will bring, nor do I claim with unbreakable conviction that the Dreamlist is a 100% sure-fire guarantee that every single title added to it will be revived one day. That would be ever so slightly naive of me. I do, however, think it’s a step in the right direction. I applaud the introduction of a concrete outlet for gamers’ wants; an interface where people can follow exactly which titles are desired, and how many people have voted for them. I’m glad it’s a thing that exists, basically, because if nothing else, it gauges interest. And maybe, just maybe, something good will come out of that. Am I just huffing some hopium here? Possibly.

But let’s be honest: it’s nice to dream a bit sometimes.