is there a way to purchase it at retail/online or is it freely available for download off a publish website? if its freely available on a publisher website download the darn thing as it is free. There are some special cases like UT99, it was freely available for a while, then was placed onto Steam for purchase making it so it wasnt free anymore.

Like I said, it depends on the game. But I do not consider downloadin g for example a GTA game morally lacking when the developers and studio are already swimming in a pile of dough. There is no such thing as a Wii, PS3 or 360 emulator though, heck they`re still working on a Ps2 one and I'm not sure if there is even a pirating scene with the Ps3 and the Wii considering their unique architecture.

That is NOT true. It is only free when the publisher/developer says so. Only abandonware sites use what you said as an excuse.

Now, if the game is not on sale anywhere, then I would guess it's not terrible to torrent it. But that is only on such cases. Games like Fallout, Planescape: Torment, etc... are all still being sold somewhere.

Even today I can still walk to a store and see a Fallout pack or a budget line with some of the best old PC games.

Planescape: Torment is being sold on Gametap. It's just too bad I can't get it there because it's NA only.

That's true, and I'm personally not one of those guys that's going to get all bent out of shape if you 'pirate' these old titles. (Especially if you purchased the games at some point in the past.) And of course if the developer offers a game for download for free there's absolutely nobody that can give you crap about downloading the game. (Ground Control, anybody?)

The thing that really appeals to me here is that a lot of the games are going to be re-tooled to work on newer operating systems. I remember trying to play System Shock 2 on XP about three months ago and I just gave up because I had so many issues with getting it to run, I just gave up.

With this, I don't need to deal with any crappy DRM and (hopefully) any issues with Vista or XP working with these old games.

Freespace is legal to give to anybody lol. At least with Freespace 2, the contract states that you can copy the disks and give them to others.

Can you give me a source on that one? There's a difference between "no legal action is taken against you" and "this is a legal activity".

It's not true, it's just what the abandonware site say to get more hit, like the rom site that tell you it's legal to download them and keep them for 24 hour on your computer, again, not true.

Aye, the last time I read up on the legality of this issue, all I found was that it was legal to make a copy if you already owned a legit copy of the game. I'd assume this applies to any copy, whether on disc or on your HD. I'm not too concerned with the specifics, since I don't steal games anyways.

But cool about that site. Assuming it's a legit site, I might check it out sometime.

Great! I am going to buy both fallouts on that site.

There plenty of free games here:
http://www.the-underdogs.info/index.php
and on gametap as well.