Fall 2009 Design Contest

[SilentThief]

If you search for "abandonware unlimited adventures", you'll find it. The company that made FRUA is now dissolved and out of business like 18 to 20 years ago (yeah it has been that long!!! ), so I don't think it would be an illegal download. You could find the manual as a download as well.

ST

[Dinonykos]

Well, hmm... The thing is that another company may hold the rights for selling FRUA...
You may be right, though.
There are other old games which have officially become freeware, but there are also examples for games almost as old as FRUA which are still sold by companies.

One thing I like so much about DC is that you do not have to think about such problems, and furthermore it allows to create stand-alone adventures...

[manikus]

While I'm not opposed to someone getting FRUA from an abandonware site or fram a friend in the FRUA forum, it is not abandonware - it's just not sold anymore.

SSI did not fold 18 to 20 years ago, since that's before FRUA came out. They did not go defunct, either, but were bought up by a bigger fish. SSI was bought by Mindscape in 1994, but continued to produce games until 2001 when it was bought by Ubisoft and the brand retired.

As I'm one of the people who has contacted Ubisoft about FRUA, not to mention WotC about 1e AD&D, I can safely say that Ubisoft does not view FRUA as abandonware, but they don't view it as anything else. Hasbro owns the rights AD&D and theyr'e not licensing them to Ubisoft, nor are they renewing the license to Ubisoft so that it can sell FRUA. I got the impression from talking with them (Ubisoft) that they don't want to say anything about it (FRUA) because they can't make money off of it, or lose money off of it. In other words, if you're not trying to make money off of it, they don't really care.

Now, I know that there were some CD compilations sold in the early 2000's that had FRUA along with other GoldBox games and one where there were also the Eye of the Beholder games. These compilations have nothing to do with Ubisoft as far as I can tell.

So, if you want to play the GoldBox games, or FRUA, I say go for it. If you need a link to a good site that one of our community members runs, PM me and I'll send the link to you.

[Dinonykos]

Thanks for the precise explanation, Manikus.

[manikus]

Just one of the many services I offer.