#abandonware

unfortunately, outside of a chance encounter with someone selling a physical disc, there is no legal and legitimate way to play it, since it's abandonware (i reached out to the company to confirm this; they legally cannot sell it anymore since the license expired and was never renewed), so we have to rely on the media preservation efforts of past fans.

frankly, i'm obsessed with this game. it got a lot of genuine laughs out of me and committed to the psych universe far more than i was expecting, and though i have many qualms with it, it is those issues that make it so i cannot get it out of my mind. it makes me want to learn how to mod, because there's only a handful of tweaks and additions that would make it the perfect psych gameplay experience that exists in my head.

anyways, loose lips sink ships, so if you'd like to play it yourself, message me and i'll gladly send you the link! you just have to unzip the .rar file and open the "Psych" application in the resulting folder. it'll only work on systems that can run .exe files (sorry my fellow macbook users).

You are correct that they would need to keep staff on payroll to handle maintenance and customer service in case players have problems (e.g. requests for restoring lost special pokemon through server or human error). These staff would not be free by any stretch. That's one of the bigger parts of it for sure, but not the only reason.

Did you know that Standard Support for Windows 7 ended in 2020? Critical patch support ends in 2023. What do you think will happened to old software that ran only on Windows 7? Some of those software publishers stopped support of the Windows 7 version shortly after Microsoft did. There's definitely plenty of Windows 7 abandonware out there - either the publisher no longer exists or they've chosen to stop supporting the product.

Software like the Pokemon Bank back end isn't built in a vacuum. We build these using other software - operating system, middleware, databases, or other stuff. Often, load-bearing software programs that were perfectly reliable in 2014 have become abandonware in 2026 for various and sundry reasons. Beyond this, there's also more and more legal requirements around user data now, which legacy software like Pokemon Bank may not comply with. Bringing it into compliance runs afoul of even more of these abandonware issues, making updating the bank a "not feasible" situation.

Note that this is all speculation. I'm not privy to Pokemon Bank's implementation, toolchain, or anything else specific to them. I am familiar with legacy codebases though, having worked on several older live service games in my time. The number one cause of End of Service is the continued cost to benefit ratio, but dealing with abandonware and compliance issues is an ongoing problem every live service has to (and hates to) deal with.

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mondays are about to get.........weird........

i have acquired a Windows XP computer and filled it up but only the best DOWNLOADABLE WAREZ and CD ROM GAMES.

we got taco bell. bootleg sonic games. spiderman. sinbad... this weird nose thing. we got GLOBY! and much more...

its time to explore a new frontier... the search for beauty continues TONITE

SCORPY'S WEIRD WAREZ

Like, what do you mean I've had NO IDEA I own lost media, and said lost media just happensnto be of one of my favorite childhood games of all time?! How long has this game even been considered lost?! Hello?!

It's weirdly not the first time something like this has happened to me. I had NO IDEA the OG Diner Dash was considered lost media until it was found... AND I'VE I OWNED THAT THE WHOLE TIME, TOO.

I'm seriously starting to wonder if I just so happen to own other 2000s computer game abandonware that's considered lost media. Because this has happened TWICE now. With Diner Dash I had no idea until it was found, but THIS ONE is still considered lost.

I swear to god, when I get back to my parents house and get access to some old ass hardware, that old ass burned CD BETTER still fucking work!

Who knew my father burning the computer games I liked, that we rented from the local library between the years of 2006-2012, so I could keep playing them after we returned them, would long-term accidentally fucking perserve media that would end up being lost. Goes to show piracy is like, actually a good thing in most cases LOL

Honsetly, more than anything, I just wanna replay this goddamn game because I haven't played it in over a decade and it's lived rent free in my head for YEARS. Me doing research on how to play the full game without paying for the old ass company membership (since the company shut down obviously) was the fucking reason I even found out I own the only game in this series that's considered lost media, which mean no code exists for me to play the full entire game lmao. Probably the best luck ever and the worst luck.

Now, I'm not very savy to how the Lost Media community operates, so I have no idea how this works, I don't know who to contact, or how to upload and get this old abandonware perserved. I'm cool if anyone from this side of the Internet wants to contact me privately about this, BUT before anything, I have to make sure this old burned CD still runs, because obviously, I need to back up my claims on this, and since it is on a burned CD, obviously the photo of the disc alone isn't gonna be any legit proof. And I've been on the Internet long enough to know it's not smart of me to say what game this is until I can hopefully get it to run, and am able to prove it.