GOG Celebrates 17th Anniversary with Fresh Additions to Its Preservation Program

GOG (originally Good Old Games) is marking its 17th anniversary by expanding its Preservation Program, bringing a new set of classic games back to life for modern players.

Owned by Polish company CD Projekt, the store has bundled in a mix of RPGs, brawlers, horror adventures, strategy titles, and space combat sims, all DRM-free, fully tested, and updated to run on today’s systems.

What’s New in the Preservation Lineup?

The latest additions include some heavy hitters alongside niche cult favorites, each over 15 years old:

• Gothic 1 – $5 (75% off), 911 MB in size

• Gothic 2 Gold Edition – $5 (75% off), 2.3 GB

• Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness – $1 (80% off), 1.1 GB

• Mortal Kombat Trilogy – $6.5 (35% off), 224 MB

• Freespace 2 – $10, 1.4 GB

• XIII Century: Gold Edition – $0.74 (85% off), 1.8 GB

• Stranglehold – $2 (80% off), 11.9 GB

Each of these titles has been polished under the GOG Preservation Program, which focuses on keeping games not just available, but also stable and optimized for modern operating systems.

Image: Gothic 1 and Freespace 2

Why These Classics Matter

Take Gothic 1 and 2, for example. Developed by Piranha Bytes, these action RPGs are widely recognized as pillars of the “Eurojank” legacy, rough around the edges but packed with atmosphere, faction-driven choices, and storytelling that pulled players deep into their medieval fantasy world. Gothic 2 even earned PC Gamer’s Best Role-Playing Game award back in 2003.

On the other side of the spectrum, you’ve got Mortal Kombat Trilogy, a fan dream when it launched in 1996, uniting every fighter and stage from the first three MK titles. It wasn’t just a fighting game; it was the fighting anthology, complete with new mechanics like Aggressor mode and Brutality finishers.

Meanwhile, Freespace 2, often hailed as one of the greatest space combat simulators of all time, brought cinematic dogfighting and large-scale storytelling that few games have matched even decades later. According to GameSpot, it remains a landmark in its genre.

For real-time strategy (RTS) enthusiasts, XIII Century: Gold Edition might be a gem worth rediscovering. Its large-scale medieval battles offered realism and tactical depth, giving players something closer to reenacting history than commanding fantasy troops.

And then there’s Stranglehold, John Woo’s cinematic gun-fu shooter starring Chow Yun-Fat as Inspector Tequila. While it didn’t become a massive franchise, it pioneered environmental destruction and remains a cult hit for action fans.

For those of us who grew up with these games, or maybe missed them the first time, this is a chance to either revisit old memories or dive into a slice of gaming history.

GOG summed it up perfectly in its anniversary message: let’s keep making games live forever.