To gamers too young to have played the 1996 original, the excitement--and controversy---surrounding Fallout 3 might be a bit baffling. Now those wondering what all the fuss is about have a chance to play the first Fallout without having to track down a battered copy on eBay.

　　This week, Poland-based publisher CD Projekt announced the launch of a new online store at GOG.com, which stands for Good Old Games. As the name suggests, the online store will offer a variety of classic PC games for download, ranging in price from $5.99 to $9.99. Though most were released in the Windows 95/98 era, all games are guaranteed to work with Windows XP and Vista, and will not be restricted by digital rights management (DRM) software.

　　"Our main goal is to create a user-friendly site with the best classic PC games for a price that might be considered impossible to achieve," said GOG.com managing director Adam Oldakowski in a statement. "The people behind GOG.com are gamers, and we all know how difficult it is to find a lot of classic games. So we've started building a great games catalogue, gotten rid of the copy protection that gamers hate so much, optimized the games to work on modern operating systems, and made them cheap."

　　In addition to the original Fallout and its 1997 sequel--created by many current members of Obsidian Software (Alpha Protocol)--GOG.com will offer several other games when it launches in September, including MDK, Sacrifice, Freespace 2, and TOCA Race Driver 3. On August 1, the site will enter a closed beta. Those who wish to participate can sign up at the site for a chance to be selected.