Kiss: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child

The old Need For Speed games. NFS Porsche would be an instant buy for me. But the licensing for the cars has long since expired and it's not commercially viable to re-license them. The soundtrack is probably an issue also.

DITTO

- Halo Combat Evolved
- Halo 2
There was apparently a Shin Megami Tensei or Shin Megami Tensei: Persona game that was released on PC in Japan.

So as the game is circumnavigating the world of Legal Hell, along its journey it finds itself - by pure chance - right next to the gOg catalog and decides to waltz right in?

Sounds good to me. "Oh, hey gOg, how's it going? Wait, you got System Shock 2 ?!?"

Many console exclusives, old & new.

No. NO. NOOOOO!

I'm sure ThomNG is doing everything in his power to get this license from Microsoft (ok, I'm not sure - but hoping ;)

The NOLF games are well known to basically be held back by legal issues. Legal issues can get sorted out over time by the people involved actually caring enough to want to resolve them on all sides and coming together to find a mutually agreeable solution, so I wouldn't come close to saying that seeing NOLF show up here on GOG in the future is impossible. It's entirely possible.

I do not know anything about the other games mentioned and what their official status/story is, however the bottom line about any game coming here is whether the intellectual property owners all combined have a financial interest in bringing a game back from the dead and are willing to put some priority on resolving any legal issues, technical issues or other in order to make it happen. As such it is theoretically possible to see just about any game ever made show up on GOG if it fits into a category of things that GOG actually sells and meets their other criterion or if GOG's criterion changes over time to embrace other games that do not presently qualify for potential sale here.

In essence, everything is malleable. Some games are more likely to show up here than others and some are much less likely but the likelihood of any particular title showing up here is never 0% or 100% - there is always a possibility in the future of anything showing up here. Despite how unlikely it seems that a particular game might show up here, we have already first-hand seen quite a large number of games show up here in the GOG catalogue that prior to their release many people would have sworn up and down, left and right that they'd never ever come here in a million years. And yet - those very games are sold by GOG right now.

What is the lesson to be learned? Never say never, because we simply do not conclusively know that nor have a way to know that. All we can ever know conclusively is "not yet". People who own crystal balls excluded. Not because they can see the future mind you, but because they're batshit crazy. :)

Tradewars 2000 for BBS, Strategy, Micromanagement SciF
Hopkins FBI(1998) for OS/2 Warp, FPS
Links for any OS, golfing simulator
MUD code, modded or raw

I had a game called Tribal Rage. It wasn't very good. Bug-ridden and half-baked, it was clearly rushed out the door. A shame, it had an interest concept and some early examples of RTS concepts like a campaign map, customizable units, building garrisons and more. It also had a cool world with amazons, biker gangs, cyborgs, trailer trash and death cultists. These were all playable factions. Even the jewel case was interesting, it had a burger design but as soon as you opened it, there was a cockroach drawn on the disc. Anyway, I don't expect to see it here. Even in its time, it reportedly had issues with sound cards, as well as a bunch of bugs. Then again, so did Fallout 2.

Darkened Skye, maybe? I don't know. I'm just guessing. Ugh, don't remind me! I'm still kicking myself for missing that one.
That and Second Sight. How long has Second Sight been gone now?

I honestly don't know. I'm wondering that myself now.I forgot all about Curse. I do know Lucasarts did not develop Curse or Escape. And the guys who created Tales, well Telltale Games under lisence from Lucasarts. Maybe it's a liscensing issue.
Awesome. Maybe i posted this to reassure myself hoping there'd be a response such as yours. Haha.

As for Mafia 2, I didn't realize they were able to renew the music licenses. At one point you couldn't buy Mafia 2 on Steam, the page was up, but you just couldn't purchase.

That's probably a big problem with some games I imagine. They've licensed either music which they no longer have a license for and the cost involved in relicensing is considered too high for the projected margins in comparison to the money spent going into some other unrelated product/project, or similar with other IP. For example games that are based on movies or other Hollywood franchises etc.

It's funny because if one takes the time to study both the intellectual property laws (trademarks, patents, copyrights, etc.) and why they were originally created in the first place - the entire industry out there more or less uses those very laws for the exact opposite reasons of why they were created. It's sad really. And nowadays with video games it means many games end up dying and fall into a black hole never to be seen, heard nor played again by any legitimate means and vanish from history unless they become "protected" via some means out there that may not be protected by the legal establishment if you catch my drift.

One has to wonder if any major paradigm shift will ever occur for how all of this works in the future. Personally I think it will for some games from some companies in the future but I don't think it will ever retroactively change things that have come to be for the worse at the present in the future. Yeah, one might have to read that last sentence a few times to unravel it. That was intentional. :)