I mostly want to play Prince of Persia 2 DOS. I am unsure if they are freeware, in same way GTA 1 and GTA 2 are freeware.

But i would love seeing those games on GOG. Prince of Persia 2 is a game i never played and it looks very well made for a PC game. It got a bad SNES port but the PC looks very good!

Prince of Persia 1, PoP 2 and PoP 3D are notoriously hard to come by in a "legit" form these days. Digital or whatever.

You can find some copies of them on eBay, and of course on the most reputable abandonware sites out there. From a technical standpoing. PoP 3D is the shittiest retrogaming experience I have ever had (thus far) on Windows 10. Indeed I should write a post about that...

For PoP 2 The Shadow and the Flame, a bit of advice from the greatest fan of the series in the world (ie ME :-P) which is currently replaying the entire series (on PoP 2008 right now): expect to be frustrated, and angry. A lot. It's a VERY old school type of fun, mind you.

POP3D is just weird. My disc copy simply won't work, no matter what I try. Compatibility options, dgVoodoo, nothing.

Then I found a copy from an abandonware site, and that one works fine. Not perfectly mind, there are occasional ground textures issues and the game can slow to a crawl in large areas (640x480 is recommended), but it is playable. Well, as playable as POP3D can be, though I kinda like it myself for some reason. If only I knew what they have done to the executable to make it work, I could do that to my English disc copy and play it instead. Because the Italian dub is atrociously, hilariously bad.

Gotta agree on POP2 as well, the first game was challenging but fair, the second game... not so much. Still finished, but I'm never gonna play it again.

The original copy of POP 3D is notoriously impossible to run on Windows 10. The OS doesn't support the game's copy protection, so you need either an "unprotected", original exe or a cracked one to start the game to begin with.

The texture bug is well known as well, you need to have the game's second CD-ROM in the drive (or a digital copy of that mounted in a virtual drive) to show the right textures in the later levels of POP 3D.

So there's an Italian version of POP 3D? That's interesting, I should try and recover a copy for my collection one of these days...

As I said, POP 2: The Shadow and the Flame is a VERY old school kind of "fun" game :-D

When I had it on my 286, I was playing the game all the time and I had essentially mastered it. Tried nowadays, it took me a lot of pain, time and patience to put an end to the ordeal. I don't plan of doing it again for at least some years :-D

I.. I don't think that's a good idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nyX34xej7M&ab_channel=MicheleChitarraeGiochi

Uhm, ok :-D

But I don't think that is the real Italian dub of the game...

One can only hope, but looking at other localizations of the time, it wouldn't surprise me if that were the actual thing.

Anyway, the game was indeed translated in full Italian language when Leader released it, reviews of the time confirm it. I guess it shouldn't be too hard to find a copy on the usual auction sites.

Sorry to intrude in this thread after so many months, however I must profess my love for PoP 2.
It is indeed unfair with 'certain' enemies (stupid flying heads)... but, if PoP 1 had a great Arabian Nights atmosphere, PoP 2 knocks it out of the park in this department.

it is highly recommended to play the Macintosh version; emulated of course, however no emulator I know can correctly play the midi tracks for the music, so that's the only flaw...

https://popuw.com/pop2mac.html

Screenshot included for those interested to know how the Macintosh version looks like.