I would hope/assume that the rights situation is the same for both games; is there any reason to believe this would not be the case? I guess I'm one of the few people that consider the first Shock to be the better of the two (despite the creaky DOS engine it ran on).

Who knows, maybe they just couldn't get it working at the moment. Or maybe they figured this one would sell better. Or maybe there's a whole different licensing nightmare going on, I noticed that the publisher is listed as Night Dive instead of EA.

Sequel released first, forum titled "System Shock 2" (and not "System Shock Series") and a few other things amount to me not holding my breath.

Yeah, but that's always the case with the forums. As far as I know, every time a game comes out, the forum is named after the GAME, and gets renamed "x series" after the second one comes out.

Besides, once you've done the impossible, the word "impossible" loses all meaning.

example of this is Neverwinter Nights.

I've seen it happen the other ways more times, though. Game gets announced and released and forum gets marked "Series" before the announcement of the other games.

The forums are often named after the first game of the series that came out if the rest is not already on the horizon. But normally they are renamed later after more releases (the Wing Commander forums were called Wing Commander Privateer for a long time i.e.)
And I don't think it is a problem of getting it to run, it ran flawlessly in DOSBox without any work when I tried it some years ago. I only have the Floppy version, but I don't think the CD release is harder to get it to run.
I think the only problem the prevents GOG from releasing the game for years is the same as with the second game: a rights chaos.
Hopefully someone sorts it out soon, I want to play the CD version of System Shock 1 and it is pretty expensive on ebay etc.

I would guess the legal situation with the first game IS different since it was developed by Origin, and who knows what happened with their stuff, aside from it ending up at EA after they ran Origin Systems into the freaking ground and turned their name into a almost not-crummy storefront.

It was developed by Looking Glass Technologies and published by Origin (being a subsidiary of EA).

http://www.mobygames.com/game/system-shock/release-info

Ah OK, I never really looked into it, thanks for clarifying.

You know, given how well this one appears to be doing (second place on the front page best-sellers list, and approximately 33-40% up the all time best-sellers list), I think convincing the powers that be to get the first game up and running should be a snap.

SS1 is a DOS game,, so getting it up and running in DOSBOX should not be a big problem for GOG.

Yes, I suspect that in the next week or so (or maybe even sooner) it will replace Baldur's Gate 2 as the #1 bestselling title on GOG.

I really need 1 first
I have been waiting for this game to come to gog but I do not want it without 1 as well :(

So yeah add:
System Shock 1
Soldiers of Fortune 1
and Carmageddon 2
and ill be happy as can be :)

As far as technical issues, there should be none at all. I've still got the original disc and have run it in DOSBox with zero problems. The cutscenes and controls all work as they should.