14 DAY TRIAL // Playing games without the original CD/DVD may very well be the ultimate dream for all the gamers out there, forced to insert the disc each time they play their favorite games. Some have found a solution in using programs like Daemon Tools, that emulate the original media, but shouldn't there be an easier way so that you don't have to copy an entire DVD to your hard drive for each game you wanna play? The answer is yes, there is. GameJackal enables you to play games without inserting the original disc over and over again. This means a lot less hassle and more damage protection for your precious original game discs.
In theory, GameJackal sounds excellent, but exactly how much of it is true? I decided to find out. So, I gathered all the games I purchased in the last two years and wanted to see how much of this beautiful fairytale is real. The screenshots included in this article display the full list of games that required the original disc to play and therefore have been used to review the software.
There were a lot of games that didn't require the DVD in order to be launched, but the remaining ones were classified in three folders: the discs that GameJackal managed to emulate, the ones it failed to emulate despite all attempts and the ones that apparently were a success, but proved to be the opposite (details, later on). As you'll probably notice from the screenshots, the game has been tested on Microsoft Windows XP. Why? Well, besides the fact that some of the games were really old and the risk of them not working was not an option, the producers claim that GameJackal is less buggy while running on this particular operating system. And as a final note regarding the testing conditions, no virtual drives or virtual drives programs were ever installed prior to the testing of GameJackal.
Let's begin with the interface and the issues regarding it. The first thing you'll notice even before the installation process completes is that GameJackal doesn't offer you a lot of choices to skin the application. The program allows you to organize your profiles by moving them into separate folders. Although even in this case you might think there aren't a lot of ways for something to go wrong, you're obviously not right. The only way to create a folder where you can move a profile is the "Move to" option in the right-click menu.
GameJackal also enables you to access these folders thorough tray icon's context menu. Unfortunately, you won't have access to all the folders; the software only displays the content of the folder opened in the main window of GameJackal. Another small mishap that hasn't been fixed to this day is a typo in the profiles menu: "Prey" being listed as "Pray". One final bug that I would like to mention before heading on to the more interesting stuff: sometimes you may find it very hard to access the program's user interface. For example, there were cases when clicking the tray icon had absolutely no effect.
But enough chit-chat, I'm sure you're all interested in how the software actually performed during our testing. From the numbers' point of view, there isn't that much to discuss, the screenshots speak for themselves, so allow me to describe my experience while testing the application. Let's start with the games compatible with GameJackal. Creating the profiles is very easy to understand and perform. In most cases, the process doesn't take more than a minute and you're ready to go.
But there are some exceptions, for example: lots of profiles (such as those for Medal of Honor, SWAT or Age of Mythology) weren't launched from the first run. I had to deactivate those profiles and reactivate them a second time in order to get passed the "Insert disc" error. Total Overdose has its own funny story: all attempts to create a profile failed because GameJackal, for some strange reason, was unable to launch the game. I finally managed to get passed this bug by manually launching Total Overdose when creating or activating the game's profile.
In most cases, if you've created a profile and you're able to use it, there's no need to worry about anything else. I did say "in most cases". Unfortunately, there are some exceptions: in case a game requires files from the disc (usually cinematics) during gameplay, you might run intro serious trouble with its profile. Why? Because, usually, GameJackal doesn't take into consideration these files when creating a profile.
So, although very rare, the games of this sort might crash during gameplay when run from GameJackal. You might say that I'm pretentious and solutions might be found for this type of problems. Under other circumstances, I might just agree with you, but I'm referring to games which made history, games like StarCraft or The Longest Journey. Failure to successfully emulate them and not even provide a predefined profile is unacceptable for me.
As for the games that weren't compatible with the software, most of them were either protected with StarForce, either used their own launcher that, yet again for some strange reason, made it impossible for GameJackal to create a working profile. If the second case may be somewhat understandable, the first surely isn't. You must understand that this application wasn't created a few days or even a few months ago. GameJackal was first launched a few years ago and, although the development had been ceased between January 1 and June 2, 2007, SlySoft is still trying to make it better by releasing new and improved versions as often as six times per month. In spite all these efforts, to this day no serious efforts have been made towards the emulation of games protected with StarForce.
The Good
Although the software emulated only 70% of the games we used in order to properly test it and not 90%, as advertised, the percentage is not bad at all. These games were launched between 1998 and 2006, so, fortunately, 'age' is not an issue here. Using GameJackal may be as simple as 1-2-3 since the creation of a profile requires just a few clicks and a few minutes (at most) of your time.
The Bad
What hurts the most about this program is, as I was saying earlier, its lack of compatibility with StarForce protected games. Nowadays, StarForce is one of the biggest names in game protection, but the SlySoft development team seems to be incapable of making noticeable steps in this direction.
This is very sad because it gives the application an old, outdated look. To this day, even the smallest of issues like the 'Pray' typo in the profiles list or the lack of a backup profile library option haven't been fixed.
The Truth
Although SlySoft took over the project in 2007, the feeling that nothing much changed since 2006 still persists, even if the software became pretty expensive after the company's shift from dollars to euros. There are no strong arguments to explain the application's failure to emulate very popular video games like StarCraft, Prince of Persia (Warrior Within & The Two Thrones), The Longest Journey, Syberia, Splinter Cell (1 and 3) and even Mafia for which GameJackal provides a predefined profile that, surprisingly, doesn't work. I'll give the application four stars just as a form of encouragement to further develop GameJackal so that, in the near future, hopefully, it will be able to emulate 90% of all games, as advertised.
