Interesting; I was always under the impression that the ambient sounds were actually CD audio.

I love the OG Tomb Raider games! Definitely recommended for old-school gamers. The best aspect to me is the exploration and immersion. When I say "immersion", I don't mean the graphical powerhouse movie-like AAA games coming out now, I mean the feeling and depth that the gameworld gives me. The newer Tomb Raider games that were rebooted seem to focus so much on combat and shooting compared to the exploration and puzzles of the originals. Granted, there is action in all the TR games, just it is not the primary focus. TR 1 remains the pinnacle of the series imo though I recommend getting all of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5! Many people have said about "tank controls" with old Tomb Raiders as well as old survival horror games. Personally I wish they would have never stopped making these kind of games because there is still a devoted audience of folks like me who would love a game in the style of Tomb Raider, but which takes advantage of new technology to give us bigger levels, better AI, et cetera.

Don't forget also there are still 1000's of classic TR levels on trle.net.

The past few years I played through GOG's 1 - 3 on my Win 7 Dell and I think they worked fine. It's interesting: usually I find I have a harder time playing old games now vs when I originally played them, but with Tomb Raider 3, I actually had an easier time now understanding where to go now. I did cheat in TR3 with weapons but I prefer just to be able to say I beat a game/finished the adventure rather than worry about cheating.

So yes, buy them. If you can't get them running ask Support for help.

So from 2008 onwards? Not as many as I would've liked but there have been a few:
- Red Alert 3
- Dawn of War 2 (though that's perhaps more RTT than RTS, but an excellent game regardless)
- Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak
- Cossacks 3
- Spellforce 3
and a few more that aren't 'major' like 8bit armies, but unfortunately those games are way, way too fast paced for me. And it's debatable, but perhaps the anno games as well.

So wind knocked out of it for sure, but I wouldn't say its dead yet from the perspective of big developers. Personally I'm quite excited for the remastered Warcraft 3, apart from the weird cringey cutscenes and new voiceovers.