I stopped playing 1e for a reason, and have never looked back. I could afford these, but have no interest in getting them. Because, you know, just what I need: more books I don't read sitting on the shelf.

The only thing I really miss from 1st Ed is the weapon vs armor type adjustment. Made the other weapons useful.

I agree and disagree with Dauph... I might get these 'Because, you know, just what I need: more books I don't read sitting on the shelf.' I actually like game books for their intrinsic value in addition to their practical use. I got many Rifts books simply because of the outrageous and eclectic art. I keep my Shadowrun 1e books for the same reasons. And the 1e DMG was an awesome mess. Possibly the worst organized and most poorly indexed book I've ever gotten to know so well. I even used to have the 1e pocket sized books! Imagine the full books printing in a 3x5 size without adjusting for the change in size. You needed a magnifier just to read it, but to me that was still cool enough.

It's also why I'll buy more dice, when I have enough for a whole table, write up characters I'll never play and create worlds I'll never run.

I love gaming.

I doubt it is any more than an acknowledgement that people collect old editions of games. The activity on the next generation of D&D is more exciting than them releasing a limited edition set of 1e books.

I doubt anything will stop the retro-clone movement now, other than an edition of D&D that actually makes everyone happy. Ooh! Ooh! Look at the flying pig!

At least they are trying.

Trying to make everyone happy may very well make no one happy.

Wonder how many people never played 1st Ed... I wonder how many people will now.

Its certainly a nice choice for the casual gamer. You can just have an adventure, and not worry about planning your character 20 levels in advance in fear of being gimped or left behind by the resident powergamer. My first group lasted from around 1985-2001, and I can't even begin to recall the countless hours we played. The random dungeon generation stuff in the DMs guide combined with random encounters made it easy to just pick up the books and go. Certainly, there was that one player who would like to point out the flaws in everything, but then we got rid of him and the game worked just fine.

Some of the best material for the game was in the Dragon Magazine articles though.

Definitely. I got a lot of use from those magazines.

Brings back so many fond memories from decades ago.

No harm in a bit of AD&D.