Ronture's Blog

Not many people nowadays know about this video game company called PopCap Games, because they were mostly active from 2001 to 2014, bought out by Electronic Arts at some point in the 10's decade. They created fun games for people of all ages; some of their popular ones were Plants Vs. Zombies, Zuma's Revenge, Bejeweled, and Bookworm. Now they had more than 50 games in 2013, but... they no longer mention them on EA's site.

Yesterday I made a huge discovery that will uncover forgotten memories of games played once ago. I was browsing the Internet Archive on popcap.com for a way to enjoy the old games again. Of course, I was just browsing around for a download of any kind, and I eventually found one. So, being curious, I was wondering if the original link worked outside of the Archive. To my surprise, IT DID! THE GAME DOWNLOADS WERE NEVER TAKEN DOWN!

Ladies and Gentlemen, feel free to download their games and play them to your heart's content. Here are the official links to each of them. If you don't trust the links, you can copy and paste the alternates. Either way, I'll host copies I downloaded here in the folder "PopCap Games".

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS LIST IS ONLY FOR DOWNLOADS FOR MICROSOFT WINDOWS COMPUTERS AND NOT ALL GAMES ARE LISTED. YOU CANNOT BUY THE GAMES BECAUSE THAT SERVICE NO LONGER WORKS. To get around the trials, keep reading.

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To run the full version of the game (Windows Vista or later):
1. Install the game.
2. Run the game.
3. Open a run prompt (WinKey+R) and type and run taskkill /f /im <gamefilename>.exe.
4. Open a run prompt (WinKey+R) and type and run taskkill /f /im popcapgame1.exe.
5. Open a run prompt (WinKey+R) and type and run explorer "\programData\PopCap Games\"and enter the folder of the game you installed.
6. In the address bar up top, type attrib * -s -h and press Enter.
7. Click popcapgame1.exe and do Ctrl+X.
8. Right-click the desktop shortcut for the game and click "Open file location".
9. Do Ctrl+V, rename <GameName>.exe to Buy<GameName>.exe, and name popcapgame1.exe to <gamename>.exe, with the original capitalization.

For games without a timed trial:

10. Open up properties\partner.xml. If there is a NoReg value set to "True", change it to "False". If you don't see the word "NoReg" anywhere, don't edit the document.

If YOU HAVE WINDOWS XP OR OLDER:

1. Install the game.
2. Run the game.
3. Open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and find <gamename>.exe, right-click it, and end the process.
4. Find popcapgame1.exe, right-click it, and end the process.
5. Open a run prompt (WinKey+R) and type explorer.exe "%windir%\..\program files\PopCap Games" and navigate to the folder of the game you installed.
6. In the address bar, type attrib.exe * -s -h and press Enter.
7. Rename <GameName>.exe to Buy<GameName>.exe, and name popcapgame1.exe to <gamename>.exe, with the original capitalization.

For games without a timed trial:

8. Open up properties\partner.xml. If there is a NoReg value set to "True", change it to "False". If you don't see the word "NoReg" anywhere, don't edit the document.

I hope that you find this blog post to be helpful. If you do, consider sharing it with others who might miss the good old PopCap Games. If you are having trouble, you can contact me on Twitter, Reddit, Newgrounds or e-mail at so I can fix it. Please don't misuse my e-mail address and don't be intentionally abusive or rude. I encourage constructive criticism.

Signing off,

Matthew // Ronture