...for your particular problem. I find myself in that position a lot because I've been buying physical copies of games since the 80s. And I am a very disorganized packrat sort of person. A case in point, I recently saw a youtube about playing an old classic, Arcanum. And it made me want to resurrect and play it. So I've spent a couple of hours going through boxes to find it. And I can't find it. And tantalizingly, I think I've seen it fairly recently (in the last year or so). So I'm probably looking in the wrong places.

Anyway, the solution I've settled on in these cases is to find a bootleg torrent online and play that. I know, it is illegal. But since I've bought the game, I feel perfectly morally justified in doing so.

I haven't looked on the net for Arcanum yet but I'd be surprised if I could not find it. Usually you need Daemon tools or some other DVD-drive emulator to play. Or sometimes you have to get a hacked exe. Takes a small amount of research.