PC Gaming = World of Suck

Doing housekeeping at the shop, I found a box with Day Of The Tentacle and MechWarrior 3. The first is seventeen years old, the second only eleven.

I would propose them to Merc, but I'm sure he already has them. And nope, they are not in a weird foreign language like French.
 
I decided that I need to build a retro-gaming system. DOS gaming is easy enough to do on any sort of computer, but I had a real problem with early DirectX titles. A lot of them puke on screen resolutions above 1024x768 or on NT-based OSes.

My main requirement was that I had to have hardware supported by Windows 98, but still capable for gaming.

I wound up with a P4/3.2GHhz on an i865 motherboard, 1GB RAM (overkill for Win98), 160GB IDE drive, AWE64 and a Radeon 9700 driving a 15" 1024x768 flat panel.

The trick in all this is that all my components except the video card wound up being new in box parts. Some of it was just crap I had sitting around. I had to go hunting for a new motherboard, but it wasn't hard to find. It was a lot easier to find a new socket 478 motherboard than it was to find a new Socket A, though.

The whole setup is pretty sweet for stuff like the old Microprose Magic: the Gathering game, or Mechwarrior 2.

The only way I can think to make it better would be to add in an SSD.
 
Is there a reason you can't run a virtual machine to play these games? I thought certain virtualization software package supported OpenGL and DirectX.
 
VMware also supports 3d acceleration, but I expect that there is no support for non-NT-based Windows OSes, as well.
 
Yes, it's the combination of DirectX + Win98 that is specifically problematic. Virtualbox was actually the setup I tried first.

Plus now I have a nice non-virtual computer set aside for it.
 
I always like playing Worms against the computer with the destructive power of all the weapons roughly doubled. That made drilling through the landscape with a minigun a valid tactic.

Man that was a great game.
 
Mercutio said:
I always like playing Worms against the computer with the destructive power of all the weapons roughly doubled. That made drilling through the landscape with a minigun a valid tactic.

Man that was a great game.
Click to expand...
You should give Wormux a go then... Sending in the Super Tux is always fun.

PS. To play against the PC, call the second team "computer". It's in the docs, but not very well labeled.
 
I read that as well, and am anxious as to how they will do it. If there is even the slightest thought to making it playable on a console, the whole idea is toast. The accuracy/realism/difficulty was what made it fun. You really did have the sense that you were developing a skill.
 
Apparently gog.com died over the weekend. That is really too bad. I was really hoping they would continue to grow and to suck less than Steam.
 
The good news is steam doesn't suck. The sad news is you're unwilling to give it a chance.
 
When did you give it a chance? There are free games you can download if you don't want to commit money to anything.
 
I had Half Life 2.

I have used Steam to give away game codes I've gotten from buying hardware, but I do that on their web site. I'm not going to install their client until I'm sure I can uninstall it without impacting any of the games I want to play.
 
You can't play a game activated with Steam without using the client. Using the client isn't that big of a deal. It also keeps my games up to date with patches which is a nice feature. Try some of the free games and demos so that you don't have to worry about losing money.
 
Until I can de-couple the games from Steam, and until they tell me exactly what data they're collecting about me and my activities, it meets my definition of malware. I'm sorry, but I don't want that on my computer.

I do have a Steam account that I use to send legal copies of games to other people through their web site, but I'm not willing to put up with the software on my own systems.
 
Steam is useful, and it is evil (same as Facebook IMHO). I have given in to Steam because I like near-instant gratification and hate going to physical stores. I have avoided Facebook because I don't like people as much as I like games.
 
Mercutio said:
Apparently I don't like either of them enough.
Click to expand...

I'm not a fan of Steam but my gaming machine doesn't generally have any information on it that I'm worried about having collected and I'm willing to compromise occasionally for really good deals.

I hope you weren't looking forward to playing Civilization V though, it seems that even the retail boxed version will require Steam to run...
 
So you were back in a few minutes with the super-speed connection then? :D
 
I fired up a game of Alpha Centauri last night. It was Academician Proctor Zakharov's pleasure to deliver a personalized beating to Sister Miriam Godwinson.
 
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