It's probably a little sad that many of my games of (mostly nostalgic!) interest won't play on my computer anymore. I knew I had some reason to keeping some rather terrible PC hardware!
Here are some games that won't play that really should:
Knights and Merchants - I'm probably never going to be able to play this game again as the issue lies in the fact it requires DOS on the machine and so isn't really XP compatible. This was an absolutely amazing game, I loved it when I was younger... even if I did always get horribly distracted and forget that, hey, supposed to be fighting a war there! (Note to self: write review for this, and possibly write something for wiki entry: something is better than nothing, even a decade or so old recollection.)
Stay Tooned! - I could complete this easily enough by myself when I was a kid (except Kartoon Kombat... I was terrible at that, and the addition of 3D glasses just added to the confusion), so god knows how simple I'd find it now, but it was an amazing game. Quirky fun with something a bit different in every playthrough. (I seem to recall making several playthroughs after my first purely for the chance I could run into Schleopardy again. Schleopardy was amazing.) The TV was hilarious too - how can you not like a game with a Friends parody called Frauds where people's limbs randomly fall off?! (I like how that didn't even mildly alarm me as a kid.)
The depressing thing is nobody has ever heard of these games, so the conversation possibilities are... pretty much none. I'm pretty much the gamer girl who played the obscure games that only a tiny minority of people have ever played... pity, really!
At least several of my other "games of nostalgia" can still be played... even those that terrified me when I was a kid. (LeChuck's Revenge. ...It was the swamp, okay, the music and look of it creeped me out. :P I suppose this speaks well of the music composition, though - I was probably a bit young to be playing Monkey Island! Actually, the extra odd thing about this is the fact that while the swamp terrified me to the point of giving me nightmares, the whole voodoo doll "of the bone" thing also didn't phase me at all. What was wrong with my sense of creepyness?!)
On the bright side I can still play Final Fantasy VIII, which isn't exactly my earliest gaming experience (the PS games came after the PC games in my chronicle of gaming), but I still remember playing it the first time... and constantly tripping over the fact I was lame at levelling up. On my first playthrough of Final Fantasy VIII I got near the end of disc 2 (this was the Cerberus boss fight) and got totally, totally owned. I was too weak to really do anything, I didn't really stock enough magic and didn't understand the magic junctioning system (I played it not shortly after it came out, and I reckon I'd have been about seven or eight at the time), and I ran away from battles if I couldn't be bothered fighting (this was normally when I'd got lost and ran around in circles for a bit. Embarrassing story of running around in circles: it took me 2 hours after getting off the train (I think this was to Galbadia Garden?) to actually get there. The destination was about two feet from where I was standing (triggered forest event) but even though I had instructions to find a forest, I was totally lost with the directions as I was apparently a bit rubbish at following compass points. FUN TIMES. At least I gained some levels there!). My second playthrough I died about five times right at the beginning of disc 2 in an explosion: turns out that the cutscene confused me to the degree I was moving TOWARDS the exploding building rather than away. Yeah, that was awkward. I did figure it out... eventually... though!
I still love revisiting Final Fantasy VIII - though I understand the system and can complete it with ease now. I actually find it the most accessible battle system of the Final Fantasy games, probably as it's the first I played, even though I'm well aware a large part of my first playthrough problems were due to my inability to understand the magic equipping system... even with a tutorial. Funny how those things work out!
Heh, it's fun to reminisce. :D
Game Nostalgia
It's probably a little sad that many of my games of (mostly nostalgic!) interest won't play on my computer anymore. I knew I had some reason to keeping some rather terrible PC hardware!
Here are some games that won't play that really should:
Knights and Merchants - I'm probably never going to be able to play this game again as the issue lies in the fact it requires DOS on the machine and so isn't really XP compatible. This was an absolutely amazing game, I loved it when I was younger... even if I did always get horribly distracted and forget that, hey, supposed to be fighting a war there! (Note to self: write review for this, and possibly write something for wiki entry: something is better than nothing, even a decade or so old recollection.)
Stay Tooned! - I could complete this easily enough by myself when I was a kid (except Kartoon Kombat... I was terrible at that, and the addition of 3D glasses just added to the confusion), so god knows how simple I'd find it now, but it was an amazing game. Quirky fun with something a bit different in every playthrough. (I seem to recall making several playthroughs after my first purely for the chance I could run into Schleopardy again. Schleopardy was amazing.) The TV was hilarious too - how can you not like a game with a Friends parody called Frauds where people's limbs randomly fall off?! (I like how that didn't even mildly alarm me as a kid.)
The depressing thing is nobody has ever heard of these games, so the conversation possibilities are... pretty much none. I'm pretty much the gamer girl who played the obscure games that only a tiny minority of people have ever played... pity, really!
At least several of my other "games of nostalgia" can still be played... even those that terrified me when I was a kid. (LeChuck's Revenge. ...It was the swamp, okay, the music and look of it creeped me out. :P I suppose this speaks well of the music composition, though - I was probably a bit young to be playing Monkey Island! Actually, the extra odd thing about this is the fact that while the swamp terrified me to the point of giving me nightmares, the whole voodoo doll "of the bone" thing also didn't phase me at all. What was wrong with my sense of creepyness?!)
On the bright side I can still play Final Fantasy VIII, which isn't exactly my earliest gaming experience (the PS games came after the PC games in my chronicle of gaming), but I still remember playing it the first time... and constantly tripping over the fact I was lame at levelling up. On my first playthrough of Final Fantasy VIII I got near the end of disc 2 (this was the Cerberus boss fight) and got totally, totally owned. I was too weak to really do anything, I didn't really stock enough magic and didn't understand the magic junctioning system (I played it not shortly after it came out, and I reckon I'd have been about seven or eight at the time), and I ran away from battles if I couldn't be bothered fighting (this was normally when I'd got lost and ran around in circles for a bit. Embarrassing story of running around in circles: it took me 2 hours after getting off the train (I think this was to Galbadia Garden?) to actually get there. The destination was about two feet from where I was standing (triggered forest event) but even though I had instructions to find a forest, I was totally lost with the directions as I was apparently a bit rubbish at following compass points. FUN TIMES. At least I gained some levels there!). My second playthrough I died about five times right at the beginning of disc 2 in an explosion: turns out that the cutscene confused me to the degree I was moving TOWARDS the exploding building rather than away. Yeah, that was awkward. I did figure it out... eventually... though!
I still love revisiting Final Fantasy VIII - though I understand the system and can complete it with ease now. I actually find it the most accessible battle system of the Final Fantasy games, probably as it's the first I played, even though I'm well aware a large part of my first playthrough problems were due to my inability to understand the magic equipping system... even with a tutorial. Funny how those things work out!
Heh, it's fun to reminisce. :D
" Knights and Merchants - I'm probably never going to be able to play this game again as the issue lies in the fact it requires DOS on the machine and so isn't really XP compatible. This was an absolutely amazing game, I loved it when I was younger... even if I did always get horribly distracted and forget that, hey, supposed to be fighting a war there! (Note to self: write review for this, and possibly write something for wiki entry: something is better than nothing, even a decade or so old recollection.) "I remember being able to play it on XP and wasn't it released in the late 90's, so it wouldn't be based on DOS rather Win98? Anyhow that game brings back memories and I can still hear the music in my head. :)
I remember I tried to play some old PC game a few years ago (maybe Full Throttle, I don't really remember) and the game would run, but it would go way too fast to the point it was unplayable. I looked into it and there were programs out there that could slow down a CPU so the games would run at normal speed. But after trying to read up on how to get that piece of home brew software to work, it just started to seem like more work than it was worth to take a stroll down memory lane.
@Alex_Murphy: Yeah, that sounds like it would be complicated and like it could be potentially damaging to the CPU! Probably for the best not to fiddle around with it!
@Captain_Insano: I'll have to look into that. :)
I tried loading Elder Scrolls 2, Daggerfall last year, to my dismay it won't work because it needs MS DOS to run, something not used on a windows XP, at least.
II should look for a downloadable DOS program, such as the ones mentioned here.
I had a similar moment in Final Fantasy VIII to Galbadia Garden -- Train moment. There's a part, early in the second disc, I think, where the party is trapped in an elevator and they need to find a way out. It was plainly obvious that the hatch in the floor was the escape route I needed to get out of the elevator, but I couldn't manage to position Squall just so to open the goddamn thing. I literally spent two hours trying to get the hatch open then quit, completely frustrated.
I didn't play the game for two months, then came back to it a while later and immediately opened the hatch. Went on to finish the game without any further issues.
Please Log In to post.
Log in to comment