I came across a random Youtube recommended video of a "3dfx Voodoo 3" review a couple weeks back. Watched it and then sent it to my friend who had shown interest in building a Win98 era PC in the past. I knew full well this would re-ignite this idea in him. I myself hadn't felt much of a need for it. So after he views the video, which indeed sets him off, he links me an eBay listing for an old Dell Dimension PC that looked identical to what I had as sort of my first PC as a kid. At least at the age where I can remember it and started playing PC games and such. It was also dirt cheap. This immediately gets the nostalgia juices flowing, my friend somehow remembers exactly the specs my Dell had, and we both start scouring eBay looking at old stuff and reminiscing, all the while saying it would be dumb to buy this thing. I still have my 19" NEC MultiSync FE791SB 1600x1200 CRT buried in the closet for over a decade. Finally, he puts his foot down, tells himself "No!", and empties the shopping cart..

....and then some minutes later he says jokingly.. "We could play Diablo 2 together.."

Now, obviously you can just play this for the most part on new stuff. That wasn't the point. We played D2 a ton for many years. I said.. "Well, if you can find another PC like that then.." Commence several more hours of furious eBay digging. We ended up with identical Dell Dimension 4100's. Exterior wise it looked the same as my first, but this one was equipped with a much better CPU than I had. Half the fun of this for me was that I still had the original Dell Resource CD, Dell Voodoo 3 driver CD, my copy of Win98 and the manual/cdkey, old sound card, and pretty much all my games on their original CDs.

Me being the compulsive spender that I am, actually started to rebuild the other old PCs I used to have mixed with better hardware for the time. So add in WinXP 2003'ish + WinXP 2007'ish rigs, but I won't go into them here unless people are interested since they aren't quite as complete.

This is what my Win98 era PC ended up with in the end:

• Pentium III 1.0 Ghz
• 512 MB of RAM
• 3dfx Voodoo 3 Video Card
• Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Sound Card
• NetGear Network Card
• 120GB HDD
• Windows 98 SE

I'd actually like to try and get a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP card, as that is actually the very first GFX card I ever got and put in my PC. My old Dell, along with the Voodoo 5, was passed to my friend and then onto his younger sister and then who knows where. Landfill we think. So of course Voodoo 5s are worth $100+ at this point.

Anyway, I spent too many hours attempting to get this thing to run at 100%. I had a load of trouble getting the Sound Blaster Live! Value in it to work, so I happened to have my old Live! 5.1 card. Then Windows was doing a weird thing where it was sort of BSOD whenever you went to shut it down or restart. It wasn't some huge problem getting in the way, but it was just dumb and I wanted everything to work properly. Finally got it working correctly the other night.

Currently installed (Updated 2/24/16):

• Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
• Rune
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
• Railroad Tycoon 2 Gold Edition
• Need For Speed: High Stakes
• Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed
• Half Life
• Hard Truck 2
• SimCity 3000 Unlimited
• SimCopter
• The Sims
• Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors
• Arcanum
• Ultima IX: Ascension
• MechWarrior 3
• Dirt Track Racing
• Motocross Madness 2
• Monster Truck Madness 2
• Midtown Madness 2
• Gearhead Garage
• Cabela's 4x4 Off-road Adventure
• F22 Lightning 3
• Carmageddon 2
• Screamer 4x4
• MechCommander Gold
• Flight Simulator 2000
• Police Quest: SWAT 2
• Dungeon Keeper
• Planescape: Torment
• Soldier of Fortune
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
• Interstate '76
• Stronghold
• Deus Ex
• Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business
• Thief
• Half Life: Opposing Force
• Half Life: Blue Shift
• Counter-Strike 1.5
• Commandos 2
• Serious Sam
• Combat Flight Simulator
• Icewind Dale
• Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn

I have mostly fond memories of every single game on this list. I still have a few others I could install but they seem redundant or not working etc Warcraft 2 seems to want an older sound card. Or 9: The Last Resort is giving me an error about not having 8MB of RAM.

What I am interested in is hearing some other people's suggestions. What 1996 - 2001 era games do you think I'd like based on stuff on this list?

I think Deus Ex came out around then? I've heard endless amounts about it but never played it. I'd like to get some old version of Counter-Strike working as that was the FPS I was into as a kid.. No Quake or Unreal stuff for me. I used to have Interstate '76 (I still have the box actually) but no idea where that CD went. That Baldur's Gate stuff is another one I've heard a billion times but never played.. I think its from that time? I seem to be missing my copy of Soldier of Fortune, but I remember that game lead me to doing my first ever PC improvement, putting in a RAM stick, bumping it from 64MB to 128MB I think. The game went from running like complete garbage to amazing.

Shoot me some suggestions!

Ye-heeeeeeh this is a thread I can get behind. Was it expensive to get an old pc like that? Deus Ex was 2001 so I figure I must have played it on either Windows 98 or the much beloved Windows ME. Either way it's period accurate.

Baldur's Gate 1 is from that era as well as is Planescape and Fallout 1 and 2. So if you have a hunger for the old isometrics you're well served.

I have fond memories of my 5 CD version of Riven on my win98 pc. Also Star Wars Dark Forces and Blood and X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and Abe's Oddyesee.

Man what a great time that was for videogames

Hey look a thread in which to post these pics...

@hayt: The only things I bought for this PC was the tower itself and the Voodoo 3. So I'd say it was about $120? Including shipping.. which for the PC is like $50+. My friend scored the cheaper one ($20 + Shipping?) because he found it first. I already had the CRT, the network card, the Live! 5.1 card, an old PS/2 keyboard I found in a box and cleaned up, the copy of Win98 etc.

I still have my Sidewinder Precision Pro joystick, preserved in a layer of dust. I used to have the Sidewinder Wheel for driving games but that's long gone and not something I want laying around. Tried getting the X360 controller to work via a fan made 98/2000/XP driver but for some reason it wouldn't work. Friend just saved the day by noting he remembers playing FF7 on Win95 with a playstation controller using one of those ghetto adapters.. Turns out I have one buried in a drawer! And all buttons/sticks work! Awesome.

Edit: Oh another question: Has anyone used GOG stuff on a Win98 PC? I mean I can't really use Internet Explorer on the machine as its junk and most stuff doesn't work. I did get it to network with my main PC so I can just transfer files over that way. Never used GOG though so not sure what their download/install system is like.

Populous 3d.

Theme Hospital

Rollercoaster Tycoon

Dungeon Keeper 2

SIN

Forget dungeon keeper 2, the original was way better. Maybe Nox ummm... Mechwarrior mercenaries. I'd open my drawer and check for other stuff but I can't imagine you actually playing a whole lot of all those games. I think you're really missing out with monster truck madness 2. It's almost not worth playing when you can't download all the stupid tracks and trucks... Ah that's not true. That game is awesome.

Geez. This thread makes me wanna fire up my old Sony VAIO desktop from 2001 just to see what it can do with Freelancer and Far Cry 1.

@seikenfreak:GOG lets you download individual installers for each game, which as far as I know don't need an internet connection to work, and there's no DRM so you could probably just burn them to a CD (for that authentic oldschool feel) and get them to the Win98 machine that way (assuming there's no USB on that thing).

For MS-DOS games they simply use DOSBox, but I am not sure what kind of trickery they use to get legacy Windows games to behave, or if they even support that; The search function on the site lets you filter by OS, but the oldest windows version listed there is XP, and that's referring to whether or not their current version of a game will run on that, not if it originally came out for it. I can imagine that games which were originally for Win98 won't actually work on a genuine Win98 install after they've undergone 'GOG tweaking'. There's also a filter which lets you search by release year though, and this is what comes up for 1995-2005.

Their support pages and forums might provide more insight.

P.S. I wish I could justify the space to set up a whole range of old PCs and assorted other computers myself. There's a channel on Youtube called Lazy Game Reviews, and the dude who runs it has an impressive amount of obsolete hardware that he gleefully shows off. It makes me jealous sometimes.

Your only Ultima game on there is 9, the game that killed the series? You should remedy that immediately, play Ultima 6 and/or 7. Now for other classic games...

Sword of the Samurai

Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons

Warlords 2 Deluxe

System Shock 2

StarCraft: Brood War

Civ 2

Heroes of Might & Magic III

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee

Giants: Citizen Kabuto

No One Lives Forever

@belegorm: Haha. Well actually the only Ultima game I ever played was 9. Well aside from Ultima Online. I remember 9 making my PC explode or the game being buggy or something. I remember getting to some city that was underwater? I don't know.

I had the disc so I installed it.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far.

@seikenfreak: I came to Ultima late and never played 9, but the phrase "EA betrayed Ultima's fans with 9" is something I've heard a lot. The game was buggy as hell, though that wasn't the only problem.

Pretty much every Ultima game before that was fantastic too; 8 was kinda rough but still waaaayyy better than 9.

I love this idea :-)

Btw, I played a shitload of mgs1 on pc and of course Quake III Arena around 2000/2001.

I owned Ultima IX back in the day. You were right on that, it was even buggier than Daggerfall was, but that wasn't the problem. U IX had a problem with everything taking way too long to get anything done. The characters didn't move that fast, controls felt sluggish, and there were a lot of animation priority that made everything take longer than expected. Then there was a bunch of bullshit like having to enable a separate mouse cursor to interact with your environment that ends up being more annoying than the Dragon Quest 1 style menu for every interaction.

For maximum street cred:

• Jagged Alliance (1+ expansion and 2)
• Hidden & Dangerous
• Fallout (1&2)
• Max Payne
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

I'd check out Gothic 1 if you haven't before. I have no idea if it will run but it did come out in 2001 so it fits in the period you asked.

Very cool thread by the way. I was at the tail end of the windows 98 era but I did have a laptop that ran it back then so this does give me a little bit of nostalgia.

I had a Dell Dimension 4100 just like that, slightly different specs.

• 800MHz PIII
• 256MB PC133 (later upgraded to 512MB)
• 20GB hard drive
• nVidia Riva TNT2 32MB (later upgraded to Radeon 9000 PRO 128MB)
• Sound Blaster Live! Value, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, 17" CRT, Windows 98 SE

I definitely played a lot of SimCity 4, Morrowind, Civilization III. Possibly Battlefield 1942 and Tropico, but those might have been after I'd moved to a new XP system.

If you're looking for something other than ancient IE, you could download an older version of Firefox. Apparently version 2.0.0.20 is the last to support Win 98.

Now we're talking!

I bet you'd like Commandos if you don't mind a challenge. You can even play the whole thing co-op with your mate if you can still get it to work. It's fucking hard co-op as you only have one quicksave slot to work with (you can use it over and over but it's real easy to save yourself into insanely difficult positions), but it's incredibly satisfying once you figure out a plan and manage to execute it together.

Your system will easily run windows XP, which would make it almost a contemporary and crash-free system. I'm sure you can find a second IDE drive to install it. In 2008 Intel released the atom processor to unsuspecting customers (me) which had less performance than your Pentium III and it came with just 1024 MB of DRAM.

Of all the things I would hold on to that monitor, It seems like a nice flat screen CRT, which you did, great job!

I'd recommend installing CPU-Z and posting the built-in benchmark score. Maybe clean the dirt from the rollers in the ball mouse.

I also have about 3 beige retro towers (Pentium 75 MHz, Pentium 4 and some newer stuff) that I use: a room divider and pedestal for random boxes and two as spacers behind a sofa.

Oh man, my win98 pc was so much crappier than that: i had a pentium II 400 mhz, 64mb ram, nvidia tnt, 13gb hdd + 17" crt (1280x1024)

I think I might've just been able to run medal of honor on that one, but was out of luck with mafia and bf1942, which ultimately got me to upgrade at some point.

What ran realy well though were all those real time tactic games like desperados, robin hood and commandos, which I'd definitely recommend as a throwback experience that mostly holds up (I think isometric graphics from that time didn't age nearly as bad as 3d and the controlls are pretty straightforward)

@jimbo: I always wanted to play Commandos back in the day. If I played one now should I go for Commandos 1 or 2?

I mentioned I'm a compulsive spender right?

So I just scooped up some stuff off the eBays via peoples suggestions, stuff I was missing, stuff I'd heard about, checked some screenshots etc. I sort of prefer physical games which is why I ordered these (although.. I'm kinda desperate for No-CD patches now haha) Skimmed over that GOG list as well so thx @colony024

• Interstate '76 (1997) - I remember thinking this was super cool, like Twisted Metal but way more sim-y. I had the original big box version but I have no idea what happened to that and the game. So I consider it missing from the collection. I also loved Vigilante 8 and didn't make the connection between the two til later in life.
• Soldier of Fortune (2000) - Mentioned this above. This started my first ever dive into actual PC hardware and having to upgrade something. I also remember it being very graphic in terms of violence and it being a big deal at the time. Still have the box/manual for it.
• Planescape: Torment (1999) - This title kept coming up recently. Usually in relation to Pillars of Eternity discussion. I think Rorie also mentioned it recently? It seems to be a classic. Courtesy of @hayt
• Serious Sam: First Encounter (2001) - Never played a Serious Sam game. I believe its some kind of chaotic crazy shooting spree type game. Also seen it mentioned in terms of testing hardware of the time.
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998) - I got into Rainbox Six at the third installment (Ravenshield). I've enjoyed some of the games since. Why not see where it all began? This sale actually came with a mission pack CD thing as well.
• Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business (2001) - I like isometric tactical games. Heard of it before. It's always been lurking in the back of my mind. Being mentioned here broke the camel's back! Got this specific version because I didn't know wtf I was looking at and it was cheap and semi-complete. Mentioned by @charlie_victor_bravo
• Deus Ex (2000) - I never played this. I remember hearing about it being a huge deal when it came out. Seems like a very important release. Never had any interest in any of the other Deus Ex games either probably because I never played this one. This purchase came with Deus Ex 2 as well.
• Police Quest: SWAT 2 (1998) - Another missing CD from my collection. I still have the big pc box and manual. I already mentioned I like isometric tactical games. I remember this being a bit too difficult/complicated for my 11 year old mind.
• Dungeon Keeper (1997) - Mentioned by @onemanarmyy and @maginnovision. Vague idea of what this is after seeing GB play one of the newer ones? The horrible mobile version I think it was. Seems interesting. Why not?
• Combat Flight Simulator: Europe Series (1998) - A friend of mine had talked about playing this one or the sequel a bunch. I like War Thunder and such. Seems like a staple of the flight sim genre.

I was able to get all of this for about $70.

I also continued to install other games I have. Some I didn't realize were from the time.

• Carmageddon 2
• Screamer 4x4
• Mech Commander Gold
• Flight Simulator 2000

@eurobum: Well this setup was meant to be for pre WinXP stuff. For WinXP, I ended up essentially reconstructing the PC I had at the time, which actually was the very first PC I built:

• Asus A7N8X Motherboard
• AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 2.2 Ghz
• 2 GB of OCZ PC-3200 DDR RAM
• ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB
• Sound card I'd probably use the Live! 5.1 Digital I think I have? Or I believe I have an Audigy 2 /shrug
• 300 GB HDD

We were actually able to source my original build of this because it ended up with a friend of a friend and he still had it sitting in a basement or something. It was originally built with a 2500+ 1.8 Ghz CPU but I upgraded that with this resurrection ($18 for the CPU lol). Someone had also swapped out the video card for some sort of Radeon 9800 with a aftermarket cooler. I didn't completely finish setting this up so I haven't really messed with it, but this would serve as the 2002 - 2006 ish setup? It starts to get into weird issues with the CRT screen/resolution scale making the game interfaces a little tough to see? I could of course just hook it up to one of my LCDs.

The next stage of my PC life was:

• Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.6 Ghz
• Corsair 2GB DDR2 800 RAM
• BFG Geforce 7950GT
• Sound card probably a Sound Blaster Xi-Fi Gamer I think I have laying around?

I still had all of these parts except for the video card. I believe I have another video card or two from around the time if it could use a boost. This is where stuff gets more weird because games start to get into a transition between DX9 and 10, screen ratios 4:3 and 16:9, XP and Vista.. Online connectivity stuff.

And then I have my AMD Athlon Phenom 2 X4 Black Edition rig which was what I used before my current setup. Too new to serve any real purpose.

CPU-Z 1.57 (latest for Win98) doesn't seem to have the benchmark feature. I could try and get and old 3DMark running though.

@belegorm Looked up Ultima 7.. That game is on a bunch of Floppys man! Ain't nobody got time for that.

The Voodoo 3 has an S-Video out as well and I'm not sure if it can do both VGA and S-Video simultaneously. If it can, I'd be curious to see if my Black Magic Shuttle capture card can pick it up and I could capture some footage of stuff. Hmmm...

Sorry about the long post.

@hayt: both games are generally well liked i think, but personally i only played Commandos 1 and had a ton of fun with it.

I remember it as being an extremely hard, but satisfying game.

I just wanna give you a high five right now, that's so rad. I miss Parallel and serial ports.

@crithon said:

For all available chipsets there is are variants of professional motherboards that still always comes with LPT parallel port headers, to which a cable and backplate with a parallel port can be attached. These are still used for matrix dot printers of old for punch through forms. It may just be that Intel gets rid of VGA before they get rid of LPT. Just sayin'.

@hayt said:@jimbo: I always wanted to play Commandos back in the day. If I played one now should I go for Commandos 1 or 2?

A lot of people swear by Commandos 2 (and it is a good game), but I always think of Commandos 1 as the definitive Commandos experience. Commandos 1 is pretty strictly a puzzle game, whereas the sequel starts taking it partially in an action direction. Commandos 2 is probably a lot friendlier to a modern player playing it now for the first time, but given the nostalgia trip you're on I'm not sure how much that matters to you.

Age of Mythology is another game I'd highly recommend based on your list. It's just after your bracket (2002), but for me it's the best 'Age of..' game, at least for single player. I'd put it right up there with Red Alert as the best of that style of RTS.

Police Quest SWAT 1 is completely different to SWAT 2, but well worth a look for how unique it is.

One of the X-Wing / Tie Fighter games should probably make it on your list. There's not really a strong consensus on which is best, but personally I'd say X-Wing Alliance.

edit: sorry for how confusing this reads, I blindly assumed this was OP I was replying to for some reason.

Dark Reign was a pretty rad RTS of that specific era, like Total Annihilation it dabbled a little with terrain elevation, but did stick closer to C&C mechanically and visually.

If you want to get your 2000 Civ fix, I really liked Civilization: Call to Power II. They're from the time when Sid Meier and the Civ brand briefly split off (Activision still briefly had the name as Sid Meier went to 2K I think, and then got the name back for Civ III a couple of years later?), and went in some different directions compared to the later "real" Civ games.

You should probably also get all the Jane's Combat Simulations games you can get your hands on, Jane's IAF did come out around the time of your machine, I think.

Descent 3 and Wing Commander Prophecy may not be anything for you, but I'd still suggest you look them up.

For some classic couch competitive/mini-esports/whatevertheycallit, I'd suggest Liero, which at least was incredibly huge in Scandinavia at the time, a two player real-time Worms style thing with lots of modding options.

Other notable/hyped games from back then off the top of my head:

• Blade Runner
• Black & White
• Messiah
• Populous: The Beginning
• Evolva
• Anachronox
• Outcast

So much juicy nostalgia flowing through this thread. It's making me all warm and fuzzy inside. Anyway, here's a few more suggestions:

• American McGee's Alice (perhaps not better than the more recent Madness Returns, but at least equally good)
• Terminator: Future Shock (see, Bethesda was making shooters loooong before Fallout 4)
• Project I.G.I. (did it make me feel like a badass because, or despite the terrible AI?)
• Nocturne (low-rent Resident Evil)
• Oni (anime action, Bungie style)
• Gunman Chronicles (the little Half-Life mod that could)
• Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels (realtime-with-pause tactics in the Warhammer 40K universe)

I just quickly looked up these links, but didn't check the OS for all of them; could be that some are actually older and made for Win95.

If you're going to play the original Dungeon Keeper, it would be best to also try to find the two official Direct 3D patch files (one for Dungeon Keeper, the other for the Deeper Dungeons expansion) as they make a huge difference to the graphics.

@seikenfreak: Ha! I used the exact same wallpaper growing up. May have to dig that up and make it my wallpaper for my current PC. Damn man, the nostalgia is real!

AH this is amazing! It's not playable any more but anyone else play Tanarus back in the day? Old online multiplayer tank shooter. I think it came out in the late 90's. May have been on Sony's Battlenet or something.

Either way I see these already listed but to reinforce:

Fallout 1&2

SimCity+SimCopter

SWAT games were pretty fun

Rainbow Six

If you have a cheap flight stick, X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter or either individual title

Deus Ex is a must play game!!

So I picked up Stronghold (HD I guess, so I'm semi-dumb for testing this) off of GoG to test if it would work on an old PC. Immediately upon running the setup file, it asks for a newer version of Windows and Windows itself throws up some error. I will now assume all of the stuff on GoG is built specially for newer machines. I went ahead and just bought a physical copy for $5. The Stronghold games have always looked/sounded like EXACTLY the type of game I'd like, because I prefer base building, organization, and aesthetics over micro managing units and build queues. Played a lot of Age of Empires 2 way back in the day. I've watched some gameplay from some of the newer Strongholds in the past but never took the dive. Since I already bought this Stronghold HD version, I fired it up (on my main pc) and it seems.. Awesome? Looks great. Cool music. I look forward to trying out the original version and seeing how it compares.

I did more browsing as well and ordered a copy of Thief. I remember playing a demo of it when it released. The novelty of using a bow in an first-person game really rubbed me the right way. I still get a fuzzy feeling when using a bow and arrow in modern FPS games, if done well. The game also seems to be a bit of a classic. Into the collection!

Commandos 2.. Looks cool from screenshots. I'm trying to buy a copy of it but either eBays payment system is crashing or, more likely, my card has been put on hold or something because I've made a lot of $5 purchases in the last 24 hours. Then again, it won't even let me buy it via PayPal directly from my bank account soo.. I don't know. I want to buy it though.

Played a little NFS: Porsche Unleashed and Railroad Tycoon 2 so far today. NFS High Stakes and Porsche Unleashed are still pretty good IMO. Definitely the last great entries into the series I think, before it started to morph into what it is today. RT2 is both more complicated and exactly as difficult as I remember. I got really into it at some point in my life. I think the sprite work still looks pretty good. The interface just needs to be scaled down a bunch since half of the screen is just a toolbar. RT3 and Sid Meier's Railroads! go in a different visual/gameplay direction I guess. I wish the people who did Cities: Skylines could make a new one of these. I think it would fit well in that scale and art style. Maybe there is some newer alternative railroad building game I'm not aware of.

@seikenfreak said:

While it's not railroads exclusively, have you checked out Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe? It supports Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7.

The list continues to grow. It's always a good feeling having a pile of packages waiting for you when you get home. I've been updating the "Currently Installed" list in the first post as I go.

I'll say first and foremost, I can't believe how trouble free the system has been. I spent that initial week or two dicking around with Win98 or driver installs. Since I got that squared aware, I've been throwing all of these installs at it and checking each game to make sure it runs after install. Do a little sample of the gameplay. The only issues I've run in to are games that were pre Win98. 9: The Last Resort wouldn't install but it sounds like there might be a work around for that. And now getting Interstate '76 setup, first the mid-install Registration thing was causing the installer to crash, to which I was able to find a work around. Then the game would just instant error on running the .exe. Finding some random ancient message board post buried deep in the Internets pointed me in the right direction and I was able to get it to run. Once I was in it: No problems. Got it all setup with PS2 controller and no crashes.

Anyway, as I said, I've been sampling the games as I go. Dungeon Keeper seemed like the concept/gameplay I had seen in the newer one. Only played through the first tutorial but it seemed neat. Interested in messing with it a bit more. Didn't look up anything about the Direct 3D files @mekon mentioned yet.

Planescape: Torment was not exactly what I expected, a traditional fantasy style (unless it was just the starting area) but then having the dialogue be partially voiced and sounding fairly good, I immediately felt the similarities to Pillars of Eternity. I played it very briefly, tried some combat and some of the dialogue. Definitely interested, but a little more on that later..

Soldier of Fortune was exactly as I remembered. I must've just played that first level a bunch of times because that is all that sticks out in my mind. It was all just as I remembered it. And it felt so.. natural? Like a modern FPS game but with not-that-great graphics. Certain enemies and hostages had certain voice clips when you'd get near them and it instantly flashed back in my memory how those clips would just partially repeat over and over because the game was running at 2 FPS on my old computer before I put the 128 MB of RAM in. Was great nostalgia trip and the tradition continued that I only played the first level.

SWAT 2 was slightly disappointing. I forgot you had/could do all the crazy team customization which I just wanted to skip over at that point. Luckily they have some pre-made groups. Units were very tiny. Not grid based, nor is it turn based. Not quite sure how you are supposed to handle simultaneous movement and actions for separate teams. Hmm.. Unless there was a whole waypoint staging system I'm not remembering. Interface was pretty horrible. I'd have to really sit down and learn this if I wanted to get into it.

I mentioned the Interstate '76 setup hurdle earlier. The game itself though is still pretty awesome? It has so much styyyyyyyyyyyyyylllllleeeee... The cutscenes, voice acting, sound, physics and character models must've been incredible for the time. I've recognized a bunch of vehicles in it directly from Vigilante 8. Even the weapon toggle sound is the same. The voice actor for Taurus (Greg Eagles) was instantly familiar, even though I didn't know exactly who it was or from where. After looking it up, I was thinking of the friendly bomb dude with the cane in Metal Gear Solid 2. Turns out he also did work on XCOM 2, which I was just playing last week! Such a small world. What really stops me from getting into this game is the horrible terrain graphics. You might as well just be driving around a giant plain flat test map. Someone needs to put a little work into modding it and adding more stuff to the map.

Rainbow Six was weird until I remapped the controls to something more modern. Then.. it felt like a Rainbow Six game hah. I'd need practice on this one. Mouse sensitivity was too high but wasn't adjustable in-game.

More games are still on the way. I kinda splurged a bit on the most recent ones :( Planescape: Torment made me go back and recheck release date info and prices on Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate 2. I clearly remember seeing the BG2 box on the shelf at the store and thinking how awesome the box looked. Then reading that they were both critically acclaimed, especially Baldur's Gate 2 which, at least back then, people seemed to think it was one of, if not the best RPG out there. I picked up complete boxed copies of both. I also happened to see the MetalJesus Flight Sim video that went up recently and they briefly talked about the Falcon games? What particularly caught my eye was the mod (Benchmark Sims) for Falcon 4.0 that seems to have made it look fantastic with modern hardware? I love that they require you to still have/use the original CD for verification before you can run this stand alone mod. It's also from 1998 and, true to a proper PC game, has a lot of goodies in a big box! You wanna know how to cut straight to my heart? Put your instruction manual in a spiral-bound book. Hence, Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate 2, Falcon 4.0, or Sim City 3000 Unlimited.

On a side note: I can't wait for the VR stuff to hit and revitalize the Sim genre. Already have my CV1 on order.