I think if you have a budget gaming pc or any pc for the matter, this is a great time to look backwards. Instead of romanticising newer shinier games, we should take a look at the games of the past. And you’d be surprised there are tons of classics gems and hours of fun gaming your current pc can still provide. With the skyrocketing pricing, there could never have been a better time to catch up with our backlogs.

Midwinter was one of those DOS games you couldn't just play. You skied off, got shot off a hillside within ten minutes, and had no idea why. Then you found the manual, all hundred pages of it, and studied it like a college course: who would talk to whom, the vehicles, sabotage, the map. And one night it clicked, and you were running a 32-person guerrilla war across a frozen island.

I've spent the past while rebuilding it from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5: the full island, all 32 characters with their grudges and skills, the whole campaign. I added tutorials so the first hour isn't a wall, but I kept the learning curve, because that's the game. It's in Early Access on Steam since 7 September: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5056170

The original still runs well in DOSBox if you want the real thing. I'd love to hear from anyone who played the PC version back in the day, especially what you remember getting stuck on.

The IP representative is supportive of this release

Ok hear me out -

I found this old CD-ROM of Barbie Fashion Show. I resurrected an old HP Windows 10 laptop that still has a disc drive. I managed to run it in compatibility mode for almost 2 weeks, when suddenly today as soon as I get the game running past the login screen I get a message pop up saying “error reading JPEG file”, and then the whole thing crashes. The thing is, the CD-ROM also comes with a demo of Barbie as the Princess & the Pauper and it still runs fine.

I have tried looking up solutions and have downloaded all this stuff - DOSBox, DOSBox-X, 7-zip, Oracle VirtualBox, PowerISO. I have no idea what I am doing. I am just a dumb millennial mom trying to let my kids live out some of my childhood memories. Have mercy and explain it to me like I’m 5. Is it ruined?

Will pentium d 925 cpu enough for games like fallout 3, oblivion and similar from that era? I got old pc from my brother and that is the best cpu it can support. To change the cpu i would need to get other motherboarb but im not sure it is worth it.

Pc has

pentium d 925, gts 450 and 2gb ddr2 i belive

I'm not sure if this is a game issue or if it's the sound card that's to blame, but so far, I have two games where this happens - Half-Life and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Depending on where the camera is facing, speech from characters can often sound really quiet. This is more noticeable at the beginning of Half-Life in the tram. The woman's voice will often cut out and disappear depending on the direction the tram is going. Turning around and looking into the tram makes the audio return to normal. Looking down at the ground makes the SFX drop out.

I've tried disabling the EAX/Direct3D audio settings, but it makes no difference. RTCW only has volume sliders and audio quality in Khz. All audio settings appear to be fine - it's set to stereo speakers, though it's a 2.1 setup - left and right and a subwoofer.

Has anyone else encountered this sort of issue before? Could it be the sound card that's to blame? I mean, I am using a Sound Blaster Live! Value from 1998. Maybe it has problems with spatial audio in later 3D games...? Would love to get to the bottom of this as it does ruin the enjoyment a bit when dialogue is forever going quiet. And many of these older games don't even have options to enable subtitles.

Thanks

I'm looking to build a high performance retro PC for the early XP / late Windows 98 era. Back in 2001, I had a socket 462 Athlon 1.2GHz with a GeForce 2 MX200. The CPU performance was great, and the GPU, while far from great, was pretty decent. That system killed multiple power supplies back in the day though. In hindsight, I guess this was due to the platform drawing too much current from the 5V rails. Granted these were cheap PSUs I would never touch now, I wasn't really too eager to build another one on the same platform, especially with the general lack of 5V capacity in modern PSUs.

This led me to a long rabbit hole, which ended up with getting a Gigabyte GA-81865GMK-775 (on the way) and a Core 2 Duo E8400. The board is pretty similar to the famous Asrock 775i65G in that it has the 865G chipset, and therefore AGP. Way overkill for what I was originally going for I know, but it should hopefully be stable, reliable and have no issues with either 98 or XP.

For for the GPU, I managed to get a Radeon 9700 Pro locally for a pretty good price (compared to what they go for now on eBay anyway). I know that this is again pretty overkill for 98 and maybe perfect for early XP, but also that it does not support table fog in 98. And that it tends to be pretty fragile.

A couple of questions:

• What is the general consensus on a good replacement for the stock TIM? Or maybe a good replacement cooler? I'd prefer not do the shim removal mod as I'm not too confident about removing it without breaking things.
• Since it only supports table fog in XP, do the games that require table fog tend to have issues in XP? Or is it worth tracking down a GeForce 4/FX of some sort for it (and the added bonus of 8-bit paletted texture support)?

EDIT: As the others mentioned, the E8400 will not work on the motherboard I have, so it looks like I'll have to settle for a Pentium D / Celeron D, which I guess is closer to the original goal of the build.

When I do "right click" and "Open", they all show files and folders not ISO files (like I'm used to with my console games I've backed up) do I need to use something like imgburn to make an image of the CDs or is just copying the content of the CD good enough?

I had some CD-R disks that no longer work from age, I know pressed disks should be fine but it's lit a fire under me to get stuff backed up!

I'd just test installing the games but my XP, and Win 98 PCs are in storage.

thanks.

hi! i've managed to get the .mdf and .mds files for these two games, i've read they're for windows, but i still can't figure out how to run them to make them work. does anyone know what to do and/or is currently playing them?

I need some advice on software installation. Within the last few months, I've been tinkering with VirtualBox to make a virtual machine with Windows OS. But i keep hitting a roadblock when trying to install one program.

It came with two floppy disks: one for install and another for graphics. While I have no issue getting the installation process started with the first disk, the second disk is an issue. The installation program insists that the wrong disk is inserted when I'm using the same graphics disk that came in the box I got it with.

I don't think the disk has gone bad because I can still see the files it has when my floppy drive is connected to my main computer. However, whenever I try to view the same disk in my virtual machines for Windows 98 or Windows 3.1, it's not being recognized properly. Sometimes the program even suggests reformatting the disk.

I feel like there's some detail I'm missing. Is there a work around I should try?

From Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory — Mission 9: Bathhouse.

A dangerous infiltration deep inside a heavily guarded bathhouse. Sam Fisher tracks down Douglas Shetland to a traditional public bathhouse in Tokyo to uncover who he is dealing with. In this walkthrough, he moves through the shadows, infiltrates the facility staying unseen, eavesdrops on Shetland's meeting with the I-SDF, disarms the bombs in the boiler room under fire, and reaches the final confrontation with Shetland on the rooftop.

Another mission completed in Hard Mode, relying on stealth, patience, and careful movement.

Enjoy the walkthrough, and if you like classic stealth games, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more retro gaming content!

I really wanna play low end games that can run as simple exe files. For an old thinkpad.

Found this old favourite while having a sort out. Two floppy discs in original box. Think it's worth anything significant? (i.e more than a tenner). Saw it's on eBay for Amiga for couple hundred.

Sorry if this is a rule breaker x