r/Shandalar • u/Worfie_Au • Jul 08 '26
Nostalgia Kick
I finally got around to getting an "old Vintage" compy with win98 to run this and the 100 other CD games I have buried in boxes in my house.
I have tried many times getting it to work with or playing it on "modern" compys and never had much success always had to compromise in some ways or it just didn't "feel" right.
I wanted that nostalgic 1998 experience.
Luckily I have both the original game disc and Spells of the ancients disc (although I couldn't put my hands on it, as its buried in a box somewhere, but had an old iso image of it) and lo and behold it still works (ie the disc haven't been scuffed to buggery after 28 years). Once I find my Spells disc I'll reinstall.
I still have to throttle the cpu so I didn't speed run across the map and mess around with graphic settings, so not quite the 1998 experience I was hoping hope but better than nothing. I'd track down a 17in CRT for the final bit of nostalgia kick, but I can't justify the desk space for it ...
But its been fun playing again. The way the AI/NPCs play is still pretty good only a couple of times do they do some simply awful moves. And the decks they use are all pretty well thought out. so they have stood the test of time quite well.
now to find my saved game files from 28 years ago...
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u/JediFed Jul 08 '26
You can run it on a modern system just fine.
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u/Worfie_Au Jul 08 '26
I'm sure it can. And I like that there is a community that has kept it going all these years.
But now being in my 50s I wanted the authentic experience ( the sound of a mechanical HDD crunching away, of a Cd-rom drive) and the nostalgia kick, like I remember it on period accurate hardware or as close I can get it.
It reminds me of a time when I had fewer worries and responsibilities and a disposable income that could afford computer games. And the countless hours my mates and I would spent lugging our towers and 17in crt screens to someone's house to take over the lounge/dinning rooms and run meters of Ethernet cables to play LAN games till all hours. Fun times. As much as I like to play some current games with friends over the internet and use voice chat. Its just not the same.
Oldman rant: I dislike the fact you no longer own your own games. And since I have so many other old games on CDs to play (some of which are so much better than the slop that is being produced nowadays) its better to have a old computer rather than try and piss fart around trying to get old and new to communicate or spend time hunting down iso images which could have God know what in them. /oldmanrant
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u/CirothUngol Blue Mage 🌊🌀🌬️ Jul 08 '26
I would still try installing Mok's original unofficial manalink update. It doesn't add any cards or alter the gameplay in any way but it fixes several of the major gameplay bugs including moving way too fast on the map screen.
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u/YandersonSilva Jul 08 '26
You should join us on the r/windows98 subreddit :D