Posted on April 9, 2021
Livestream 4/8/2021 – Baldur’s Gate
Last night was a real fun game to revisit. That would be the original Baldur’s Gate. A game I think holds up remarkably well. It was widely praised but if you aren’t familiar with the game it tries to be a, for the time, definitive D&D experience in game form. It follows the 3.5 ruleset which allows the game to take off running without reinventing the wheel. If you have played D&D in real life or in other faithful games this will be familiar very quickly.
Beyond that the playability and polish of the game world coupled with Bioware’s deep characters and dialog contributes to a game you can sink endless hours into. There are a ton of things to discover and find in a densly populated world presented in what I consider to be some of the finest SVGA graphics you can find. Am I really overhyping this game? Maybe but it was, and still is, basically amazing. If you want to play it on a modern computer there is an Enhanced Edition available on most digital storefronts that let’s you get going right away. Still great and if you want to see me barely surviving setting out in the Forgotten Realms world check out the livestream.
Posted on April 8, 2021
Business Software and Weight
Remember when business software came in big hulking boxes and weren’t just digital downloads? When the manuals were so heavy they could be used as literal boat anchors? Rik’s Random Retro remembers. In fact one of the heaviest ones I have is Wordperfect for DOS. Coming in at a very sturdy 7.6 lbs or 3.3 kg it’s a true chonk.
Is this relevant to anything? Nope! But it’s a fun thing considering software has gone the way of nearly all digital but there is something special about big package business software from the 90s. Everything had a box and many of them were heavy as…
Posted on April 6, 2021
Status of the next video
It’s taking longer than expected to get part 2 of the AMD K6-2 video out. With the holiday weekend and whatnot just past maybe not a huge surprise but for some reason I want to do this one justice. I have just about everything shot for it save for some B roll and did start the editing process. At the moment I’m targeting a release for the coming weekend. If it looks like it’ll drag on longer than that I’ll likely put out another quick video in the form of an Extra Bit feature. In the mean time here is a shot from the video focusing on some of the games I have from 1998. It was a good year for the PC to say the least.
Posted on April 2, 2021
Livestream – 4/1/2021 – System Shock 2
The livestream this week was System Shock 2. A great game in the “immersive sim” genre and really one of the level setting ones at that. When we say immersive sim consider games like Deus Ex, Bioshock and the modern Prey. All games that give you a toolset and with multiple ways to accomplish your objectives. Shoot your way through, hack things or sneak the solution is up to you.
System Shock 2 was released in 1999 being the sequel to well… System Shock but it improved on it in just about every way. System Shock I think had a bigger vision than the tech could provide at the time but the sequel was able to realize that in a way that wasn’t possible before. The pace might appear to be a little off putting at times since it looks like a shooter you are constantly scavenging for resources, planning your route and exploring your surroundings carefully. It’s also pretty creepy since it follows the “something bad happened and you are the only survivor” path asking you to piece together what happened. An evil AI is the cherry on top talking to you in a glitched and even creepier way. Either way it’s still a really fun game and if you haven’t played it but have experience with the Bioshock series you’ll definitely see where the inspiration came from!
Posted on March 29, 2021
New Pickup – Dell XPS T450
I managed to arrange a local pickup of a pretty neat machine over the weekend. That is a Dell Dimension XPS T450.
It was basically a quite high end late 98/early 99 computer that was able to be customized with some good specs for the day. We tend to think of prebuilt as the lesser machines these days but back then they often were the most desireable machines as long as they used good components. And we definitely have some good components here. Specs that I was able to find just by looking at it and doing some quick research, I haven’t powered it on yet:
- Pentium 3 450 MHz
- 440 BX Chipset Motherboard
- AGP Voodoo 3 (!)
- Turtle Beach Sound Card
Overall I’m very happy with this find. Expect to see a full video on this machine eventually and definitely some live streaming as well.
