Computer Archaeology

Matt was kind enough to scrounge up a USB 3.5" floppy for me (thanks Matt!), so I dug deeper into the past with DosBox... back to times where EGA graphics were top of the line (look it up, whippersnappers... :)). Back to times where manuals were huge, in part to distract you during the forever-install process. Back to when companies actually used a 720k floppy for the last disk of an install set, because it was cheaper than all the 1.44M floppies they had to use otherwise.

It was an interesting journey... and not entirely fruitless, either, between things like Dungeon Hack and the original Sam & Max game. Sad to say, I just couldn't bring myself to install Windows 3.1 on the Mac... some wrongness is just best left untouched.

Edibles twofer

• If you're like me, every so often you go back to the basic 'pasta and tomato sauce' dinner... something I tried tonight that was surprisingly good -- cook some Brussel sprouts with the pasta, and brown up some cubed Spam to add to the sauce.
• In case you didn't know, the Easter candy's out... which means, in my case, the evil that is Cadbury Dark Chocolate Mini-Eggs. Not the gooey pseudo-eggs, although those are okay in small (like once-a-year) quantities, rather the oversized M&M replacements, with "better" (if not "good") solid chocolate innards, in your choice of milk or dark chocolate. Om nom nom nom... :)
  

Lego + Star Wars = Fun

Got $20 burning a hole in your pocket, and looking for some fun? Might I suggest Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy? Based on the "good" Star Wars trilogy, it's a bit of an oddity... sort of an adventure/puzzle game disguised as an action game. Yes, you do get to run around blasting and light-sabering stormtroopers and the like... but that will only get you so far. Besides which, there's one big unexpected mechanic for an action game... you can't die.

I should clarify... yes, you do have a health meter, and you can get "killed"... but you don't have any limit on how many times you can die, and all dying really does to you is lose some in-game cash (and not even a particularly large amount of that). This mechanic allows you to take your inevitable demise from a horde of troopers or a bad jump in stride, while you concentrate on another major mechanic... building stuff.

This is a Lego game after all... creation and destruction are part and parcel of that system. In this game, building comes both from manually gathering bits and pieces to form objects and controls (and pretty simply at that), or, in some cases, "using the Force" to accomplish the same sort of thing writ large (can't have a Star Wars game without the Force now, can you?).

Apart from that... well, you get some running-around levels with a team of Legoized characters from the films, and fly-around levels with Legoized vehicles from the films, and the encompassing collection game that surrounds the whole mess... it's good, clean, wholesome fun... and, unlike my usual usage of that phrase, I mean that literally this time. Those of you on next-gen consoles might have to pony up for the "complete" Lego Star Wars... I might balk at what they're wanting for that just now, but keep an eye on it... at some point, it'll be cheap enough to "take a chance" on... and I heartily recommend you do.

Field Day

I'm working in the housing industry just now, which means things are pretty slow at work... there are plans in the works to change that, but it doesn't change the fact that I honestly have nothing useful to do at work right now. It's bad enough that I decided to head home at lunch today and give the house a good field day. For those of you unfamiliar with that Navy phrase, it's spending the entire day doing nothing but cleaning, usually with the expectation of getting your area inspected thereafter (based on the results of which there may be more cleaning in your future, or, in rare instances, getting the rest of the day off, that sort of thing).

So now, the cobwebs are knocked down, every room has been dusted and swept/mopped/vacuumed, the bathroom's thoroughly swabbed out, and most of the glass/chrome bits are cleaned up. It's not inspection-ready, and I really wish I could air the place out a bit, but it's not too shabby, either. Now, I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with myself tomorrow.

Lunar Eclipse

I snuck a peek at tonight's lunar eclipse a couple of times... a reasonably cool thing, and watchable from the warmth and comfort of my house, so why not. I tried taking pictures but, well, pictures in the dark just don't work that well, as I've found before. No worries, I'm sure there's some around somewhere if you missed it.

FIVE discs?

I was doing my irregular update of my NetFlix queue today, and one of the recommendations I got fed was for a 5-disc series of Strong Bad emails. Now, I actually enjoy watching this online series every so often (like, say, when a new one comes out), and, if you haven't seen it, well, here's a link for you... but I have to wonder mightily about this particular package.

I mean, first off, the package includes the first 100 emails they did, from what I gather... I'm sorry, but for all that I find it reasonably funny in small doses, that strikes me as being just a little bit of overkill, like watching the Monty Python fish-slapping dance for two hours straight. Second... FIVE discs? Honestly, each of those shorts runs about five minutes long... unless there's just a ton of bonus material on those discs, the only reason I can see for making a five-disc set of it was to justify charging a five-disc price. It's the sort of sales/marketing "tactic" that, in my humble opinion, ought to be banned outright, and the perpetrators flayed and keelhauled... okay, some of that may just be my nasty cold/flu talking, but only a little... :)

Games, for better or worse

Well, I finally finished my initial sort... looks like I've removed about half the assorted game boxes I had laying about, and none too soon at that, considering the layers of dust and cat hair I found on some of them. All the games I have left now, I can run whenever I want, without thinking about how long it'll take to get it installed, will it work on my system, etc, etc.

One odd bit I noticed in the process... it seems like many of the games I thought of as being "pretty cool" in earlier days were the ones that gave me the most grief... so, no Fallout, no Black & White, no Thief, no System Shock 2... and, from what I can tell, it's mostly because the makers of those games made assumptions that just aren't valid these days (multi-core processors, for example, are the single biggest source of grief I found).

Oh well, I've still got a hoard of games to play with now (decided to start with Wizardry 8, because it's old enough that I barely remember anything about it, which is saying something when it comes to my memory), and space to put more when I get them. Too bad I just found out that the game I was most looking forward to (Spore) got pushed back to a September release. A pity, but I'm not sure whether I'm really that put out about it... yes, I would like some new shinies to play with, but with all the RPGs at my disposal now, it might be a while before I really "need" a new game... :)

Computer Sickness from Ages Past

So here I am, cleaning up the computer room a bit, doing something that should have been done long ago: removing any software (primarily games) that are too ancient or otherwise cruddy to work on my state-of-last-year's-art Windows XP game machine. As part of that process, I'm looking up install info on older games that I remember as being cool, when I come across an old DOS game. I do my search, and... well, nothing directly about running it under XP comes up, but all sorts of things come up about using DOSBox to get it running.

DOSBox (which you can download here) is a program to provide a DOS-like environment (and I apologize for anybody who's reading this that doesn't know what came before Windows), mainly to run old games in. Now, being the sort of geek that I am, if there's anything cooler than a computer, it's a computer with more than one operating system on it... and if there's anything cooler than that, it's a computer running multiple operating systems at the same time... and if there's anything cooler than that, it's making such a setup work in a way that's fundamentally wrong in some respect. That's why I picked up a Linux kit for my PS2 originally... so I could revel in the glory of NetHack on a state-of-the-art game system.

DOSBox has a universal binary for Mac OS X. I am now using my mid-powered Mac Mini with the ultra-polished user interface to run crusty old command-line programs from the early '90s... and loving it. Time hasn't been kind to these games in general, but it's still a fun walk down memory lane... sometimes marveling at some of the effects game makers were able to pull off with very limited resources, sometimes cringing at the terrible voice-acting, but definitely having a blast.

Oh, and if you want to try out DOSBox yourself, but don't have a repository of old games cluttering up your room, I'm sure you could find a nice abandonware site somewhere...

Free game trial: Armageddon Empires

I don't post about every computer game I come across (honest), but when I find a hybrid strategy/card game, that runs on both Mac and PC, with good production values, and a free trial, well... how can I resist? Check it out here.

An even more different sort of online game

Wow. There's a reason I tend to stick to implementing other peoples' ideas, rather than pursue my own whims... other people tend to think on a much larger scale than I ever do, even when they full well know the task they're letting themselves in for.

Take Metaplace for example... while I'm thinking of making a little system you can host on your website for you and your friends to enjoy turn-based games online, these gents are looking at making a universal, cross-linkable game system that can be used for little private game areas or big MMOGs of practically any type. Mind you, I'm still going to play with my own idea for now, but I'm going to keep a close eye on this project... the potential there for fun games with little pain is simply HUGE.