VOGONS


First post, by Alistar1776

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I built a Windows XP machine to play my physical big box pc games, which arent very many, probably 6 in total id say. But i'd like to expand on that collection a bit, along with my Windows 98 machine. I typically like puzzle/strategy type games as well as car games and rpg style games.

My Windows XP machine is built with an AMD Phenom 9750 quad core, single 1Gb stick DDR2 1066mhz, a GTX 550ti, and a Creative Sound card, CT5803 i dont remember what its called. 120gb hdd
My Windows 98 SE machine Im sure some of you have seen previous posts about, its an old Gateway PC, Athlon 850Mhz, 512Mb memory. GPU currently an Nvidia Riva TNT 2, needs an upgrade, and i am considering the suggestions i have gotten, as well as others.

A few games on my list currently to get are Age of Empires, and I think Civ3? or was it 4? something I played before in about the mid-late 2000s

Looking forward to the game suggestions. I do like to do more with these machines than just build them and set them aside, so I thought id make this post 🤣. Thanks as always!

Reply 1 of 15, by thepirategamerboy12

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I'll give one. Pandora's Box is a great puzzle game collection I've been playing through lately.

Reply 3 of 15, by RandomStranger

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Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-08-01, 02:54:

I built a Windows XP machine to play my physical big box pc games, which arent very many, probably 6 in total id say. But i'd like to expand on that collection a bit, along with my Windows 98 machine. I typically like puzzle/strategy type games as well as car games and rpg style games.

The gaming industry and I were in our RTS phase in the XP era.
Empire Earth
S.W.I.N.E.
WarCraft III + Frozen Throne
Rome: Total War
Age of Mythology
Command & Conquer: Generals
Codename Panzers
Afrika Korps vs. Desert Rats
Medieval II: Total War
Command and Conquer 3
Joint Task Force
Supreme Commander
World in Conflict

For car games
Need for Speed from Hot Pursuit 2 all the way up to Carbon
Colin McRae Rally 2005 and DIRT
Race Driver: GRID
Midnight Club 2 and 3
Test Drive Unlimited

For RPGs:
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Gothic 2
Fable
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1&2
Neverwinter Nights 1&2
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (especially with the Shivering Isles DLC)
Fallout 3
The Witcher

These are mostly well known, mostly popular games.

Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-08-01, 02:54:

a Creative Sound card, CT5803 i dont remember what its called.

Yeah, that's just a rebranded Ensoniq AudioPCI. You might as well take it out. I don't think it offers anything over the on-board sound. It might be even worse.

sreq.png retrogamer-s.png

Reply 4 of 15, by Alistar1776

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RandomStranger wrote on 2022-08-02, 05:50:
The gaming industry and I were in our RTS phase in the XP era. Empire Earth S.W.I.N.E. WarCraft III + Frozen Throne Rome: Total […]
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Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-08-01, 02:54:

I built a Windows XP machine to play my physical big box pc games, which arent very many, probably 6 in total id say. But i'd like to expand on that collection a bit, along with my Windows 98 machine. I typically like puzzle/strategy type games as well as car games and rpg style games.

The gaming industry and I were in our RTS phase in the XP era.
Empire Earth
S.W.I.N.E.
WarCraft III + Frozen Throne
Rome: Total War
Age of Mythology
Command & Conquer: Generals
Codename Panzers
Afrika Korps vs. Desert Rats
Medieval II: Total War
Command and Conquer 3
Joint Task Force
Supreme Commander
World in Conflict

For car games
Need for Speed from Hot Pursuit 2 all the way up to Carbon
Colin McRae Rally 2005 and DIRT
Race Driver: GRID
Midnight Club 2 and 3
Test Drive Unlimited

For RPGs:
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Gothic 2
Fable
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1&2
Neverwinter Nights 1&2
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (especially with the Shivering Isles DLC)
Fallout 3
The Witcher

These are mostly well known, mostly popular games.

Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-08-01, 02:54:

a Creative Sound card, CT5803 i dont remember what its called.

Yeah, that's just a rebranded Ensoniq AudioPCI. You might as well take it out. I don't think it offers anything over the on-board sound. It might be even worse.

Motherboard in my Windows XP system iiisss... cant find the actual model, its behind the gpu atm 🤣. its an AM2+ Gigabyte board with support for 1066mhz memory, and dual bios capable. Thank you for the extensive list of games as well, if theres a site I could go to, to download them, that would be awesome

Reply 5 of 15, by RandomStranger

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Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-08-03, 07:42:
RandomStranger wrote on 2022-08-02, 05:50:
The gaming industry and I were in our RTS phase in the XP era. Empire Earth S.W.I.N.E. WarCraft III + Frozen Throne Rome: Total […]
Show full quote
Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-08-01, 02:54:

I built a Windows XP machine to play my physical big box pc games, which arent very many, probably 6 in total id say. But i'd like to expand on that collection a bit, along with my Windows 98 machine. I typically like puzzle/strategy type games as well as car games and rpg style games.

The gaming industry and I were in our RTS phase in the XP era.
Empire Earth
S.W.I.N.E.
WarCraft III + Frozen Throne
Rome: Total War
Age of Mythology
Command & Conquer: Generals
Codename Panzers
Afrika Korps vs. Desert Rats
Medieval II: Total War
Command and Conquer 3
Joint Task Force
Supreme Commander
World in Conflict

For car games
Need for Speed from Hot Pursuit 2 all the way up to Carbon
Colin McRae Rally 2005 and DIRT
Race Driver: GRID
Midnight Club 2 and 3
Test Drive Unlimited

For RPGs:
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Gothic 2
Fable
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1&2
Neverwinter Nights 1&2
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (especially with the Shivering Isles DLC)
Fallout 3
The Witcher

These are mostly well known, mostly popular games.

Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-08-01, 02:54:

a Creative Sound card, CT5803 i dont remember what its called.

Yeah, that's just a rebranded Ensoniq AudioPCI. You might as well take it out. I don't think it offers anything over the on-board sound. It might be even worse.

Motherboard in my Windows XP system iiisss... cant find the actual model, its behind the gpu atm 🤣. its an AM2+ Gigabyte board with support for 1066mhz memory, and dual bios capable. Thank you for the extensive list of games as well, if theres a site I could go to, to download them, that would be awesome

S.W.I.N.E. went free ~10 years ago just around when the developer went out of business. You can get it from reliable sources like moddb.
The rest mostly are (or were) availebale on GoG DRM free. For example Colin 2005, DIRT and GRID were available through GoG, but are abandonware I don't know the legal status of pirating them. Fable is on Steam and apparently DRM free so you don't need the client for XP. Test Drive: Unlimited and the Need for Speed entries as far as I'm aware were never available in digital stores and are essentially abandonware.

As for sound, your exact model of mobo doesn't really matter. By the time of the AM2+ boards anything is at least as good or better than the AudioPCI.

sreq.png retrogamer-s.png

Reply 6 of 15, by Alistar1776

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RandomStranger wrote on 2022-08-03, 08:15:

S.W.I.N.E. went free ~10 years ago just around when the developer went out of business. You can get it from reliable sources like moddb.
The rest mostly are (or were) availebale on GoG DRM free. For example Colin 2005, DIRT and GRID were available through GoG, but are abandonware I don't know the legal status of pirating them. Fable is on Steam and apparently DRM free so you don't need the client for XP. Test Drive: Unlimited and the Need for Speed entries as far as I'm aware were never available in digital stores and are essentially abandonware.

As for sound, your exact model of mobo doesn't really matter. By the time of the AM2+ boards anything is at least as good or better than the AudioPCI.

ok, ill look them up when i have more time. I assume some games that will play on XP might work for Windows 98 SE? just depending on hardware requirements

Reply 9 of 15, by chinny22

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RandomStranger has already listed most the RTS's I would have said. only one missing is "World War 3 Black Gold" which works on both 98/XP

Reply 10 of 15, by RandomStranger

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chinny22 wrote on 2022-08-04, 01:44:

RandomStranger has already listed most the RTS's I would have said. only one missing is "World War 3 Black Gold" which works on both 98/XP

WW3BG is very nostalgic to me, it was the one that kickstarted my RTS phase, but objectively looking it's a mediocre one. Though not without a charm. It has a lot of good ideas, but failed to establish mechanics to capitalize on them.

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Reply 11 of 15, by Alistar1776

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cyclone3d wrote on 2022-08-03, 21:45:

You are killing RAM performance by only running a single stick. Add a second stick so you will be running in dual channel instead of single channel mode.

i only had the one stick on hand that was functional. the other matching sticks gave a no post issue

Reply 12 of 15, by Alistar1776

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RandomStranger wrote on 2022-08-04, 04:09:
chinny22 wrote on 2022-08-04, 01:44:

RandomStranger has already listed most the RTS's I would have said. only one missing is "World War 3 Black Gold" which works on both 98/XP

WW3BG is very nostalgic to me, it was the one that kickstarted my RTS phase, but objectively looking it's a mediocre one. Though not without a charm. It has a lot of good ideas, but failed to establish mechanics to capitalize on them.

what is "RTS"? out of curiosity

Reply 13 of 15, by RandomStranger

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Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-08-04, 09:04:
RandomStranger wrote on 2022-08-04, 04:09:
chinny22 wrote on 2022-08-04, 01:44:

RandomStranger has already listed most the RTS's I would have said. only one missing is "World War 3 Black Gold" which works on both 98/XP

WW3BG is very nostalgic to me, it was the one that kickstarted my RTS phase, but objectively looking it's a mediocre one. Though not without a charm. It has a lot of good ideas, but failed to establish mechanics to capitalize on them.

what is "RTS"? out of curiosity

An acronym. Real Time Stragegy. You mentioned you liked stragegy games.
There are also turn based strategy games, like the Worms series which had some XP era entries, but the 2D games of the franchise are the best.

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Reply 14 of 15, by Alistar1776

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RandomStranger wrote on 2022-08-04, 09:07:

An acronym. Real Time Stragegy. You mentioned you liked stragegy games.
There are also turn based strategy games, like the Worms series which had some XP era entries, but the 2D games of the franchise are the best.

oh ok. Yea, homeworld 2 which i still have and Age of Empires were some of my favorites back then.

Reply 15 of 15, by chinny22

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RandomStranger wrote on 2022-08-04, 04:09:
chinny22 wrote on 2022-08-04, 01:44:

RandomStranger has already listed most the RTS's I would have said. only one missing is "World War 3 Black Gold" which works on both 98/XP

WW3BG is very nostalgic to me, it was the one that kickstarted my RTS phase, but objectively looking it's a mediocre one. Though not without a charm. It has a lot of good ideas, but failed to establish mechanics to capitalize on them.

I really liked the Russia campaign where you could send units back home then bring them back to the battlefield in the next level.
Plus I always preferred game's with realistic? units vs futuristic units. It's why I preferred Red Alert series over C&C's or Warcraft over Starcraft and this game is as about real as it got back in the day.
But I agree, it lacks that certain something even compared with say C&C Generals which wasn't that great either.