This has become a massive pet peeve of mine lately. It's not just old Valve games, almost anything re-released on Steam or GOG is all anyone ever talks about or troubleshoots these days. If you want to look up issues with running Serious Sam TFE/TSE or Jedi Knight, you'll almost never find anyone using the original releases.

What bugs me is not so much the lack of attention original PC games get, but because just next door I see copious amounts of glory being bestowed upon retro game consoles and handheld systems. Why is it those games get a free pass, yet original PC games and hardware are given zero respect? It's just not right.

notsofossil wrote:

This has become a massive pet peeve of mine lately. It's not just old Valve games, almost anything re-released on Steam or GOG is all anyone ever talks about or troubleshoots these days. If you want to look up issues with running Serious Sam TFE/TSE or Jedi Knight, you'll almost never find anyone using the original releases.

What bugs me is not so much the lack of attention original PC games get, but because just next door I see copious amounts of glory being bestowed upon retro game consoles and handheld systems. Why is it those games get a free pass, yet original PC games and hardware are given zero respect? It's just not right.

I think the extra attention paid to retro consoles has to do with their appearance of having more unique character than PCs. The marketing of consoles focuses so much on each one's unique nature and image that they make an impression and easily lend themselves to nostalgia. From our standpoint, we're computer geeks and love old systems and hardware; we find unique and nostalgic character in PC systems that to a non-geek appear to be pretty homogeneous. When we look at a storage room filled with old dusty PCs we see Packard Bells and Amstrads and the like, while most will just see a room full of beige and gray boxes. An old NES system is an immediately recognizable iconic image for a larger portion of the population.

SRQ wrote:

You wouldn't just need to rip it, you would need to replace the executable and some other things with properly compatible older versions. The versions now rely on XP and up hooks and at least DX9, probably a newer opengl.

That's what kernelex is for and D3D , OGl, software shouldn't be an issue for HL1.

Just to update, I actually found a (used, obviously) Game of the Year edition of Half-Life at a local video game store for $8, complete with (cracked) jewel case. Very exciting. It works like a charm in Win 95 OSR2, and is actually quite reasonably playable on my P166MMX with Voodoo. The 586 I had when the game was originally released did not have a 3D accelerator, hence its nearly-unplayable nature.

I have a boxed Half-Life Blue Shift that oddly claims it includes the original Half-Life, if anyone else wants in on original Half-Life goodness.

Is there any point in playing the original Half Life 2, other than running it on old kit? With Half Life there's Aureal3D/EAX support, but I've not heard of functionality being lost in later releases of HL2.

ynari wrote:

Is there any point in playing the original Half Life 2, other than running it on old kit? With Half Life there's Aureal3D/EAX support, but I've not heard of functionality being lost in later releases of HL2.

Well, aside from playing the game on period correct hardware (something I would guess a few of us do when playing old games), there were a number of bugs introduced a few years ago that apparently Valve don't seem bothered to fix. Getting a copy of the original game and running it on old hardware means that it can be played as it was, not as it is now.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthr … d.php?t=1286478

There was also a LOT of bugs in the original HL2 as well. The ATI fog bug is a huge one

leileilol wrote:

There was also a LOT of bugs in the original HL2 as well. The ATI fog bug is a huge one

Yes, that's true... I guess it just depends on your setup I guess. I mean, you wouldn't play Skyroads on a 486 with a flakey Sound Blaster clone. Not that the ATIs were flakey... Just using that as a silly example