Today's PC Games are much more than a danger to our youth. Beside turning society's future to sadistic madmen, kinky murderers and sex-crazed heretics, contemporary games try to bore the rest of us to death. Sad. But, that's is where philosophy can help us. The future is written in the poetry of the past, said one of the well-educated full-bearded brigade. Same thing goes with games. You can corrupt yourself and the neighborhood kids using older games, without getting bored. This time it will not be just another Dune 2 or Wolfenstein 3D clone. It will be something totally different and (usually) inspired. Problem is your average 2006 PC doesn't look like this:
Problem solved.
Mr. Emulation Mostly, using his powerful C++ arsenal, came to the rescue of our gaming values and memories. Take a look at the following links:
DOSbox: The ultimate way to enjoy
Wing Commander and probably the best DOS emulator available. It's free too, but so is every other program on this (tiny) list. Unless of course it's shareware.
ScummVM: SCUMM. SCript Utility for Maniac Mansion. Also, something you'd rather wouldn't like as an adjective attributed to yourself. Also, the best way to run every old
Lucasarts adventure and more (
Beneath a Steel Sky,
Simon the Sorcerer,
Gobliiins ...). Extra simple interface, with added friendliness.
Sarien: Something like ScummVM, but for the early
Sierra games, and definitely less polished.
WinFrotz: Something like Sarien (and apparently like ScummVM), but for the ancient
Infocom text adventures.
VDMSound: An old soundcard (Adlib, Sounblaster etc) emulator. Or to put it in a fancier way: "a modular, extendable soundcard emulator".
CPUkiller: A shareware little program, that lets you slow down your PC. Seems strange, but does come in handy.
DodGE: It's a DOS game emulator. Again. A great one too.
Abandon Loader: In the words of the publisher: "Abandon Loader provides a front-end interface designed to maintain compatibility and simplify configuration of old DOS games on modern PC's".
Mind you, beside corrupting young people, you might want to try some of these tools on the free games included
in this cute list. On the other hand, you could just take a look at a nice
DOOM 3 mod, or help develop
a Half Life 2 one.
Related Tags: Download, Downloads, Abandonware, Abandon, Emulator, Emulators, Free, Freeware, Dos, Sierra, Lucasarts, Infocom, Retro, Games, Game, Gaming, PC, Adventures, SCUMM, ScummVM, Entertainment, Weblog
