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Recovering Lost Games
I don't know why, but yesterday I spent some time trying to find some CDs of old computer games. I've gotten tired of the ones that I have, I guess.
I was hoping to find Arcanum, but didn't have any luck. I was also hoping to find Warcraft 3, although I wasn't a huge fan of that game. Unfortunately since it was never installed on my current machine, that meant I'd need to find the serial number too - and I didn't.
But I did find the old CD of Sam & Max Hit the Road. Now, I knew that that was useless, because the game had featured an annoying anti-piracy device: a pamphlet with figures of Sam & Max in different outfits. To run the game, you first had to answer a question about what Sam & Max were wearing. And of course I'd lost the pamphlet (and the many copies I'd made) years before.
In any case, S&MHtR had been an old DOS game, and I knew that it was incompatible with modern Windows.
But somehow I found myself bopping around on the internet. Almost instantly I found an executable for Windows. And to my utter amazement, it worked! Not only could I play, but the whole anti-piracy protection was completely eliminated! Neat. :D
I played it for a while; the graphics were amazingly crude, and the voices don't sound like the ones that I've always had in my head for Sam & Max (unfortunately John Astin, who played Sam in the later cartoon TV series, didn't do the voice for the game, and the Max guy just sucked in both), but it was still as quirky and funny as always.
I also found the CDs for NeverWinter Nights. On the downside, I couldn't find the serial number, but on a whim I ran a search of both of my hard drives, looking for some remnant of the game. To my surprise, there was a full installation of the game on my F drive. That was my old C drive, which we moved to F when the old F drive failed (confused yet?). So it didn't work when I put in the NwN CD. But after I put in the CD, I tried running the executable, and to my surprise, it worked! It had to be extensively updated, and then patched, but it did work. I played it for a bit, but I have to say that even though I'm much more knowledgeable about D&D now than I was when I first played it, I was still not impressed.
Still, it's nice to have the option to play something different.
I was hoping to find Arcanum, but didn't have any luck. I was also hoping to find Warcraft 3, although I wasn't a huge fan of that game. Unfortunately since it was never installed on my current machine, that meant I'd need to find the serial number too - and I didn't.
But I did find the old CD of Sam & Max Hit the Road. Now, I knew that that was useless, because the game had featured an annoying anti-piracy device: a pamphlet with figures of Sam & Max in different outfits. To run the game, you first had to answer a question about what Sam & Max were wearing. And of course I'd lost the pamphlet (and the many copies I'd made) years before.
In any case, S&MHtR had been an old DOS game, and I knew that it was incompatible with modern Windows.
But somehow I found myself bopping around on the internet. Almost instantly I found an executable for Windows. And to my utter amazement, it worked! Not only could I play, but the whole anti-piracy protection was completely eliminated! Neat. :D
I played it for a while; the graphics were amazingly crude, and the voices don't sound like the ones that I've always had in my head for Sam & Max (unfortunately John Astin, who played Sam in the later cartoon TV series, didn't do the voice for the game, and the Max guy just sucked in both), but it was still as quirky and funny as always.
I also found the CDs for NeverWinter Nights. On the downside, I couldn't find the serial number, but on a whim I ran a search of both of my hard drives, looking for some remnant of the game. To my surprise, there was a full installation of the game on my F drive. That was my old C drive, which we moved to F when the old F drive failed (confused yet?). So it didn't work when I put in the NwN CD. But after I put in the CD, I tried running the executable, and to my surprise, it worked! It had to be extensively updated, and then patched, but it did work. I played it for a bit, but I have to say that even though I'm much more knowledgeable about D&D now than I was when I first played it, I was still not impressed.
Still, it's nice to have the option to play something different.