Remember when you used to buy a game, put it in, then play it

B1gbeard said:
Trying to free up as much of your 640k base memory as possible was always fun. :)
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I remember that, messing about with virtual memory, rebooting to make sure windows 3.1 didn't load, and altering the config.sys and autoexec.bat files with commands like himem.sys and so on. Didn't have a clue what they actually did, but I knew what I had to change for each game to make it work!
 
Howitzer said:
It's sooo frustrating!
I managed it when I got Empire retail - not sure how! I got annoyed and kept clicking cancel and re-inserting the disc etc, eventually it installed from disc but no idea how I did it! :P
Never managed it again since, always an overnight d/l for me.

Didn't know there was a way to force it!
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I'll post up the link when i get home mate.
 
compboyo said:
btw what the hell is a cartridge. Guess Ill wiki it. BUt I mean what the hell are they. Cds,dvd, etc are read by lasers which reas data on the disc right? Or if you isntall to hard drive Computer reads data from the hard drives...but what the hell was a crtrdige and how did that work.
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Cartridges are sort of like computer parts/expansion cards, a PCB with ROM and some microchips on it. The slot they went into was like a PCI/AGP/PCI-E slot is to the motherboard, sort of. It would boot up the game and load certain startup data into it's memory.

Some games (Like starfox or x-wing I think on snes) had their own graphics chip on the cartridge to process the graphics and display stuff beyond the snes's capability.

Zelda had a battery inside and some writeable flash for storing savegames but most just used passwords to allow the players to go back to the last level they played.
 
compboyo said:
Whoa those were the days.

Insert.
Install.
play.

Even better on the old consoles.

Insert
Autoplay.


Wow lets reminisce those magical days. :rolleyes:
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Still have a few old PC games I need to do that on :p

Rome, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Sim City 3(not certain on number) are those that spring to mind!
 
PaulyD said:
Grand Theft Auto IV came to mind when I saw this thread. Install Rockstar Social Club, Install Windows Live Gaming, download the update.

Took me an hour of updates and installing before I could play..
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omg i gave up with that even when i finally got it working it decided it either wouldnt save or would crash every timeI tried to save it.
 
B1gbeard said:
Trying to free up as much of your 640k base memory as possible was always fun. :)
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..... and having separate floppies for certain games with their own autoexec.bat and config.sys. Getting the sodding things to work was often more fun than playing them
 
Even worse on the ZX81 with a Sinclair 16k RAM pack. Type in program from magazine laboriously into the computer, using the keyword system which meant you had to hunt around for the correct key to press.

Then when you run it you jog the machine slightly, the RAM pack wobbles, the computer crashes, and you lose everything.

Still love the machine though. I have one on my desk at work to show how far we've come since then.
 
mame said:
I remember downloading a 1.4 patch to find out that it was actually a 1.3>1.4 and my game was 1.1 so I had to either download a 1.1>1.3 or search around for a 1.1>1.4
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Sounds like Far Cry? Really hated patching that game.
 
The biggest gripe I have with PC gaming these days is Games for Windows Live and Origin. My flatmate can't play arkham asylum on his PC at the same time as I play MW3 on the xbox because they both use the same Windows Live service. It's taking the **** it really is.

And Origin installs BF3 on my mates SSD despite him telling it explicitly to install to his HDD.

I preferred when each game was just seperate and you didn't have any of this garbage of using the same account over multiple games. I can see sometimes it's useful but generally the proprietary software client you need to download is usually pants and it's more fuss than it's worth.

Steam is the only one that doesn't enrage me lol.
 
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