I’ve got some DOOM WADs I have been meaning to play so I would probably grab Trench Foot, Total Chaos, and the sequel to Ashes 2063, Ashes: Afterglow with a portable install of GZDoom to play them.
After that I’d probably bring Star Trek TOS and a MOBI copy of Neuromancer by William Gibson combined with a portable install of VLC and Calibre in case the computer didn’t have applications that support the file format.
What about you?
I wanted to phrase this in a way where it isn’t a prolonged or desert island style question where the responsible idea would be to bring Wikipedia ZIMs and educational PDFs. It’s just an awkward amount of time to kill. The mid 2000s office desktop stipulation is just an additional challenge so you can’t just bring in a copy of Baldur’s Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077.
Edit: By mid 2000s I meant around 2005; the XP or Vista.
Boy, this question hurts.
For anyone above a certain age with kids below a certain age this isn’t a punishment or a challenge, this is A DREAM!! Heroes of might and magic 3, system shock 2, Anno (any version up to 1503), Morrowind, Civilization 3, Age of wonders shadow magic, Baldur’s gate 1 and 2…
Whenever my wife finds the time she goes to her room to play Morrowind. She just got a new laptop and the first thing I did was install OpenMW and copy her save file.
It goes without saying that you couldn’t finish any of those games in those 12 hours, except for System Shock 2.
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Civilization 3, and I would accidentally stay 20 hours
Civ is a good one. I have done the same. Would you prefer 3 over 4 if the computer could run it?
I’d take 3 over 4 anyday. 4 always felt like it was designed around Multiplayer.
Either would be fine, but I liked the look of 3 a lot better.
Alpha Centauri. Just oooooone more turn
This is a fun question!
So, in the mid 00’s I worked for a pretty large software company doing mid level tech support for enterprise customers. One unassuming weekday, we get a notice that the building is going in to lockdown. Nobody in, nobody out.
Not long after we’re told to contact our families and anyone that may be depending on us after work. There’s a communication stating “we have a strong reason to believe anthrax was released in the building and no one is leaving until the CDC takes a sample and tests it”. Awesome.
After the initial chaos wears down the dawning realization that there are a few hundred (well closer to a thousand of us) now stuck in a multi- building complex with fuck all to do sets in. This is before YouTube really had anything and Netflix was barely serving up a few streaming movies. Plus, there’s no way I’m installing Silverlight on my production box. Dark times indeed.
In a stroke of pure luck, I stil had a couple of burned “backups” in my backpack from the previous weekends LAN party (jesus, this story just keeps getting more and more ancient).
A few short moments later and the ISO’s were dumped and it was game time. Now, we were all saddled with Dell Optiplexes of some random flavor (620’s maybe… this was pushing 20 years ago, details are a little sketchy) so there wasn’t much we could really run but anything in a pinch, yeah?
Long story long, I’d spend that time playing C&C Renegade, Quake 3 Unreal Tournament and maybe speed run Duke3D one more time. All while listening to some flavor of Scandinavian metal to truly flesh things out. If that got boring, I’d likely watch Ricky-O again or maybe throw on whatever else I happened to have dumped at the time (likely something from Tartan Asia Extreme or an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm).
Despite what an utter shit show this moment was, I have so many vivid memories of playing those games on the test network with a bunch of other 20 something people barely navigating through life while being scared to death that we may never see our families again.
That and trying to teach Ted how to copy a crack to the install folder… again… wtf man, directions are right there in the readme.nfo
So eh, obviously you survived. But what about the rest?
Ended up being a hoax. The crew is still around and we occasionally get together to golf or drink at tailgaters when it’s football season. Time and children have taken their toll on the LAN’s and other drunken tomfoolery of those days. That’s always the thing about the “good times” they just seem like life when we’re in it.
What a ride. Someone asked what they get for doing this. I guess the answer was not killing your family or being arrested.
It ended up being some jackass on the SoCal sales team sending a “joke package” to one of our local sales guys. As far as I remember he was let go and no criminal charges were pressed. I think everyone involved was just relieved it was a hoax.
That’s one hell of a story, thanks for sharing!
Absolutely! It was a pretty fun moment in my early years in this industry. Now, after 10 or so years working from home, I almost get nostalgic for an office.
Only 12 hours? LoTR extended edition.
I put my answer in, but this is the only true answer.
Ikr? It’s like, the perfect thing for a 12 hour period of time. I should just carry it around in my backpack (ive got the 4K blu-rays), you can’t go wrong with it. That and star wars (classics, prequels, and animated cartoons).
Just gotta beat everyone to the nearest conference room and take over the projector.
A whole 11.5 hours of extra sleep next to a nostalgia machine?? Count me in.
just put a big pillow ‘on’ the external hard drive.
12 hours? I’m sleeping through that whole thing
MS Paint, an old clip art CD, and notepad. It’s time to make some unbearable personal websites
This is the best idea.
12 hours isn’t really even that long, could probably bring just about anything, but I think Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri would be a great way to spend that time.
Fallout 1&2 obviously, and stay trapped for the next month or so
Or morrowind if it can handle it
I’m here for the Morrowind vote. I do that for 12 hours already, willingly, with plenty of other things I could be doing. Maybe for the fun of it though I could grab some other games that are hard to run on modern machines, like the Neverhood
Would you bring the GOG version or the data files and something like Fallout-CE?
12 hours of trying to overclock a mid 2000s desktop as much as I can
Memtest on a floppy and superpi or prime95, atitool on the drive, maybe a few games to benchmark? Can’t forget a soldering iron and defroster repair kit. 12 hours is not going to be enough.
Emulators definitely should still run fine for GBA games I’d think. So there’s a lot to choose from already in that library. If not, then SNES. even a potato from the mid 2000s can run SNES games.
Other than that, I’m thinking I would load up my entire calibre Epub library so I can read books. I have so many books I want to go through that I have collected over the years. Want to go through the entire Dune series for the first time among other books.
I’m also quite certain a mid 2000s office PC can run VLC. I have many older series I have yet to watch still because I’ve been so busy. Stuff like The Shield or The Wire that I have downloaded but never got around to watching.
I don’t think I would get bored without internet for 12 hours at all with all that media at my disposal. Even on a 128gb thumb drive, I can easily bring in 2-3 full 1080p tv series. Epubs and retro system ROMs take no space at all so that’d be easy.
And if I get bored of all that media somehow, I’d just use an offline copy of wikivoyage to plan my next vacation.
SNES 9x ran great on systems of this era. I spent days playing all the Megaman titles and save-scumming or scanning memory to make infinite health cheats.
I’m currently listening to the Children of Dune audio book. That alone is 16h. I think Messiah was around 8h and Dune was around 12h. Basically, 12h is nothing.
I could bring the whole Person of Interest series and wouldn’t finish a season. That, or any TV series with reasonable length. I was thinking:
- Dark
- Breaking Bad
- Fringe
- Mr. Robot
- Hannibal
- Battlestar Galactica
- The Expanse
Speaking of, I wonder what the mid-00s performance for decoding HEVC.
Also, what do I get from this, anyway?
Also, what do I get from this, anyway?
You don’t kill your family or get arrested if you are in this person’s position I guess
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/10506722
Speaking of, I wonder what the mid-00s performance for decoding HEVC.
That’s a good question. I hadn’t thought of how that would play into things
Yeah, my collection is now on either AV1 or H265. Otherwise that 2TB won’t last.
I was hoping someone with a retro PC could answer.
Rollercoaster Tycoon 2
ADoM
Donkey Kong Country and SNES9x
2005, you say? I bet KOTOR could run on low on a shitty office PC.
Master of Orion 2
Check out OpenRCT. It’s RCT but improved for the modern age.
I’m well aware, thank you
GalCiv 2?
Winamp with my favorite skin
Entirety of my mp3 collection
All 7 seasons of DS9
All 5 seasons of Kids in the Hall
Someone explain to this guy how long 12 hours actually is.
I like to overprepare - if I get tired of one thing I can switch to another.
Dwarf Fortress. I used to play it on the weekends as a kid when I was stuck with my stepmom’s old computer from 2000.
