Blast from the past -- Doom II

[julesjones]

Doing some tidying up, notably picking up some boxes that fell off the top of the tall bookcase yesterday. One of them was the copy of Doom II. The DOS version on 3.5" floppies...

I know we do have a Thinkpad USB floppy drive around here somewhere, and I could probably find it within five minutes or so. I'm still not sure if it's even possible to play this on any of the current herd of silicon lifeforms we share this flat with. Anything that's in the x86 line of descent in the first place certainly meets the minimum spec of 386/33 DX or better. Possibly meets it a little too well...

I should resist the temptation to even try, because I *know* what it will do to my RSI. This is why I never did get around to installing it on the previous machine. But I suppose I should see if Spousal Unit wants it before I bin it.

Comments

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

There are a fair few free virtual machine packages out there.

I gave #1 a Virtual PC with Win 95 for old games when I gave her a new computer the other year.

[julesjones]

That's part of why I've still got it -- I know that with a little effort I should be able to download an emulator. It's just that I also know that I shouldn't. :-/ So it sits on top of the bookcase, gathering dust...

I never did play Doom II much myself, genuinely not having a copy. But the shareware episodes of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3d and the original Doom were all games that were not present on any of the machines at work, and there was no Doom deathmatch running on our ethernet. Alas, I never got to not play in the deathmatch that was not running, because my section's 'Doze machine wasn't hooked to the ethernet. I had to be content with not playing in solo mode the copy not installed on our hard drive.

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

If you're looking to de-clutter, remember that you can still buy it as a steam or id games download (a bit of a waste in terms of buying things you already have, but if you just wanted a few dollars worth of space back on top of your bookcase...) I'm sure the files are floating round the internet too, in a form easily compatible with dosbox/dfend or equivalent.

This is not to say that you should play it and wreck your wrists/nostalgic memories, but getting rid of the dusty box could be mostly guilt-free.

[julesjones]

I suppose what I should do is haul out the drive and burn the files to CD. Then I could stop worrying about whether I might want to play it again some day.

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I have the same problem with a lot of old Amiga floppies. I know I should clear them out, but...

I'm sure if I went through and picked out everything that exists online, I could clear out 90% of the disks.