I recently wrote about my attempt to install Max Payne on a seemingly compatible Windows 98 SE system. I said I would update my progress if anything changed.

I decided to try the install on a Windows XP system sporting an NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX 400 video card, a Creative sound card (I think it’s a Sound Blaster Live!), and a LITE-ON DVD-RW SHW 160P6S optical drive. Nothing too fancy.

It installed and ran perfectly using the original release disc, no patches required, although I might decide to patch it if there are bugs that should be fixed.

Categories: Games, Windows
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Most predictable title ever. I must be an NPC.

I am one of those weird people who love PC computing from 1985 to 2001. I have a machine that runs Windows 98 natively along with a blistering 16X speed Yamaha CRW4416E CD-ROM, Sound Blaster sound card, and ATI Radeon 9600 series graphics card. I have been trying to get an authentic installation of Max Payne to run on this machine for a couple of days of on and off tinkering. The core issue seems to be around the terrible disk protection mechanism they used called SafeDisc.

At first I thought it was just the speed of the CD-ROM, which was causing the game to not recognize legitimate media. It was throwing a dialog box up stating “Cannot locate the CD-ROM” with additional text “Please insert the correct CD-ROM, select OK and restart application.” So, I lowered the speed to 4X using a utility called Nero DriveSpeed. That helped get past that particular error.

At this point, the game would start and the initial movie would play. After aborting the movie or letting it complete, the game would crash before reaching the game menu. Sometimes the crash would exit the game, other times it would cause the screen to freeze and require a reboot. I have tried running the game using different versions of DirectX and different screen resolutions and color depths. No dice. I am sitting at the latest version of DirectX (v9.0c) for Windows 98.

The confusing part in all of this is that this is a PC configuration that is suppose to be 100% compatible with the game. It should be noted that I have very little additional software installed on this machine which could cause compatibility issues. After researching the issue, it seems that people have more luck getting the game to run on Windows XP than on Windows 98, but it could also be that most of the people who posted an issue were using that setup; it is impossible to say.

I will dig into this a bit more over time, but it will be a slog.

Categories: Games, Windows
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I love this game, and I do have an appropriate piece of hardware history sitting in my game room, so I decided to try and get it running on my Windows 98SE installation. I have a Radeon 9600 series video card, which has served me well for many games. The DirectX gods did not favour us this time, however, and I could not get the game to run. I did install nGlide 1.05, which provides a series of Glide wrappers, but that did not get the game up and running for whatever reason.

I should mention that I am assuming it is a 3dfx compatibility issue at this point, but before that, I did try multiple resolutions and colour depths. I did not find an official patch for the game.

I think I need to build a 3dfx machine to get this working. The good news is that there are several games requiring 3dfx acceleration in the market, so it would not be one off build.

Categories: Games, PC, Windows
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As a preamble, I truly tip my hat to the team who built this game. I can only imagine the hell you went through to get this title out the door. I hope you all feel it was worth it.

I have started and re-started this game four times since I bought it back during the Covid pandemic. Each time I reboot this process, I end up playing for about 2-3 hours and then I stop. I do not pick it back up again for several months, and then I try again. I do not know what it is about this game that stops me from continuing to play, so I thought I would write my thoughts down and try to sort it out.

From a story line perspective, it does not grip me in the first few hours or compel to continue playing. There is no mystery that is revealed in the first few hours. There is no great calamity or evil threatening the land. No one has been captured, and no one or nothing has been lost. There is no pull, other than curiosity.

There are many decisions to make and things to learn in this short period of time. Perhaps too many. I recall feeling a bit overwhelmed at just the input control scheme.

You have an arsenal of weapons to choose from over the course of the first few hours, and your inventory will continue to swell for a long time after that according to some reviews I have read. You can change your clothing into a near infinite number of combinations, and anything else about your body you find undesirable, including the size of your genitals (if you are playing with those options enabled). You can hack machines and people using novel skills and technical mods. Fancy a sharp stick instead of a pee shooter? Swords and daggers are options along with a bevy of special fighting manoeuvres. Don’t feel like walking? Buy, steal, or earn your wheels; the selection is truly insane and the vehicles are nicely modelled. Anyway, I could go on, but I am starting to feel overwhelmed just listing the options out.

The voice acting and script is top notch. They had access to some real talent when they made this game. You have three different starting paths at the beginning of the game and you need to choose one. I don’t remember the option, I think it was nomad or something along those lines. Some games do have annoying dialog and voice talent, which can lead to burn out, but this game isn’t one of them.

It’s not that I avoid complex games. I have played many games with deep plots, vast skill trees, and control schemes that leave your hands feeling nicely tenderized.

My symptoms are not unique. I have read and listened to similar comments from other people. At some point on their journey, a few decided to clench their buttocks and learn this system. This system that is posing as a game. In the aftermath, all of them said that it was worth the effort. In this round, I would like to get a little further than I did in my last attempt.

Basically, I am trying to find the fun, and I will let you know when I do.

Categories: Games, Steam
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There are a few go-to games for the Atari 800 that I play frequently. One of them is a cops and robbers game called Getaway! Without getting into too much detail around the game play, you play the robber who canvases the city looking for treasure to steal and unmarked white vans to hi-jack and loot. The cops are roaming the city, essentially randomly, until you perform a specific action or a game play event takes place. One such action is robbing the white van, and an event could be the game transitioning to dusk or night fall. Once that happens, the cops immediately seek you out and give chase. As your score gets larger, they also become more suspicious and start chasing you sooner.

I find that the game gets considerably more difficult around 7000 points and I have yet to break the 8000 point barrier as of this writing.

As you progress through the game, there are different treasures that appear, giving different point values when you collect them. I wanted to know how many treasures there were in the game and what happens as you get to higher scores. Also, I have often thought that the game would be fun for young kids, if the police did not act so aggressively. They would have a blast driving around and collecting the treasure. Note that the game isn’t fun for an adult when this change is made, but a four year old would probably love it. If you find the modified game entertaining, you may not want to post that in the comments.

The author of the game, Mark Reid, released the source code to the game in 2017 on Github. It is written in assembly language but some of the basics can be puzzled out if you are familiar with a few core instructions. Like many computers of the era, the system is driven by a 6502 processor. Unlike many systems, it is clocked at a higher frequency than many of its competitors, running at a blazing 1.79 MHz for NTSC systems.

At any rate, I wanted to modify the game so that the cops would always remain in their random, passive state. The code refers to this state as “dumb” and the opposite behaviour as “smart.” To change it, just modify this piece of code:

COP031 CPX #4         ;Van is dumb
       BCS DUMB
       LDA RANDOM     ;if SKILL>RANDOM
       CMP SKILL      ; COPs smart
       BCC SMART

To this:

COP031 CPX #4         ;Van is dumb
       BCS DUMB
       LDA RANDOM     ;if SKILL>RANDOM
       CMP SKILL      ; COPs dumb
       BCC DUMB

Assemble the code. I think I needed to fix a few issues first, such as disabling debug mode which is found at the top of the module. If you leave the debug mode set to ‘2’, it will produce a weird looking map by default.

;
; compilation flags
;
DEBUG = 0 ; nonzero includes debugging code & sets debug map

There may also have been a few include paths that needed to be changed as well. At any rate, once those changes are done the assembler will produce a “getaway.exe” file. It is not a Windows executable file so don’t try and run it; just rename it to “getaway.xex” since that seems to be the format. I copied the file to my Lotharek drive and played it on the Atari, you could also choose to fire it up in an emulator.

Categories: Atari 8-bit, Games, Programming
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Round two. Playing DOOM 3: BFG outside of Steam works very well. Just check out this project and set it up as per the “Quick Installation Guide” in the second link.

• https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/RBDOOM-3-BFG/?tab=readme-ov-file
• https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/RBDOOM-3-BFG/releases

Categories: Games, Windows
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I am playing The Witcher: Enhanced Edition for the PC. Given the very basic nature of the models, textures, music and sound effects, I am grateful that Steam offered the enhanced version to play. I do like the story and even the stilted conversations in the game, but not a lot else. The editing and scene transitions are atrocious. Of course, my evaluation is tainted by the games I have played recently, which are orders of magnitude more advanced in every way. Despite the blandness, I will try to finish it before my wife and I settle in to play Horizon Forbidden West for the PlayStation 5.

Categories: Games, Steam
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I have been playing Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla lately on the PlayStation 5 and I noticed that there were no official game guides for it on Amazon. I thought this was odd since there are many things to find and unravel within the game which would surely be enough content to warrant a guide. Some time later, I visited the in-game store and found all kinds of downloadable patches that could alter the game and give you content that you would typically find in a game guide, such as location maps for items and such. Obviously, this is the reason why there are no official guides, since Ubisoft wanted to leverage the power of in-app purchasing and make money directly off of these hints, rather than split the profit with the publisher for the guide. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good strategy and I don’t necessarily disagree with it, even if it costs me more money. The in-game location maps for Vahalla, which could have built-in filters and search features, deliver a better experience than having to flip through pages of a game guide. Naturally, it is a bit of a balancing act, since many gamers want to feel like they own the complete experience for a game once they pay the sticker price. If some content feels like it should have been part of the official release and not as a separate download that must be purchased later, then the model has crossed that line. There are several games available that follow that model to its inevitable conclusion, where the core game is free, but any additional features or content that presumably make the game more interesting, must be purchased separately.

Categories: Games, PS5
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Unusually, the release date for this game in North America appears to be under some debate with some sources listing it as being released in June, July, or August. I chose the latter since it was the only entry listed with a specific day. The Japanese release was in February 1986, over a year earlier.

Before this game, I had played text adventures, Dungeons and Dragons over e-mail, and one or two “RPG adventure” titles on the Atari 2600. I have long been fascinated with the genre as RPG elements and action are two of my favorite themes in a video game.

Categories: Games, NES
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I finally had an opportunity to play and finish Dead Space for the PC. I had a lot of fun playing this game, and while the camera took some time to get use to and the VSYNC bug that took some time to diagnose, neither detracted measurably from the overall game play experience. I am not going to do a review on this game since the world doesn’t need another one of those. What I have been thinking about, though, is giving you a persona based list of key gaming elements that may help you decide if you want to play it:

• Jumping about in 3D space doesn’t make you queasy (you will literally be jumping about in space with no gravity).
• You like being told what to do and bossed around.
• You can continue to snack while walking through pools of blood and guts.
• You like games that allow you to kill things with visceral tools like bolt guns, saws, and fire.
• You like it when you are low on ammo and there are baddies around the corner.
• Detailed space ship environments make you happy.
• You enjoy long load times as it gives you an opportunity to reflect on how you buggered it all up.

Categories: Games, PC, Steam
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