82-T/A

I just went to Replay Museum today... it was pretty awesome. Very reasonably priced, honestly... and tons and tons of pinball machines too, which are equally as cool. Most of the restaurants around were closed (since it was late on Sunday), but definitely going back! Thanks for letting me know about it, @TampaBay

Dude, this is so cool! I can't believe I missed this thread! I see these on Tinde... I've been thinking about buying one and building it just like you have. The only thing is, I don't really know what to do with it. I grew up with an 8088 KayPro PC (with DOS 3.21). So I don't really know computers prior to that time. I know the new one has a VGA port and some other stuff... can you run programs on it other than looking at lights in a binary sense? Also, I just re-watched the "made-for-TV-movie" Pirates of Silicon Valley the other day. Anyone watched that? The Altair was in there a lot in the whole first 1/3rd of the movie.

Anyway, for me... this was my first "real" game that I played. I remember being at Software City in Richmond, Virginia... and standing there looking at the shelves of games. My mom told me I could only have one game. There were three games that were drawing me in... Starflight, Arctic Fox, and Garfield Paint. Now... I was a huge fan of Garfield... so I almost got that, and Arctic Fox looked good, but Starflight promised me an entire world (or universe rather), so I picked it up. It came in one of those old school LP / Vinyl game sleeves with two 5.25" floppy disks. The one in the video there is the EGA version. I only had a Hercules monochrome monitor at the time, so it looked like this:

Oh dude... stop!!! Haha... this was like one of my absolute favorite games growing up. This was a slightly later game for me... I'm mid-40s now, so the first games I played were all CGA / Monochrome games on an 8088... but I played this one when I was a Freshman in high school during the summer. I loved this friggin' game. I also played Terror from the Deep. Which by the way, there's an interesting story on that. XCOM 2 - TFTD had an emergency patch that went out. They had multiple missions where you'd run across an airplane that had crashed in the water (because of course, the whole game TFTD is under water). And apparently shortly after release, there was a major airline crash where hundreds of people died. Maybe it was the ValueJet one in the Everglades where all the survivors of the crash were basically eaten by alligators. Anyway, the patch for XCOM TFTD 1.2 stripped out all the crash-landed underwater commercial planes. There was no real value to having them, it was just another "thing" that you'd see underwater as you were responding to an alien underwater landing. But I always thought that was interesting. If you can find the original floppy disk version of XCOM 2, it still has the crashed underwater planes in it. But yeah... I'm assuming you've played the new XCOM and XCOM 2 that came out a few years ago? They were both pretty awesome. There was a whole slew of XCOM games that came out between XCOM 2 - TFTD, and the "new" XCOM games from a few years back. Almost none of them were very good. One of my friends (who's name I can't even remember now), put a picture of me as an Easter Egg in one of those games... I'll have to look up which XCOM it is. But if you manage to find this one area and go into it (3D), you end up walking into a room where there's a picture of me on the wall in my 1970s leather jacket from like 1999, standing next to David Hasselhoff in front of Knight Rider, and this other guy named TART who's flexing and working out at the gym (they photoshopped us all together), along with a picture of his Dodge Neon which he did all kinds of stuff in it. It's pretty funny... BUT... ok, seriously... did you ever play the UFO games? UFO Aftershock, UFO Aftermath, and UFO Afterlight (maybe not in that order?). You HAVE TO HAVE TO HAVE TO HAVE TO play those games. I know you like the original X-COM, it's awesome, and maybe you liked the new XCOM but thought it was maybe a bit "too much." The perfect "in between" are those three UFO games. They have all the fun / strategy of the original XCOM game, but with slightly better graphics. Here's the GOG title page for one of them (the rest are linked from this): https://www.gog.com/en/game/ufo_aftermath Anyway, these games were made by the original XCOM developers, but under two different companies (rights kept changing hands), so it took forever for them to get all three.

Android and iOS? Dude, that's wild... I can't imagine playing an AD&D game on a tablet or iPhone. Anyway, these sound awesome. I just don't know when or where I'm going to find the time. 😕 I offend people when I say this... but remember the old Ultima games, like Ultima 1 through 5? Those games are horrendous (in my opinion) on the PC. But the versions they put out for the 8-Bit Nintendo made them more like Dragon Warrior, and in my opinion, far more playable. Ultima 6 of course MUST be on a PC... and sucks on a console (my opinion), but maybe the Dark Alliance games are just better on PC. Ok, so you're starting to uncover my "crack" addiction here. I have a problem... and also apparently I lied to you guys (more on that). I have 389 games in my GoG Library. I hoard digital media. I feel the need to be a hoarder, but not in my real life because it's too stressful. So I have bare walls in some rooms just because I like the feeling of open space. But computer games were such a huge part of my childhood when I was in grade school. I went to a boarding school, and my parents let me take my 8088 KayPro with me (other kids had 286s and one kid had the new 386!). So I was enthralled with these games. Suffice it to say, I apparently have every single one of the games you listed above. And I remember now that I have actually played Pools of Radiance - Ruins of Myth Drannor. I would creepily wait in the parking lot of my Catholic church (while my daughter was in Sunday School, which was on Tuesday nights oddly enough), and I'd play on a small laptop, Pool of Radiance... this one, not the old Gold Box Series game. I got fairly far in it, but I screwed something up, and cannot find a key with which to open a door that will allow me to go on to the next "area." I can't even recall exactly what... but the key is gone, and now I'm screwed. So I don't think there's anything I can do... even though I wanted to complete the game (sigh). Anyway... I just looked up Icewind Dale... and damn, those games are both awesome, and both totally along the lines of kind of what I'd like to play. I'm almost thinking that when I'm done with BG3... I will probably go straight to Icewind Dale.

I definitely will. If you ever have the chance, definitely go to Hack Miami also. It's a much smaller get together... but there's always someone weird there. John McAfee went twice with his entourage, and they had a presentation from Mossad another year, and YTCracker comes regularly too. I don't think I ever stood out because I was originally from Miami, and I'd let my hair grow out a bit before I'd go anyway. Man, I'd heard about BSides many times, and just never thought it was in Florida. That's awesome. Well... I'm psyched... I'm definitely going to that arcade this weekend. And perfect timing too. My daughter just broke up with her boyfriend and she's devastated (which I don't get because SHE broke up with him). But it's been drama for an entire week, so I think we all need to hit the arcade. Hopefully they sell alcohol there too... hahah...

Thanks guys! That's awesome!!! Yeah, so just to be clear, the last "physical copy" game that I bought was Menzoberranzan, but all the other games I bought on GOG. It's sad really, almost an obsession... I flagged every single AD&D and D&D game I could find and just bought them all on GOG. But I JUST looked (right this minute), and I see that I own Baldur's Gate 1 and 2... both the enhanced editions. I just looked at EE for BG1 and it says, "The Enhanced Edition contains over 75 hours of gameplay, including the original campaign, the classic Sword Coast expansion, plus brand new challenges in the Black Pits arena!" And BG2 EE says, "The Enhanced Edition includes the original Shadows of Amn campaign, the Throne of Bhaal expansion, plus brand new challenges in the Black Pits II arena!" I guess I thought I already owned everything related to it, but I just saw on GOG there's some other things: DLC Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear. I guess apparently I do own this, but it doesn't seem to be included in any of the EE games I already have (but it says "In Library"). There are also two games that just came up that apparently I do NOT own: - Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance - Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 What are these? Have you guys ever played these? Are these like offshoots, like how Ultima had the Savage Empire games being an off-shoot of Ultima 6? It's definitely going to be weird doing D&D where it's real-play... (not turn based)... but the graphics definitely seemed to be a bit closer to what I like. @fdr4prez, I do have a Dual Pentium II machine with Windows 98 SE and all the good stuff in it (Sound Blaster 16 ASP, Roland SCC-1, etc.). But GOG pre-loads all the stuff like DOSBOX and everything, so the games will likely run fine on my current modern PC. Thanks guys!!!

Big question for me is... is BG1 and BG2 worth playing? I've never played them, though I own them... just curious if it's worth busting out. I like BG3... the overview and everything is great... but part of me yearns for a smaller more "compact" visual, similar to what maybe I would see in say the Ultima games (not Underworld, to be clear).

Dude... that is awesome, I didn't even know that was here. I used to work for a 3-letter for over a decade, and had no friggin' clue. I did used to go to Hack Miami all the time. You could tell the Feds because of their green GSA notebooks... lol.

This is awesome!!! Thanks for telling me about this! I had no idea, I've been to a few of these... "museums" but it's always been on a vacation somewhere. I had no idea there was one like this here. Thank you! I'm going to check it out on Saturday and take the family.

Yeah, from what I understand... the NEC-V20 supposedly has 16-bit architecture... but is neither supported via the bus or via memory. I think I read somewhere that it was NEC's attempt at building a next generation 80286 style processor, but it didn't quite meet expectations, so they clocked it lower and used it as an 8088. My KayPro also has an NEC V20 in it. I have this 8088 system (uses a backplane like the KayPro with processor on a card) that some guy on YouTube made. I bought one of each of his cards... he has multiple cards that allow you to use the NEC V20 / 8088 processors, the NEC V30, the NEC V40, an 8080, an 8086, and some other processor... all of which you can boot into DOS with. Most games don't work on it, but Red Baron and some of the really old Shareware games will play. It's pretty cool.

By the way, I'm in Tampa too!

When you swapped out the 8088, what did you put in place of it? You mean an Intel 8088? Same speed I assume? I have my original ~1985 KayPro 8088 that my parents bought when I was a kid. I still have it, and I hook it up every once in a while and play some of the old games on it. I have a dual Pentium P2 that I use for most of my late 90s / early 2000s era video games. But to be honest, I haven't had time to play any of them... I've just been so busy with school, work, and my daughter. But I'm I might bust them out this weekend.

I'm there!

I absolutely loved Compute! magazine. I got it for two full years back when I was a kid... and it was the most fascinating magazine. It was like Omni and Popular Mechanics mixed with GamePro. I have my ~1992 subscription saved... and there's old Ultima Savage Empire ads inside there, along with some other awesome games. Man... I loved those magazines. Thanks for reminding me and sharing the links.