Octopus Overlords

Posted: **Tue Mar 22, 2005 11:15 pm**

This can be divided into two parts:

The most difficulty you have had getting a game to run - and then SUCCEEDED in getting it to run.

And the games you had so much difficulty, that you NEVER DID get it to run.

I'll go first:
SUCCEEDED: The original Carmageddon: Max Pack with 3Dfx VooDoo 2 patch. First you had to patch it for regular 3Dfx, and THEN patch again for compatibility with VooDoo 2 cards. Cripes, I had detailed instructions on this and it still took me the better part of a day--and this back when the game came out and on a proper gaming rig.

SUCCEEDED: Descent 2 with 3Dfx patch. Hmm. I sense a pattern. Those 3Dfx patches were murder.

SUCCEEDED: Dream Web. Circa 1994? Took so damn much base memory, I only got it running 4 years after I bought it, and played it for 10 minutes. Next time I tried to run it, I couldn't. Never could since. So this actually comes pretty close to a "NEVER DID".

NEVER DID: Silent Steel. An interactive movie type thing. I got the DVD version and no DVD Rom I've ever owned since 98 has ever been able to run the video--only the sound. I still try it with every DVD Rom I buy.

Posted: **Tue Mar 22, 2005 11:24 pm**

I got Star Trek: Borg for XMas one year, never could get it to run. Then again, heard I didn't miss much. (PS, I didn't ask for this game, I have better tastes than this).

Posted: **Tue Mar 22, 2005 11:29 pm**

Easily Falcon 3.0 back in '93. Was using my father-in-law's 486 DX2/50 and just could NOT get enough conventional memory available. I was always around 3-5k short.

Finally got the sucker running around 4am after trying for ten hours, but at this point my eyes were burned out of my sockets.

Game I never got to run? Hmmmmm........there was some FMV Zork game from back then that absolutely refused to display the video. Remember, this was back in the day of DOS 6 and Windows 3.1 . Drivers basically sucked and were not updated like they are today.

Posted: **Tue Mar 22, 2005 11:46 pm**

I have one of the original boxed version releases by the game designer whose name I shall not mention for fear it will summon him from the depths of hell. The game was so buggy that a can of RAID bug killer couldn't kill all the bugs. Sorry to say it's still in the box, haven't touched it since that first install attempt.

Posted: **Tue Mar 22, 2005 11:53 pm**

Falcon 3, that was a toughy.

But I own NOLF 2 and I have never played it. Let me take this opportunity to scream about it. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!! NOLF 2 SUCKS AND SO DOES CREATIVE!!!!!! RRRRRRRRHH I'm going to cut off your HEAD and stuff a grenade in your spouting neck AAAAAAAA!!!!

Actually NOLF 2 runs fine, just that there's no audio. I have a Soundblaster Live and I have no idea why there's no audio. I hate PC audio, why the hell can't it be flawless in 2005, but many, many games and programs still have audio problems.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 12:12 am**

Easily it would be MOO1. It was DOS and you had to use extended memory or something as well as upper memory and the end result was you had to make a seperate boot disk.
It was too much hassel,and after getting it to run finally, I gave up on it.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 12:36 am**

Success: Ultima 7. Voodoo be damned.

Failure: none...by which I mean I have never failed to get a game I have purchased to run on whatever platform was appropriate at the time.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:16 am**

I had a hell of a time getting Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun to run on my old P2-233 with Win95, and a voodoo banshee video card.

I eventually succeeded in getting the game to run very smoothly, only to be terribly angry that the game was terrible.

I think I spent the better part of two days trying to get it to work.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:46 am**

I missed the golden age of DOS era gaming. In my olden days of the C64 and Amiga, getting a game to run was pretty simple. And in my latter post-Win-95 days, ditto (mostly).

I had to do some finagling to get Tomb Raider 1 to work on my Win98 box a few years back. And I've had difficulties with some stuff in DOSBox more recently.

Overall though, I think I dodged a bullet during my 6-year gaming hiatus...

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:51 am**

Despite my best efforts, I was never able to get Wing Commander: Prophecy to play on my Win95 rig (with AWE64) without the movies skipping and stuttering. It's the only game I've ever returned.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 3:11 am**

The pain of getting DOS games to run is but a distant nightmare. More recently, the conflict between Doom 3 and my CD backup software has been the most frustration I've had in a long time.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 3:34 am**

I think it was Ultima Underworld 2, the CD version. Trying to free up so much memory, and still have enough memory for the cd drive was almost impossible. I succeded in the end.

Unsuccessfully, they tend to mostly be budget games that I couldn't be bothered spending too much time trying to get to work. Redguaed comes to mind.

Edited to add that I never got the cut scenes to work on FF7 PC. A pity, as I missed the best parts of the game. I really hope that they release it for PSP.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 3:58 am**

I was a memmaker master, but on one system I could never get Privateer to run. I still can't get it to run.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 4:20 am**

Heretic, Hexen, Duke 3D, etc. Always had to do a lot of fiddling to get those to work.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 5:54 am**

It's a tie a between Wizardry 7 and the original X-wing. Wizardry 7 was my first real experiment with massive boot disk configuring (took bloody forever to figure out how to do everything), while X-wing had a terrible conventional memory requirement that made me spend hours setting up that damn boot disk.

I remember when Win95 came out all sorts of geeks said it was horrible and DOS would remain the dominant platform for PC games. Screw that! Dos was horrible, thank god Windows made Pc gaming remotely reasonable.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 7:17 am**

There were a bunch of nightmare games back in the DOS days, but the one that stands out most was Darklands. I had to fight not only with the configuration but with obtaining multiple patches by mail - by the time it finally ran, it would have had to be the best game ever to paciify my rage. It wasn't - I found it to be mind-numblingly repetititve.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 8:00 am**

You whippersnappers. Back in MY day, I used to wait up to 20-30 minutes for a game to load for my Atari 800 from an audio tape - just to get a "read data failure" at the end because the tape was bad.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 8:50 am**

Ultima 7 WITH mouse AND sound... in MS-DOS 6ish... You needed some ridiculous amount of free base memory, like 639k out of 640k.

-Chris

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:53 am**

X-Com Apocalypse or at least that's what I think it was called. It was the X-Com that had you defending the last human city or something like that - it kept crashing on me. At the time, I was a thirteen-year-old with no internet access and limited computer skills ("skillz"): try as I might I never got it to run for long.

I've seen it since and it looks kinda cartoony. Oh yeah, at the time it was a depressing experience because I only bought a game very rarely because of limited funds so I used to play the hell out of whatever I had. Not being able to run a game was a 6 month setback.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 11:03 am**

Failure: Descent 3 on my current rig. More than a dozen installs trying different things and I have yet to get the thing to launch as mision.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 11:08 am**

Failures: Angel Devoid (apparently, it's only compatible with early video cards) and the DVD version of Tex Murphy Overseer.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 11:14 am**

Mail Order Monsters for the Commodore 64. That game was just wonky. Sometimes it would take 30 minutes to load up and sometimes it just wouldn't load at all. So normally, I'd try to load it up, do something else for awhile, and then come back to see if it worked. If not, either try again or play something else.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 12:47 pm**

Blackhawk wrote:Failure: Descent 3 on my current rig. More than a dozen installs trying different things and I have yet to get the thing to launch as mision.

Who was it on GG that always named that game as their favorite? I remember getting help in a GG thread on how to get it running on a modern rig. I can't even recall the issue I was having getting it to run.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:21 pm**

Enough wrote:
Blackhawk wrote:Failure: Descent 3 on my current rig. More than a dozen installs trying different things and I have yet to get the thing to launch as mision.
Who was it on GG that always named that game as their favorite? I remember getting help in a GG thread on how to get it running on a modern rig. I can't even recall the issue I was having getting it to run.

I dunno - I just get a CTD every time I launch an actual level. Nobody on any of the Descent boards could solve it.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:29 pm**

is_dead wrote:Falcon 3, that was a toughy.

But I own NOLF 2 and I have never played it. Let me take this opportunity to scream about it. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!! NOLF 2 SUCKS AND SO DOES CREATIVE!!!!!! RRRRRRRRHH I'm going to cut off your HEAD and stuff a grenade in your spouting neck AAAAAAAA!!!!

Actually NOLF 2 runs fine, just that there's no audio. I have a Soundblaster Live and I have no idea why there's no audio. I hate PC audio, why the hell can't it be flawless in 2005, but many, many games and programs still have audio problems.

I don't know if you care anymore, but I had this problem because of an installed codec. I found this in a NOLF2 FAQ:

SOUND:

GENERAL:

If the in-game sounds and dialogue (voices) do not play, or there are
problems with the quality of these sounds, then please try each of the
following steps (in order) before playing again. Note that you should only
try one solution at a time, since trying them all can greatly reduce the
overall sound quality of the game unneccesarily.

1. Make sure that you have the latest drivers available for your sound
hardware installed. These can usually be found on the manufacturer's
website.

2. From your main installation folder (Default C:\Program Files\Fox\No One
Lives forever 2), double click on the file named WMFADist.exe, and then
follow on-screen instructions. This will manually install the audio codec
that is required by the game.

3. From the in-game sound options menu,change the sound quality option from
high to low, or vice-versa.

4. Refer to the sections below for specific troubleshooting information for
your particular sound card.

5. From the Nolf2 launcher application, click on the "options" button and
then click on the box next to "Disable Sound Filters".

6. From the Nolf2 launcher application, click on the "options" button and
then click on the box next to "Disable Hardware Sound".

Please note that since No One Lives Forever uses an MP3 codec for sound, the
Nimo codec pack may cause speech and sound to drop out completely. Please
uninstall the Nimo codec pack before installing No One Lives Forever 2. If
you have already installed the game, please uninstall both the Nimo codec
pack and the game, and then reinstall the game only.

Also, subtitles will not appear in the game if you do not have a soundcard,
or if your soundcard is not detected, or if you have disabled sound
completely in the advanced options menu.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:54 pm**

Front Page Sports: Football and Football Pro.
I tried to get that thing to run on a Win95 machine and I never could do it. It just wasn't gonna work without the right kind of memory, the 612k of something or other RAM. I had 128 MBs of RAM at that point, but it didn't understand this.
I really liked that game, too, even if I could beat the computer by 100 points.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 2:25 pm**

Ultima 7 (both parts), Ultima 8, Ultima Underworld, Dreamweb, Elder Scrolls Arena (in Windows 95/98), Strike Commander (notice an Origins trend?).

Of all of those I could not get Strike Commander, Ultima 8 or Ultima Underworld to run. Dreamweb finally worked just recently when I discovered Dosbox. Thankfully in the days of DOS most stores had an easy return policy.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 2:58 pm**

I forgot Ultima 7 did have a really wonky memory requirement because of OSI's silly "voodoo memory management system" or something like that. I remember it wasn't that big of a deal for me to get it running as by then I was a boot disk ninja. I had to spend so much time freeing up differing conventional and ems memory that I did it without a second thought.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 3:37 pm**

supercars on the zx spectrum. that shit would never load.

R Tape Loading Error.

every bloody time.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 4:51 pm**

DuckofDeath wrote:I forgot Ultima 7 did have a really wonky memory requirement because of OSI's silly "voodoo memory management system" or something like that. I remember it wasn't that big of a deal for me to get it running as by then I was a boot disk ninja. I had to spend so much time freeing up differing conventional and ems memory that I did it without a second thought.

It was one of the first games I got for an IBM PC, and before I got that PC I had never used anything other than a C-64. It's the game that broke my Autoexec.bat/config.sys cherry 8)

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 5:15 pm**

Crusader: No Remorse. Simply couldnt figure out what the problem was, eventually played it on PSX I think.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 5:55 pm**

McCrank wrote:Ultima 7 WITH mouse AND sound... in MS-DOS 6ish... You needed some ridiculous amount of free base memory, like 639k out of 640k.

-Chris

Ding ding ding! That's my winner too!
In the end, I did manage to get it to work.

I never got Doom to work on my old 386. After days of trying, I figured out this wasn't because of a lack of conventional memory, but because Dos4gw needed 4 mb RAM, and I only had 2.
Damn it's completely uninformative error message: "Not enough free memory" (or something like that)

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 6:30 pm**

Falcon 3. QEMM is the Awnser

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 7:00 pm**

dbt1949 wrote:Easily it would be MOO1. It was DOS and you had to use extended memory or something as well as upper memory and the end result was you had to make a seperate boot disk.
It was too much hassel,and after getting it to run finally, I gave up on it.

Damn, I forgot all about DOS stuff - totally slipped my mind. Can't remember any specifics, but I certainly remember a number of games giving problems - all the extended, upper, lower memory crap. That was crazy stuff, but you felt like a pro when you could get one to work after fiddling with it.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 7:51 pm**

SUCCEEDED:

Carmageddon Max Pack: I had trouble with this one, too, but with a 3Dfx Voodoo 1 card. It took several installations for the game to finally "take," and even then I had problems getting music to play and with non-vehicular crashes.

Star Control 3: I believe that the installer, oddly, required more memory than the game. The game was kind of buggy, too.

FAILED:

Staflight: I bought the original version, not knowing that its CGA graphics wouldn't work on my EGA/VGA system. Fortunately, an EGA version came out later, so I bought that.

Pinball Construction Set and Pool of Radiance: The disks didn't have executable files! I guess someone previously bought the games, deleted the files, and returned them.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 7:58 pm**

I remember going through a lot to get Tie Fighter to run. Made a boot disk and everything.

Maybe the same case for Privateer.

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 9:46 pm**

RookieCAF wrote:Falcon 3. QEMM is the Awnser

I had more problems with QEMM than I did running Falcon 3 since I had several programs that would not work with it.

Fortunately, I had a bit of wisdom imparted to me by the technician installing the math co-processor in my high-end 386-25 (so I could play Falcon). He showed me an EMM386 switch that allowed you to access some of the memory that's reserved for the video buffer (that never gets used). That freed up enough memory so that I no longer had to worry about multiple configurations.

I carried that business card in my wallet for years so I wouldn't lose the syntax. I wonder what I ever did with it.

Edited to add: Bless the intarweb! i=b000-b7ff

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:27 pm**

Wow, this thread sure brings back memories of DOS. No particular game comes to mind as being the most difficult, although there were lots that had their moments. I've still got printouts of all my various config.sys and autoexec.bat settings for different games. It's funny to think how much I resisted the idea of using Windows for games at first, but it sure has simplified things. That being said, there was a certain sadistic level of joy in tinkering with your system to get something to run, those moments of manical laughter when you finally squeezed out that extra 3K of conventional memory or whatnot.

Since Windows has become the defacto gaming platform, I'd have to say the game that has given me the most difficulty was Half-Life 2. In all fairness part of the problem was overloading of the Steam servers on day one, but I ended up buying a brand new modem to finally get the thing working (wouldn't let me use a shared internet connection to install).

Posted: **Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:43 pm**

Act of War, released last week, is without a doubt, the most difficult game to get to run, and keep running.

Sad I know.

Posted: **Thu Mar 24, 2005 12:10 am**

killbot737 wrote:Success: Ultima 7. Voodoo be damned.

Winnah!

Octopus Overlords

The most difficulty you've ever had getting a game to run.

The most difficulty you've ever had getting a game to run.