This is my entry for the Old Computer Challenge of 2024. While various people decided to go different ways, I want to use an older Sony Vaio as a gaming station for most of the month of July. It’s fortunate that the OCC time frame will overlap with a big heatwave in Romania (39-41ºC announced), so I’m going to have a lot of time to fiddle with it. Many others have chosen different approaches to the challenge. However, as I’ve decided to use a Windows XP machine which is pretty useless in the “real” world nowadays, I decided to mimic a week of summer vacation of 2004, right after I finished high-school, therefore the software, hardware (mostly) and the entertainment should be time-locked to about July 2004, playing the games and listening to the music I had back in the day. It’s a nice throwback to 20 years ago and I’m sure it will be a nice trip down the memory lane.

Day 0 Hardware & Setup^

This laptop is a beauty and it’s my go-to laptop for retro activities because it has some really nice features. When I got this laptop for about 40 euros from a classified ads, I chose it not only for the big 15,4" screen, but also because it has a processor at about 1.7GHz and an Nvidia GeForce 2 video card, this making it very similar to the first computer my parents got me, back in 2002. I did upgrade it the RAM, increasing it to 2GB, in order to make it a bit more usable on the “new” web, but I don’t actually need it. The main attraction of this is the really neat 1280x720 screen at a whopping 15.6" diagonal, which is very comfy for my tired old eyes.

Issues

One of the first issue were some audio issues, sometimes it throws some hissing sounds, like a cable is doing imperfect contact. As far as I can tell, yelling and swearing at the computer seems to have fix it for now, about 4 days with no issues encountered. If it craps itself again, I might connect it to an external speaker and be done with it.

Then it was the connectivity. The integrated wireless card would only connect to one of my TP-Link routers and not to the Time Capsule I use upstairs. It would see the network, attempt to connect to it, then drop. However, the TP-Link routers are downstairs and not only there was the distance issue, but also the fact that they’re separated by a very thick armoured concrete slab, which made the connection drop consistently and it would only connect at 14.4Mbit/s and it would drop faster than some girls’ panties when they hear the word “Dubai”. Moreover, trying to connect using my network cable, I’d get the “Network cable unplugged” error, which makes me believe the internal network card is busted as well. Luckily, I did find an USB wifi adapter made by TP-Link (Archer T3U) that was forgotten in a drawer and was also lucky to find Windows XP drivers for it. You’ll find a link in the “Downloads” section at the end of the article.

Because technology in 2020s is pretty much retarded, all my Logitech mice cannot connect to the laptop, because they are missing Unifying drivers and they have a cable port but that’s just for charging, not for data transfer or connecting to a PC. After fiddling too long for something that might never work, I’m just using a Raspberry Pi cable mouse, that came bundled with the Raspberry Pi 400 kit I got a while ago (and that I’ve never wrote about, even though I should have)

The base of the laptop is missing the rubber feet and feels a bit swollen and the bottom part bent (although the battery is fine), so the base is pretty wobbly, therefore I’ll just use my Keychron K5 SE for ease of use. I am considering of getting a keyboard from that time, but when I’ll get it, I’ll write about it.

Another issue I seem to find is that some items in the Explorer shell have been replaced with weird looking characters, sign that some malware might have found shelter somewhere, but since it’s running beyond my home firewall and it’s isolated from the rest of the network, it’s not a huge hassle and I’m not gonna stress myself to see what’s up or to reinstall Windows. Apparently there’s no malware, but this shit happens when some software tries to configure Windows to go into a different language. Or something. The fix was fairly simple, I just found where those strings were saved in the registry (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\MUICache), opened an older virtual machine which didn’t have this issue, navigated to the same place and exported the keys. I took the .reg file, copied it to the laptop, run it (to install the keys), then re-started the explorer.exe process (open the Task Manager, kill the explorer.exe process, then File->Run, type “explorer” and hit enter). Blam! You can find the .reg file in the download section below, in case you need it (I think I need it on a different laptop).

To put the cherry on top, sometimes, I get a blue screen while in the middle of anything, complaining that STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}. Hope the system will live until the end of the challenge.

Windows Update

With the help of the guys at #oldcomputerchallenge I was able to upgrade my Windows installation to Service Pack 3 and get all the released updates (except WGA of course, fuck that) using the tools provided by Legacy Update. The make everything work super fine, sped up my computer a bit and made it more friendly to the internet and connectivity of today, so if you still need to manage old Windows XP systems (especially for retro gaming), send them a tip. Your beer might be someone’s bread. I installed without knowing Internet Explorer 8, but it’s fine. At least I noticed Windows Media Player 11, so I skipped that update.

Development

Another fun part is the web development. I’ve installed EditPlus 2, PuTTY and WinSCP, so I will try to do some work from it as well. Because hugo is a pretty bitch to run on such old hardware and under Windows XP, I’ll keep my current website setup where my M2 Max laptop just acts like a server. However, all this didn’t stop me to make a new theme for the website, inspired by Windows XP’s design that also features a cute (and fairly loud) Easter Egg.

Anachronisms

Some of the things that doesn’t match the 2004 setup are the wallpaper, which is a light one taken from wallhaven and screensaver, which is the Fliqlo, because it’s purely beautiful and simple.

Another anachronism is the presence of the browser as mentioned above which is an implementation for the modern web, as well as the existence of the RSS reader, which was unheard of in 2004. The Vaio also hosts a couple of apps and tools I needed over the years to do various stuff:

• Transmac - an application that can open APFS partitions and write floppies for my old Macintosh Plus.
• HotShots, tool I’m using for automating saving screenshots to a directory.
• XSnap 1.2, another screenshots tool.
• honestech VHS to DVD, tool i’m using for transferring some old VHS tapes to the computer.
• Nero Burning ROM, for burning CDs which I did have installed but never used, as I didn’t have a CD-writer back then.

Day 1 Entertainment^

On the entertainment side, I can cheat a bit, because I have my Plex server at home, which can transcode some shit, in order to make it view-able on this laptop. HOWEVER… I’ve decided that since I’m hosting a “Gaming like it’s 2004”, all entertainment should as well be limited to stuff that’s been released prior to July 2004. This includes movies, TV shows and most importantly, music. I have exported my full Winamp playlist, if you’re curious about the shit I’m listening to. In terms of software, I will use VLC because I don’t want to fiddle with Ace Mega Codec Pack, as the system is already fairly unstable. For music Windows Media Player will definitely get some play time but I will use most of the time Winamp 2.95. I was also considering using Winamp 5 for the library component, but I like the small memory footprint of Winamp 2. Also time to find a good Winamp skin, most likely I will get the 2Advanced Prime. I also have iTunes installed, because I used to manage some iPods from my gadgets collection with this, and I also have Sony Sonicstage, which I used to put some music on some minidiscs to use them in my MD players.

The skins from the image below can also be downloaded from the Downloads section below, and they are named: Classic (Winamp default), Bento Classified, Nucleo-NLog, 2advanced_prime and aqua_x.

I also have installed a long time ago honestech VHS to DVD, software I used to rip some old VHS tapes of Romanian stand-up comedy and save them as AVI using an USB capture dongle. Can’t get any more retro than that.

As a browser, I tried Mypal 68, a nice current, secure and reliable browser for Windows XP, however, I was greeted by the “mypal.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close.” welcome message triggered by an error caused by kernel32.dll so I tried the older version which seems to be working, it’s faster and snappier than the Google Chrome 49 I was using before (which is so out of date). This will also help me check my emails, as I’m using webmail on my server.

For instant communications, I am using mIRC 6.2 on the 30 days evaluation time, and if you send me a pretty email, I might even let you know where you can find me. I could install some old MSN Messenger and/or Yahoo! Messenger, but since login servers are down, they’re just pretty junk to have on.

For keeping up to date with the sites of my friends, I exported all my feeds as an OPML feed, which I imported into QuiteRSS, which is plainly the best RSS reader for older PCs, but of course it struggles with feeds forcefully served over HTTPS. I’ll try to find a workaround for that. Update: Upon installing all the Windows Update modules, now the OS can properly communicate with the other servers on the internet and although it moans that it can’t understand “Let’s Encrypt” certificates, it allows me to manually approve them and they load just fine. I’ve also changed the screenshot below.

Day 2 Games^

This is for me the perfect nostalgia machine. I have installed a ton of the games I was playing in high school, like Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, most of the Need For Speed games, Midtown Madness 2, Medal of Honor, FIFA 2000, Half-Life, Counter-strike, Red Alert 2 and some of the Harry Potter first games.

I’ve also installed a shit ton of puzzle games distributed by GameHouse, which are the classic puzzles that require skill and patience, without the need to buy power-ups and shit (fuck you Candy Crush!), games like Collapse, Zuma, Aloha TriPeaks, Bejeweled, Chuzzle, Lemonade Tycoon and Diner Dash. I have fond memories of taking turns with my late dad playing Feeding Frenzy, so I installed that too. I’ve played a bit some of them in the latest days, mostly just to check that they run fine, and I will write more about each one in detail in the days to come.

I have decided to write about some of the games I will enjoy over this month so I’m going to write a few personal things about them. I was thinking about writing some long ass reviews, but I’m the champion of half-assing things, so just enjoy a short snippet of text and a shitload of screenshots.

Midtown Madness 2

Following the first great hit, Microsoft’s own Midtown Madness 2 was super fun. Getting chased by the police in San Francisco and/or London while driving some of the most iconic cars of the time was always a lovely experience. I fondly remember the LAN chases we’d do and it was a game that I always like to chill in while listening to some music.

Play time: hours

FIFA 2000

Capital E. Capital A. Capital SPORTS.

This is probably the FIFA variant I played the most, it’s also one of the simpler ones and I fondly remember playing a “long-night” in an internet cafe for my 16th birthday and winning a championship. Among other competitions, I used to play a lot this, either on PC or sometimes on PlayStation one, when we’d go to the arcades. FIFA 2000 is not one of the most polished games and there are huge differences in both terms of engine and polygon count between this version and the one that followed it (you guess it, FIFA 2001), but this game still comes with some legendary players, no loot boxes or in-game transactions and it offers you still a great deal of fun. I also love knowing that this version I have is the one I copied from the internet cafe I used to frequent, so I still have my players and teams customizations, where I have a player with my name and max skills playing for both my favourite team (Rapid Bucuresti) and the Romanian National Team. Also, as a way to honor the Romanian team that did well on the Euro 2024 that just ended, I decided to play a World Cup and win it, wooo!! Amateur difficulty FTW! One more quirk of the version I’m having is that it has only one song in the soundtrack and that’s Robbie Williams’ “It’s Only Us”. So without further ado, here’s a screenshot dump.

Play time: months without pause

Day 3 Puzzle Game Pack^

While this is not a game per se, it features a ton of great puzzle games and I’m going to quickly feature through some of them, released and or made by Gamehouse / Popcap / Reflexive Games. I won’t talk too much about each, but they are very good, so they are worth mentioning (and playing!). I won’t play them too much now, but they’ll stay installed on the hard drive for future fun! Just like “Big Kahuna Reef”, these games don’t bring power ups or in-app purchases, you only have a limited number of lives and your skill. If you run out of lives you either continue from where you left or you have to go back to square one. The whole thing can be found on Archive.org and it’s free to download. Another release of the pack with slightly different games (I think) can be found here. Additionally, if you have trouble unlocking some of the games in there, there’s a nice activator Reflexive-Arcade-keygen.exe. Watch out, this file might contain trojans or some shit, make sure you run it in a sandbox!! The Original Source of the crack gives you alternate options, do whatever you want with this information.

Big Kahuna Reef

Oh, this game! This is the quintessential game to play if you like tile-matching puzzle games. It’s similar to Candy Crush or Frozen Bubble and so many others and what’s beautiful about it is not the fact that you don’t have power ups or any kind of in-app purchases. It’s the fact that as you progress through the base levels you unlock various species of fish that will populate your game screen (which also doubles as a screen saver!) and if you finish the game and defeat the 100 levels, then you get 50 more bonus levels to play FOR FREE! No DLCs, no season passes, no “pay 1 dollar so we can give you a bomb”. You have a set number of lives, yo0’ve got your skill and a predetermined set of rules. It’s super fun, a bit hard sometimes, with great music and a great vibe. I’ve played countless hours, but I just can’t fucking find the original screenshots of all the levels I played, so I leave you with just these. Just get the game and have fun with it! Also it’s one of the games my dad liked to play, so it holds a special place in my heart.

Play time: a couple of days with no sleep, until I finished it.

Zuma

Pop! Pop! Pop! Ding! Pop! Pop! Pop! Ding! Pop! Pop! DINGDINGDINGDING! Ribbit.

They say you can’t hear an image, but you can. I’ve played countless hours this game and I think everyone already knows it. I played it, my dad, my sister, my niece, a policeman from the next street, my best friend, my worst enemy, everyone played it. If you haven’t, just do it! This was also one of my dad’s favourite games, and I think it’s one of mine too I’ll add some more photos when I finish it, at the moment I took a break at level 7-1. Play time: ages.

Feeding Frenzy

It takes work to do something beautiful that just works, and Feeding Frenzy is simply that. With easy to understand gameplay mechanics and 40 levels, it’s a fun trip climbing the food chain and it’s easy to play (but not that easy to master!). Because it had fish, it was also one of my dad’s favourites, so that gives it an extra cool factor. Also, did I mention that playing the game unlocks some screensavers as well? Play time: until you sleep with the fishes, which is a couple of hours.

Super Bounce Out

The thing here is super easy: match balls in pairs of three by swapping them over and over before the dynamite goes kabloom! It’s also got puzzle modes where you need to keep removing pairs and it was so good it spawned a sequel called Bounce Out Blitz. Play time: hours.

Chuzzle

We had some keychains in the shape of the Chuzzles, or whatever they’re called. It’s a very nice match puzzle game, but instead of swapping places, you slide rows and columns of chuzzles until you get locked by so many and you remain out of shuffles. And then you can choose a different mode and play some more, since there are a ton of trophies to be unlocked (early achievements, ikr). Play time: forever. I can’t quit the game, I mean look at the puppy-eyed chuzzle on the quit screen.

Super Collapse

This can already be called a franchise, Collapse, Super Collapse II, Relapse, Super Collapse II Platinum, Super Collapse 3 and so on. The task is simple, click groups of pieces to make them go away until you eventually remain out of space on the playing board. Click-click-click-click-click-click-click! Play time: until my mouse’s left click stopped working.

Shape Shifter

Another nice puzzle twist, it’s using a conveyor belt that brings something that looks like candy and you need to put them on some other conveyor belts in the appropriate place. Why? To unleash the circus magic, of course! Play time: until my blood sugar gets very high from all this candy.

Ricochet

I remember fondly this game. It’s a great variation of the classic Pong game, and I remember loving it when it appeared because it had such a cyberpunk design and really really good graphics. I’ve tried to play some levels now, but I am both rusty and old, it’s pretty hard for me nowadays. It’s still a super fun arcade action game and it spawned some great sequels as well. Play time: eons.

Day 4 Racing Games^

The second meaning of this means mostly racing games. After playing Midtown Madness a few days ago, I decided it’s time to go for a race track day. So of course, I went the Need For Speed route, which proven a bit … challenging. Not because NFS and NFS II refused to run completely, nor because NFS III was nice but soooo hard to control. NFS3 was a really nice game, but I didn’t play it that much back in the day, so it’s here more for showcase than for nostalgia.

I also wanted to play Need For Speed High Stakes (NFS4), because it reminds me of a very old friend and that I used to play that on his computer when he got it, while we were in high-school, but the game was a nuisance to install and to make work and after the first race the game just refused to work anymore, starting, showing the cinematic, then throwing the AMF=5 screen.c(563) error when entering the menu and crashing. Thankfully, I managed to snag a few screencaps before that. I’m not too nostalgic about this either, although it was a brilliant game.

Need For Speed: Porsche 2000

Then I went to the big guys that I really played a lot back in the day, starting with Need For Speed: Porsche 2000 (or Unleashed), which was a superb play and I really enjoyed a couple of races. I remembered fondly how I tried to progress the Career mode of the game to become a fully licensed test pilot doing obstacle courses, as well as the Evolution mode, which allowed one to progress chronologically through all the timeline of Porsche’s history and drive and the best Porsche cars ever made. It’s a shame I never finished any of them back then, but they were so awesome! Nostalgia kicks in here hard, because it’s the game that helped me bond with one of my best friends (the maniac used to play with Manual transmission!!). We’re still friends and maybe over the weekend we’ll do a LAN party to have some fun.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

Then I played a bit Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, which was the same as I remember it, beautiful. The car selection was great, the difficulty of the races was challenging enough and both Tournament and Hot Pursuit modes were super nice, I remember playing this a looooot back in the day, and my favourite cars are still the blue BMW Z8 and the orange Lamborghini Murcielago. Running from the cops has never been so fun and it’s definitely something to look forward to. Also I’ve never finished the story of this game, so I could try to attempt this again.

Need For Speed: Underground

Another NFS I played for a shit ton of time was the first (and only at the time) Need For Speed: Underground. My favourite car there was the Peugeot 206 which I tuned and made pretty, but because nothing is ever as it should be with this computer, my save seems to be corrupted, so I had to make a new one. I’ll search on my SteamDeck for some screenshots from when I played it last year on that. There’s not much to talk about the game itself, it was bonkers and I loved to customize my little Peugeot and race through the night.

A really funny thing I’ve noticed, is that my screenshots software makes the game bug, or there’s a weird video glitch and sometimes when I’m capturing screenshots, some items on the screen are not rendered properly, either the car, the HUD, both or only parts of the cars. It’s funny and I thought it’s worth to mention them here. This happens both in NFS Porsche and Hot Pursuit 2, so maybe it’s an engine thing.

Re-Volt

Oh, what memories this little game brings! What could be more fun than racing remote controlled cars into the neighbourhood? Of course, racing digital remote controlled cars in various digital neighbourhoods! While the races themselves are fun and really keep you on your toes, what really tickles the nostalgia factor is the multiplayer mode where you just play “tag” in various playgrounds and supermarkets, touching a star and trying to keep a buff given by it for two minutes. It’s fast, it’s insane, and if you want to play it on your big screen TV, it’s also been remastered for 4K.

Star Wars Racer

Back in the day of NFS: Porsche we were so happy to have a have that could nicely display a good map while running at over 200km/h. Until we discovered this gem by LucasArts, based on the pod racing scenes from Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, where the pods go upwards of 600km/h!!!! That’s bonkers and it makes for a lot of fun in multiplayer, another game that we spent so many days and nights playing. This was so good, it spawned a sequel, but we never got to play it, as it was a PlayStation 2 exclusive.

Day 5 Pew Pew!^

After racing a lot, today was shooting time! So without further ado, I jumped right into the best shooters of the history, real classics, games that endured the challenge of time and that are still played today in their upgraded iterations. I was planning to feature a couple more games than the ones below, but some games just won’t run on this computer, like Delta Force. Even more so, very ironically Quake II didn’t work either and it’s so much more funny because all the games below (except one) are more or less based on its engine. Oh, and I should have also included the first Halo in this, but I simply forgot about it, lol.

Half-Life

You cannot start a first-person shooters list without starting with Half-Life. I don’t know (nor care) for how many years it was Game Of The Year, but it’s definitely Game Of The Century. It’s gripping storyline, really cool characters and flawless gameplay make it a game where you’d sink 15 hours in story mode easy, shooting at things in various locations on and off this planet. And after you make your deal with the G-man, you go into multiplayer and bash your friends over and over in boot_camp or troll everyone by going into the bunker and calling for the airstrike in crossfire. This game has made millions of friendships and destroyed pretty much the same amount and taught us the important life lesson that nothing is impossible, as long as you have a crowbar.

Deathmatch Classic & Team Fortress

Deathmatch Classic (or DMC) is one of the multiplayer-only mods of Half-Life. What is a mod, you ask? Well it’s a custom game with different textures (the world looks different, weapons and body models are different too) and the game sometimes brings new rules. It was created by Valve as a tribute to the original Quake game and it’s basically a for lulz remake made by hardcore fans, DMC being infamous for having an inactive community, its record player count being 28.

As opposed the the Half-Life “free for all” fights, Team Fortress brought not only the concept of team-based fights to Half-Life mods, but also the concept of roles. You no longer get weapons off the ground, you are spawned with specialized weapons and tools based on what your class is, similar to an RPG. You can be a scout, sniper, medic, soldier, spy, engineer and many others, each class with its own particular set of skills (heh) bringing their value to the team. This was better received than the aforementioned DMC and spawned a free-to-play sequel in 2007 that’s still played today.

Counter-Strike

Another very popular Half-Life mod (which most kids nowadays don’t even know it’s a HL mod) is Counter-Strike. Borrowing from TF2 the concept of team fights, it also brings small economy elements, in terms that players need to earn in-game currency by winning rounds to be able to buy better weapons, kevlar, grenades, etc, making the game a bit more complex and needing a bit of strategy to maximize success. Easy to play, hard to master, it spun out into a huge universe, becoming one of the first eSports, gathering millions of players from all the world. I fondly remember playing this in the internet cafes back in the day for hours without end.

Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault

This was one of the first first-person shooters I played that was based on real life events. In the campaign you are an American soldier installing freedom.exe in fronts all over Europe and Africa during the First World War. Its level design is super cinematic and it’s like putting you into the shoes of a character from _Saving Private Ryan (guess what, Steven Spielberg was one of the writers for this game) and if it was made today, it would have been politically-correct woke trash propaganda. Luckily, this being made in 2002, you can play in multiplayer as Axis, just because to the war there are always two sides and history is always written by the winners. All in all, a great multiplayer war-themed game that makes Call of Duty look like crap.

Unreal Tournament

No, I’m not talking about the one from 2003 or the following, I’m talking about the first Tournament, made in 1999. It’s bloody, gory, fast-paced and really fun. I really liked to play this against bots, as no one would play it at the internet cafe, but it was still fun. And what I found super cool about it is that it had automatic logs and it would generate statistics based on them about your gameplay. You can see all the stats. Some links are broken, but it’s still a cool thing to browse. Also, looking at my Career Totals for one hour of playtime, it’s not bad, especially noticing an Average frag-per-hour (FPH) of 297.9, which means that I’ve managed to do a kill almost every 12 seconds :D Pew Pew!

Update: If you got Unreal Tournament GOTY from GOG or some similar stuff, the stats thing might be broken. You can fix that by using the ngStatsUT-fix.zip also available in the Downloads section at the bottom. Make sure to check the readme file for instructions.

Day 6 Strategy and Adventure^

After a lot of shooting, we need to chill back a bit and put our mind more to the test rather than reflexes, therefore today we’re going to experience some of the greatest games of 20 years ago. You will see that some really nice titles are missing, like Age of Empires, Pharaoh and Sim City, mostly because I wasn’t an avid fan of them back then and I only played them a bit. This section also features an unexpected strategy game and I’m going to start with that because it’s bonkers. I will then move towards some of the best games ever, flow a bit into another Blizzard title and then some other adventure titles.

Lemonade Tycooon (and LT2)

It’s the Anmerican Dream for kids transposed into the digital world: make yourself a lemonade stand, sell lemonade, become a billionaire lemonade tycoon. Easy peasy. What, do you think it’s more complicated like that? Just find a good recipe, start to invest in better equipment, rent better locations and sooner rather than later you will become the McLemonade of the world. In honesty, it takes a bit to find a good recipe that works most of the time and just grind that over and over until you can afford better things. However, it’s still a great progression, but the endgame is a bit boring. As for the second game, it’s got more complex mechanics and you can play a lot more, allowing you to expand over more locations simultaneously, so it gives a ton of game time. Also it’s set in New York.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

We leave the lemonade stands behind because they are suddenly attacked by the Soviets! Following the great success of the preceding C&C titles (Red Alert, Tiberian Sun), Westwood brings us the scenario where the Cold War turned hot and faces the world’s two big super power into an all-out war. The gameplay is excellently done and what really made this game stand out was the fact that they used real actors in real settings for the cinematics. Yeah, and Tanya’s hot. Also the Yuri’s revenge expansion was super cool, but by the time I discovered it, I was pretty bored of C&C.

Starcraft

We leave the Soviets and the Allies behind because they are suddenly attacked by zerglings! Starcraft is without a doubt one of the most played Real-Time Strategy games out there. After being a total initial failure when presented for the first time as a reskin of Warcraft 2, Blizzard scrapped everything and went back to the drawing board. Released in 1998, it was one of the first strategy games played professionally, and is still played in various circles a lot. The three-faction war, the excellent design, storytelling and game mechanics made this a strong contender for the “Game of the Century”. And yes, the LAN battles were so fierce, they would often end in tables being flipped, even before it was a thing. It was funny that both my screenshot applications had an issue with this game.

Warcraft III (& Frozen Throne)

You cannot talk about strategy without talking about Warcraft. The third instalment in the series, working on the engine of Starcraft and with a lore universe beyond comprehension, it adds up into a brilliant game. Loved spending tens of hours in the campaigns and replaying the cinematics. It didn’t have the eSport fame that SC got, but it’s definitely one of the best games out there. The game focuses on the conflict between the Horde and Alliance and how the power of friendship™ will unite them in front of a common enemy, coming from another corner of the universe. The expansion, The Frozen Throne, puts under the spotlight the leader of the Alliance, Arthas and his descent into darkness, creating one of the best stories ever told. As a WoW player, the nostalgia here hits like a motherfucker.

Diablo 2

We can’t mention Blizzard in the early 2000s and not talk about Diablo 2. There’s not much actually to say about it. You either played it and loved it, or you never heard about it. I played a bit using my main (a level 36 Barbarian) and somehow got stuck into the worst possible place. While randomly going places, just to make some nice screenshots for this post, I went into the Chaos Sanctuary. All fine and dandy over there, until you trigger the last seal, moment when a bunch of minions with 500% movement speed huddle and instantly kill me. After about 50 or so corpse runs (using about 35 scrolls of town portal) until I successfully managed to outrun the fuckers and safely teleport back to town with my gear. Researching more into the issue, it seems that these mobs are bit overtuned in comparison with everything else and one of the mobs two-shots my level 35 companion. Searching online for tips and ideas, I find them to be either boring (farm normal Countess), or simply retarded (Just don’t be a melee fighter). The best solution would be to try to pull them one by one, but the moment one aggros, at least 3-4 will come after and make sure you get your ass whooped. Maybe it’s bugged, maybe it’s me who’s shit at the game, bur I don’t recall being this bad when I finished it the first time (on this character). I could try to farm some better gear, but as someone said before “you don’t find the gear you need until after it’s useless to you”.

Harry Potter: The Philosopher’s Stone

I’ve played this for a bit, as I’ve finished both this and the sequel back in the day. The game is linear and childish and it was really fun to play them back in the day. Seeing the Harry Potter movies whenever they came out, I grew up along those characters and I always loved the universe. The games are a bit quirky, the controls are a bit bouncy, but all in all it’s a very fun game to play. I kindly remember fighting with my niece for play time at the computer. I installed the sequel as well, but will play it more in the future. These are definitely some games I want to finish before the end of the year and maybe I will write more about them soon.

final Conclusions^

First of all, I need to mention that while writing stuff and speaking with friends, I remembered I could install some more things and write about them., things that were really nice and that I just forgot about, things like Halo: CE, GTA III, MS Office XP with FrontPage, Adobe Photoshop CS3. This week went faster than I thought, so I have a few starting points for the next year’s challenge. I’m planning to research how to write a Winamp plugin, do some stuff in Photoshop, make a game in Flash.

But until then, I’d like to share my thoughts on the challenge. In short, I loved it! I got the chance to meet really nice and interesting people who took the challenge in their own way and provided inspiration and guidance along the way. I was planning to do some more productive stuff, but there wasn’t enough time for that. I started to go down the rabbit hole of high school gaming and apparently you can’t fit a few teenage years into a week without forgetting about stuff.

It was hard at the beginning, the most tedious part was making stuff behave and work (and some things I never made to work properly), but it was a nice learning curve and I didn’t mind of the hops I’ve encountered during the trip. I got to reminisce about some of the games that really made me a gamer (ayy lmao, forgot about Mortal Kombat 4!!), and will probably spend some more time with some of these games in the upcoming months. I also did manage to listen to a lot of good music (do Linkin Park, Kosheen and Goo Goo Dolls count as “old-school”?) and watched some of the VHS tapes I’ve digitized and they were super fun. Navigating the web slowly means you have more time to focus on the content that’s in front of you. I’ve fallen behind a bit on my RSS reading, but that’s not on the challenge itself, but more on the things that happened away from keyboard. The bottom line is that I really enjoyed doing this challenge and it’s something I recommend to everyone to do sometime (even this year, as Solene said, you can do it any time!)

I hope this was as fun for you to read it as it was for me to write it!

Thank you for your time, don’t forget to stay retro and let’s party like it’s 2004! <3

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