Signs Of Aging

"...quoting old stories/situations," said lad on GChat. We actually did feel that way too although not at that moment ranting about how, er, pirated games aren't so easy to install anymore. There are other things we'd thought on about how different it was then and now.

Basically it's like this.

Back then when original PC games probably were in the vicinity of RM100-150, and CD games were on the rise making diskette games slowly obsolete, anti-piracy measures went from password authentication every time you would start the game (how we enjoyed Prince Of Persia's password dungeon, where you've to check the manual for the requested letter, then find the potion with the corresponding letter and drink it to continue the game) to CD-Key authorization upon installation.

Now...back then in the DOS days of diskette games we had manuals for looking up passwords (and understanding how the game works...how we love poring over the manual of a game sometimes), or in the case of a game that somehow lacked a manual, photocopied or otherwise, or because it was from somebody else (original games didn't come easy or cheap but did have whacky box sizes and shapes), there used to be a .BAT or .EXE file that will help bypass the password or other security thingamabobs on the game.

Oh, and viruses were quite obvious in what they do. We remember our early 386 getting infected before by some virus that had the letters 'SW' appearing on our screen before every game loads. Then again it's because there was no internet or world wide web to get connected to and 'malicious software that allows other people to take control of your computer' and all that.

Back then CD games didn't need much to bypass security save a provided CD-Key and a patch file (ahem).

Then came a point when Civilization 4 came out and there was all this need to install some program first, or install the game then install this other program then launch this game from there, or copy the entire DVD to the hard drive then run a program to create an image of it so that instead of a directory it's treated as a DVD instead...

Just isn't as simple any more.

Fact is, games still aren't cheap enough to buy without, er, trying it out first to see if it can work on our 6 year old desktop, as well to make sure the game was worth coughing out RM100 or so.

Even when it's a game like The Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition, with new graphics and voice-acting but still essentially the original game with no changes, new system requirements means we can't buy on a whim except probably as for keeps (until we get a new PC, and we wonder if we shall buy Street Fighter 4 for the PC instead of a console too). Still, it would be a pleasant surprise to find that the game could work on our desktop.

Would have been a pleasant surprise.

From what we read online, not only installation would unpack some near 3 gigs onto our hard drive but we would also need to install some version of DirectX and probably some file under a directory called DotNet95 too. The fact that a commentor mention something about "Installing a dodgy version of DirectX," doesn't sit well with us. Someone else also mentioned about making an image of the directory, which seems a lot of unnecessary hassle for old fuddy duddy us. And we don't like the idea of installing any more programs we have no idea does what (we mean generally, not the DirectX), if it isn't a 'malicious software' it would just pretty much slow down our PC.

Perhaps it's time to just pay full price and download the entire 2.5GB. And with the original there shouldn't be any hassle. At USD10 it's pretty much paying for a premium app from the iTunes App Store.

Forget the fact that we actually do own the original Secret Of Monkey Island game CD that came together with our Soundblaster some what, 14-15 years ago?