Video Game Shelf Toads

What are the old video games on your shelf that I really need to get rid of but don't have the heart to throw it away? Or wondering why you even have it?

I've got an whole bookshelf full of 10-year-old or older games. Some of the stuff I saw was:

City of Heroes/Villains - those are literally unplayable. Why haven't I thrown it out?

Diablo/Diablo 2 - sentimental reasons. Probably never throw those away.

IL2 Sturmovik - turn the difficulty all the way up and it's too hard to play without some rudder arrangement, and then if you get a rudder it's still too hard to play.

Links LS - that was before I discovered the joys and sorrows of real golf. And video golf is maybe a little bit better than video fishing. (Note: MMO fishing doesn't count, because you might need the money. Hi, Moat Carp and Stoneskin Eel!).

Wing Commander 3 - That set me to thinking about it. I think I bought it but it turned out that my hardware was too slow to play it. And back in those days games wouldn't let you turn the graphics down. "Machine too slow? Too bad, buy a new PC."

Dragon Age: Origins - bought it again on Steam for like $10 a while back.

I know there's also a bunch of stuff on that shelf that is on 3.5" floppies. I guess I could buy a 3.5" drive, but why? Maybe on my upcoming Christmas break I'll shovel all this stuff out. Or not.

I have codes for Ambrosia software titles like MAELSTROM, APEIRON, and the like. I even keep a 15" Powerbook on mothballs to play them. Insanity.

I still have a GameBoy Color for DISNEY TETRIS I guess? What the hell?

I have a duct taped together copy of Chrono Trigger in a box somewhere for SNES. Played through many times.

I have a Dreamcast hooked up in my basement. It doesn't get used, but a few months ago my sons and I had an impromptu JoJo's Bizarre Adventure tournament.

I won since I'm the only one of them even remotely interested in fighting games.

Man, I have a LOT that qualifies here:

I have have a shrink wrapped promo version of X-Com Interceptor from my EB retail days. Battles of Destiny on 5.25" disks (think I can get a hook up device for that?). Sierra's SORCERIAN on 3.5. Bandit Kings of Ancient China on 5.25.

SEGA CD ROM games that I can't play because my original Sega (and I suspect the CD drive as well) got blown out by an electricity strike to my house..... WHILE I WAS PLAYING IT....


I have a bunch of others... I'll update this when I get home.

You'll pry my Quake retail CD from my cold dead hands.

I have a cd binder with a ton of random old pc stuff in it, that's about all I've got floating around any more. Warlords 3 dark lord rising, ready at a moment's notice!

I don't have too many of these toads, because I went cold turkey on video games during college and didn't come back to them until 2003 or so. When my older PC was on the brink of death a few years ago, I stopped using it and focused on using my newer PC, with the intention of rescuing the old PCs hard drive and having it installed as a slave drive on a newer PC, which I successfully with another computer a few years ago. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had installed some extra memory and forgot to rescue that as well, so I lost the games installed on that computer. I can't readily reinstall them on my other computer because it is running Windows 10. I know in theory that I can install an older game on a Windows 10 machine and run it on a legacy version of Windows just by clicking a few places, but the reality can be very frustrating.

For example, I picked up a cheap copy of the first two Fallout games at Goodwill and set up the first one on a Windows XP computer via DosBox. But the screen kept going black every few minutes, though it would somehow let me wipe away the black screen by vigorously sweeping my mouse back and forth. Finding and applying a workaround consumed another six hours. Fallout was cool, but my character build ended up being too much of a compromise and I ended up unable to handle any of the more challenging parts of the game maybe halfway through. Never got around to finishing it.

My shelf toads:
Riven (I couldn't figure out any of the puzzles on my own and was too proud to consult a walkthrough.
Fallout
Fallout 2
Temple of Elemental Evil (my all-time favorite, and someday I will try to get this running on a newer PC without resorting to Steam)
Evil Genius (supposedly won't run in Windows 10 due to difference between 32-bit and 64-bit, and maybe this is a problem for my whole list)
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (thanks to help here and from a friend, I got it working on Windows 10 but the controls are frustratingly janky)

I have no shelf toads, but I do have server toads, i.e. games waiting for me to download:

- That enormous itch.io bundle for BLM. Granted most of them are short indie games but technically I paid for them via my modest but heartfelt donation. So that’s a backlog of a couple hundred.

- TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENARA. This was the spiritual successor to PLANESCAPE: TORMENT, which I never played but had this amazing reputation as the best D&D CRPG. I went in on the download-only version but then development dragged on and on and on ... I didn’t know anything about Numenara but ended up reading a bit about it and was pretty meh. Had almost nothing of the cool stuff about Planescape as a setting. The download keys were emailed in a big fanfare and I put the email in a “will deal with this later” folder. It’s still there.

I played part of Torment, and thought it was pretty cool. Definitely not a combat focused RPG which was a nice change. Perhaps I'll start it over some day.

Final Fantasy Tactics for me, I guess. I’ve barely played any video games since high school and quit Tactics then after any an early battle against enemy mages stymied me. I’m just daunted by its length and would rather spend my limited free time on games or reading or with my wife.

I’ve held onto my six editions of Dance Dance Revolution too, but those are only waiting for me to buy metal pads to get played again.