I’ve got some DOOM WADs I have been meaning to play so I would probably grab Trench Foot, Total Chaos, and the sequel to Ashes 2063, Ashes: Afterglow with a portable install of GZDoom to play them.
After that I’d probably bring Star Trek TOS and a MOBI copy of Neuromancer by William Gibson combined with a portable install of VLC and Calibre in case the computer didn’t have applications that support the file format.
What about you?
I wanted to phrase this in a way where it isn’t a prolonged or desert island style question where the responsible idea would be to bring Wikipedia ZIMs and educational PDFs. It’s just an awkward amount of time to kill. The mid 2000s office desktop stipulation is just an additional challenge so you can’t just bring in a copy of Baldur’s Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077.
Edit: By mid 2000s I meant around 2005; the XP or Vista.
Boy, this question hurts.
For anyone above a certain age with kids below a certain age this isn’t a punishment or a challenge, this is A DREAM!! Heroes of might and magic 3, system shock 2, Anno (any version up to 1503), Morrowind, Civilization 3, Age of wonders shadow magic, Baldur’s gate 1 and 2…
Whenever my wife finds the time she goes to her room to play Morrowind. She just got a new laptop and the first thing I did was install OpenMW and copy her save file.
It goes without saying that you couldn’t finish any of those games in those 12 hours, except for System Shock 2.
except for System Shock 2.
No, at some point I’d make a very unmanly noise and Alt-F4 the fuck outta there.
Civilization 3, and I would accidentally stay 20 hours
Civ is a good one. I have done the same. Would you prefer 3 over 4 if the computer could run it?
Either would be fine, but I liked the look of 3 a lot better.
A whole 11.5 hours of extra sleep next to a nostalgia machine?? Count me in.
just put a big pillow ‘on’ the external hard drive.
Only 12 hours? LoTR extended edition.
I put my answer in, but this is the only true answer.
Ikr? It’s like, the perfect thing for a 12 hour period of time. I should just carry it around in my backpack (ive got the 4K blu-rays), you can’t go wrong with it. That and star wars (classics, prequels, and animated cartoons).
Just gotta beat everyone to the nearest conference room and take over the projector.
MS Paint, an old clip art CD, and notepad. It’s time to make some unbearable personal websites
This is the best idea.
12 hours isn’t really even that long, could probably bring just about anything, but I think Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri would be a great way to spend that time.
12 hours of trying to overclock a mid 2000s desktop as much as I can
Memtest on a floppy and superpi or prime95, atitool on the drive, maybe a few games to benchmark? Can’t forget a soldering iron and defroster repair kit. 12 hours is not going to be enough.
12 hours? I’m sleeping through that whole thing
Emulators definitely should still run fine for GBA games I’d think. So there’s a lot to choose from already in that library. If not, then SNES. even a potato from the mid 2000s can run SNES games.
Other than that, I’m thinking I would load up my entire calibre Epub library so I can read books. I have so many books I want to go through that I have collected over the years. Want to go through the entire Dune series for the first time among other books.
I’m also quite certain a mid 2000s office PC can run VLC. I have many older series I have yet to watch still because I’ve been so busy. Stuff like The Shield or The Wire that I have downloaded but never got around to watching.
I don’t think I would get bored without internet for 12 hours at all with all that media at my disposal. Even on a 128gb thumb drive, I can easily bring in 2-3 full 1080p tv series. Epubs and retro system ROMs take no space at all so that’d be easy.
And if I get bored of all that media somehow, I’d just use an offline copy of wikivoyage to plan my next vacation.
SNES 9x ran great on systems of this era. I spent days playing all the Megaman titles and save-scumming or scanning memory to make infinite health cheats.
I’m currently listening to the Children of Dune audio book. That alone is 16h. I think Messiah was around 8h and Dune was around 12h. Basically, 12h is nothing.
Winamp with my favorite skin
Entirety of my mp3 collection
All 7 seasons of DS9
All 5 seasons of Kids in the Hall
Someone explain to this guy how long 12 hours actually is.
I like to overprepare - if I get tired of one thing I can switch to another.
Dungeon Keeper, Diablo II, StarCraft maybe, Morrowind, Uplink, Civilization II, Sim City 2000 or 3000 (depends on what will run), quake.
I enjoyed Uplink as well.
I blame my career choices to that game and the 90s movie “Hackers”.
Mid-2000s? SC3K would run easily, I’d have thought. SC4, on the other hand…
Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction
Stardew valley
Copious amount of ebooks or web novel downloads, as well as my lofi folder for background music. All preloaded on a boot drive with a Linux distro capable of both running on the hardware and viewing everything I brought, if I can figure out how to do that. Plus however many snacks I can sneak in.
Nothing I can explore the PC for 12 hours. Sounds like fun. Maybe play some pinball.
Please not Vista
Windows ME it is!
Okay I have never used it I think that will be interesting!
It was windows 98 but worse. It ground my GF’s Compaq cheapo college computer to a halt at the time.
