Oh, I hate you Vista (well, more than usual)

Baby, come back...

Who has two thumbs and discovered the other night that he can't get neither Medieval: Total War nor Master of Orion II to play on his new(ish) computer? This guy! The former works normally, right until I try and start a campaign, then it keeps going back to the pause menu, then crashes. MOO2 simply won't run at all because it's missing the dplay.dll, which apparently was removed from the most recent versions of DirectX. Fortunately, I didn't googling and wikiing and discovered the problem: As it turns out, dplay.dll wasn't removed, Microsoft, for some reason, renamed it dplayx.dll. I found the solution on Atari's (current owners/publishers of MOO2) forums. Basically, you just have to copy the .dll and rename the copy dplay.dll. The downside is that the file is in the System32 folder, which is the one thing on your computer that you do not want to go monkeying around in. I only risked it because the solution came directly from an Atari staff member.

I'm a bit worried, however, about my other old games. I've developed a preference for older titles because I've never had a computer that's been powerful enough to run newer games. Sure, my current rig can play games that its predecessors couldn't, but there's no way it could ever run Crysis or anything from the last few years. As a result, most of my computer games are old. How old?

I own a original copy of Myst. Back in like '97 or 98, my parents bought* me a computer and the first game I got for it was the Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, followed a week later by Warcraft 2. I still own both copies. I know, it's not Zork, Commander Keen, Star Control, or anything like that, but how many gamers have these games on disk? Well, probably a lot, but not the young whippersnappers. I'd be surprised if they even knew there were Warcraft games before WoW. Not being able to play Warcraft II or Starcraft would suck badly.

By the by, if you're hankering for a hunk of chee...I mean, if you're want to play Master of Orion II, you can buy the game at Good Old Games for less than six smackers. One of the best games, ever.

M:TW picture via Giant Bomb.

*Well, leased it, since it came from one of those rental retail places in town.