I definitely dabbled a bit with the original C&C as a kid. Probably worth trying to find a copy.

I kind of want to get my hands on an old 486 machine with 5.25" and 3.5" drives. 

Bloody Penguin

posted by justincredible

I kind of want to get my hands on an old 486 machine with 5.25" and 3.5" drives. 

I’ve got one w/2 5.25’s

If you're going for the Doom series, might as well snag Duke Nukem 3-D and/or Star Wards: Dark Forces. Two of the better Doom clones from that era. And with the Doom files on your computer, that also gives you access to all sorts of fan-made .wads where they took the source code to make their own levels for the game, including full games. A few of them, like the two Memento Mori games, Requiem and Alien Vendetta, are very good. Tougher and more complex levels than Doom 2.

Age of Empires.

posted by Ironman92

Bloody Penguin

Is that the one where you hit a penguin with a club to see how far it would go? 

posted by Heretic

If you're going for the Doom series, might as well snag Duke Nukem 3-D and/or Star Wards: Dark Forces. Two of the better Doom clones from that era. And with the Doom files on your computer, that also gives you access to all sorts of fan-made .wads where they took the source code to make their own levels for the game, including full games. A few of them, like the two Memento Mori games, Requiem and Alien Vendetta, are very good. Tougher and more complex levels than Doom 2.

I forgot about Duke Nukem.

 The original will run on just macOS

I still have my SNES with several of the games for it like Illusion of Gaia and Zelda:LttP. Not getting rid of any of them.

I also still have my old Myst games, though it's been decades since I've played them.

posted by justincredible

Is that the one where you hit a penguin with a club to see how far it would go? 

Lol yeah….I got hooked and finally hit one where the penguin skidded off of about 25 bombs and put up a score I didn’t think was possible

That was my final swing ever.

archive.org has a section dedicated to software. You can find ISOs for just about everything.

I recently went down the retro computer path and now I have three: a 486 (windows 3.11), a Pentium II (windows 98) and an Athlon XP (win XP)

I got a cheap KVM to toggle between them all. It even does sound switching. 

I'm willing to bet if you cracked the case open you'll find faulty capacitors

It seems to run fine, what would faulty capacitors cause?

posted by justincredible

It seems to run fine, what would faulty capacitors cause?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague?wprov=sfla1

Complete failure of the board, strange behavior, smoke/fire, etc.

Also if you liked Sim City 2000 you'd probably like 3000. And if you like 3000 you'd probably like Cities: Skylines.

Also surprised nobody mentioned The Sims yet.

Half-Life 2

Battlefield 2

posted by MontyBrunswick

archive.org has a section dedicated to software. You can find ISOs for just about everything.

So much porn, browsing is almost useless. I wish it had better filtering, but it's pretty good if you know what you're searching for.

GOG(?) sells vintage PC games.  I've actually run several on Windows 11.  You can get entire series of classics for like $10-$20.

My favorite was probably Hero's Quest.  I replayed several a few years ago, and they hold up.  Didn't even mind the graphics.

And, of course, Doom.  Never gets old.  Probably play a few levels every 3-4 months.  For that I'm using an emulator called Chocolate Doom.  Couldn't get into Doom 3 though

posted by justincredible

So much porn, browsing is almost useless. I wish it had better filtering, but it's pretty good if you know what you're searching for.

I don't think I've ever stumbled across porn on there. Make sure you're in the software section and then just run a search for whatever.

https://archive.org/details/software

I'd suggest sorting the results by views as it tends to push the stuff you're actually searching for towards the top.

If you're just browsing for shit, you might do what gut suggested and skim GOG for ideas and then go fetch the original iso from archive. The GOG games are usually packed up in a way so they work on modern OS's (but won't run at all on older OS's)

Rise of the Triads

Another I remember from back in the day was Warlords. Basically like Civilization, but without the diplomacy and empire-building. Instead, you just generate characters and conquer everyone.