The biggest problem I come across when writing these reviews is finding old games that will still run.  It’s surprisingly harder these days to get old games to work.  Since I’ve yet to build my ‘Old Gamer Rig’, I’m forced to suffer the effects of incompatibility.  So this Special Bargain Bin is an overview of all the games I’ve thus far not been able to review.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six – Covert Ops

Asides from the Splinter Cell games, I’ve only played one other Tom Clancy game and I can’t remember the name of it, but it was one of the first game with his name.  I was really looking forward to Covert Ops, and am still annoyed at it.  I honestly don’t know too much about the game and that’s also one reason why I wanted to play it.  It would have been a completely unbiased review, it would also be the first review of a game that I hadn’t played previously.

Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds

Galactic Battlegrounds was my favourite Star Wars RTS, I played all the campaigns and hundreds of skirmishes.  I spent countless hours making custom maps, only to then spends even more hours playing on them.  Some of my matches lasted over three hours.  When the game got expanded and they added content from from Episode II, I played devoted even more hours.  I was really looking forward to play it again, and I was able to get it installed.  Only to have a horde of issues getting it to run.  Eventually I was forced to give up on it, as crashes were too frequent, and I wasn’t able to complete a single mission.

Star Wars Dark Forces

One of the first Star Wars FPS’s, and hailed by many to be the start of a great series of games.  Dark Forces is another game that I never got to complete, and have only a few foggy memories of playing it.  Another game I was really looking forward to playing, but forced to give up.    Hailed by many to be a milestone in game design.  It had many aspects of modern gaming that you didn’t find in it’s era.  While some called it a Doom-knock off, the game had a custom engine built for it that gave it more atmospheric  designs.  Not to mention the main character is Kyle Katarn, any anybody who reads the Star Wars Expanded Universe knows he’s just bad ass.

Get ready for the most controversial Bargain Ben yet; WarCraft II Battle.Net Edition.

I’ll start by saying that WarCraft has never really been my cup of tea.  I once got the WarCraft Battle Chest, containing WarCraft I, II, and an expansion.  Never played the first, played about half the singleplayer of the second, never touched the expansion.  A few years later a friend wanted me to play it with them, so I did.  Well, I had to go and buy a whole new copy of it, the Battle.Net Edition.  Played a bunch of multiplayer games and then it got lost in the collection.  When I saw early screens of WarCraft 3 I was impressed, but never bothered to play it.  I was involved in the beta for World of WarCraft, played that for a month or so, never saw the charm.

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In the Bargain Bin this week, Evil Genius, developed by Elixir Studios and published by Sierra Entertainment.  Evil Genius was released on my 21st birthday, making it just shy of five years old.  Not an incredibly old game, but again, game years are more like dog years.  Evil Genius is a take on the 60′s spy thrillers, mainly James Bond flicks.  You have an evil genius(you), a secret lair inside a mountain, a henchman or two, and a who boat load of traps and gizmo’s.  The whole point of the game is, as one would think, to be evil.

My first step at becoming an evil genius was browsing a few shady websites.  A few hours later, I had Evil Genius installed and ready to play.  The exact details of how are not important.  What is important is that from the very first splash screen, I knew that this game had stood the test of time.

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I’ll first state that this may be slightly heavily one-sided.  I first bought American McGee’s Alice back in Oct. of 2000, when it was released.  I was very excited about the concept of revisiting Wonder Land in a more depressed and macabre vision.  I enjoy the story, and am looking forward to the movie(that was originally due out in 2001, but is supposedly filming this week). (continue reading…)

Today in the Bargain Bin we’ve got Sim City Classic.

I first played Sim City on my Nintendo Entertainment System, having rented it from Erols Video.  While I enjoyed it, I wasn’t fond of moving around with the D-Pad on the controller.  Some time later I found a PC copy in the local Wal-Mart, titled Sim City Classic and included a level creator.  I played this immensely, and was the door opener for me and RTS games.  So why not, go back into my gaming history and relive an old classic?

Because CABAL refused to run it.

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