Have a win 7 mouseless laptop I’d like to put a game on and play for funs. Typically my go to game for olden computers is Heroes of Might and Magic 3 or maybe Civ 4. Any recommendations?

Diablo2, WC3, and RTSs would be tricky because lack of mouse and I’d prefer no rush to my actions so I can simultaneously be coding and just do minibreaks taking a turn or part of a turn here and there

    • Redkey@programming.dev
      112·
      8 months ago

      Back in the olden days, when we used kerosene-powered computers and it took a three day round trip to get IP packets via the local stagecoach mail delivery, we still had games even though Steam didn’t exist yet. :b

      We used to transfer software on these things called disks. Some of them were magnetic, and some of them used lasers (you could tell them apart because for the laser ones it was usually spelled “disc” with a “c”).

      Anyway, those dis(k/c)s mostly still work, and we still have working drives that can read them, and because the brilliant idea of making software contact the publisher to ask if it was OK to run had only just been invented, we can generally still play games from the period that way. Some people kept their old games, but others sell them secondhand, which I believe the publishers still haven’t managed to lobby successfully to be made illegal, unless I missed a news report.

      Even if you can’t get the original physical media for a game, sites like GOG sell legal digital downloads of many old games, which are almost always just the actual old software wrapped in a compatibility layer of some kind that is easy to remove, so you can usually get the games running natively on period hardware/software. Finally, some nicer developers and publishers have officially declared some of their old games as free for everyone to play.

      There are still legal options for playing old games on old systems.

    • ISOmorph@feddit.de
      61·
      8 months ago

      Have you really never heard of GOG? It’s an awesome platform. They allow you to actually buy games so you can 100% own them drm free. No Steam or whatever other game launcher is needed. Also they specialize in older games, so it’s perfect for this use case.

        • ISOmorph@feddit.de
          51·
          8 months ago

          Well, games used to and still run on MS DOS, so Win 7 really isn’t an issue.

            • ISOmorph@feddit.de
              21·
              8 months ago

              Actually the opposite is true. I don’t know of a single game where the devs patched out something so it stops working on the OS it released on.

                • ISOmorph@feddit.de
                  11·
                  8 months ago

                  I get the feeling you’re just being contrarian on purpose now. Most, if not all games released on win 7 will still run on win 7 now, and will continue doing so forever, period. That’s exactly why OP is asking for cool games from that era.