reliving the games, tech and culture of the Win9X era

The Victs rig came equipped with a potent 100 Mhz Pentium processor and future-proof ASUS Socket 7 motherboard but little else to support our high-end 1995 gaming and multimedia needs. In this article I'm going to explain the reasoning behind my component selection for graphics and sound which will...

Our first special episode is a lavish tribute to the beloved February '95 release, Star Wars: Dark Forces! With the assistance of our guest host, Connor, we cover all aspects of LucasArts' ground-breaking first-person shooter from its technical and gameplay innovations to its design, story and legac...

Last time on this ol' Pentium, I was puzzling over how I could be getting a 'CMOS battery failure' message on POST when no battery was visible on the motherboard. A quick trip to VOGONs yielded an answer, though not a particularly heartening one.

Turns out, intel's chipsets prior to the 430TX di...

Our second episode rings in 1995 with a discussion of how PC game developers and publishers responded to the the '94 senate hearing on objectionable game content before diving into impressions of January's PC Gamer coverdisc demos. Transport Tycoon, Warcraft and Lords of the Realm are highlights, bu...

One of my motivations for producing the Smug and Play podcast is to replay the Win9X era's greatest games on period-correct hardware. Having chosen December 1994, when PC Gamer Magazine debuted the their monthly demo CD-ROMs, as our starting point, I wanted to put together a machine that could've be...