Dungeon Keeper Addiction
Over ten years ago, it would seem (am I that old?), I bought a game for my PC called "Dungeon Keeper." It was one of the very few games I ever played until the end. The sequel, "Dungeon Keeper 2," was even better. Sadly, I loaned the game CD to a friend who then kind of kept it and then denied he had it. You can't play the game without the CD. Then my computers got upgraded, and so for about 7 years, I went without this game.
Dungeon Keeper is actually one of the reasons I stopped playing computer games. It was the last game I ever had problems keeping track of time with. It was a game that kept me up WAY past normal hours, and I'd be tired at work the next morning. I dreamt about the game. I saw a lot of my world in small little squares. I rethought levels and where to put whatever minions I had so that they wouldn't be wiped out by Lord Darien (?) and his goody-two-shoes people. There's such a perfect balance of game play, challenges, and satisfaction that was like a dark comedic fantasy version of Sim City (a game also got addicted to, back in the day). The very reason I like automating computers with scripts and programs
Well, that friend got divorced, and eventually, the CD turned up in his things he gave his wife, who returned the game to me, remembering how displeased I was at losing it. I had the CD in a drawer for a while, and while cleaning out my den, I found it along with my Dungeon Keeper Gold edition of the game. The Dungeon keeper Gold (various one with upgrades) worked in a Windows XP VM (VirtualBox) on my Linux box, but the 3d was bad due to the fact the Direct3D acceleration could not understand my video card, and no wonder because... well, my video card dates to 2005, and the game was long abandoned by EA support in 2001 or something. But the non 3D version worked... sort of. The mouse acceleration was completely overcompensating, so it was like trying to pick up grains of rice with Teflon chopsticks. It also was WICKED fast, which is kind of cool, but alters the pace of the game. But apart from that, it actually worked and was definitely playable, sound and all. The soundtrack for DK1 is still cool. One track called "Industrial Dungeon," is like a goth version of the "factory music" in those old Warner Brother Cartoons.
I tried to load DK1 on my new laptop (a gift from my wife's work which went out of business), and it just kept crashing. Funny how it worked on an Windows XP VM on a Linux box, but not real Windows XP. So I loaded Dungeon Keeper 2 and hoped for the best. It's rough at first, which I expected because XP wasn't out when this stopped being supported. It crashes a lot while loading, but trying repeatedly eventually works. Once you get to the main screen, it works perfectly (so far). I played two of the first levels, and had a lot of fun. It's SO funny how I remember game strategy right away. And I was up until 1am before I went, "I have to go to work in 5 hours! Dammit, Dungeon Keeper!"
In addition to that, I had the foresight back in 2002 to save all the patches and "Bonus Levels" the EA/Bullfrog support site had, along with notes on installation of them. That site is long dead, but all the extras are still on a folder on my shared system. Yay for me!