kibasnowpaw

Title: Today I bought 44 old PC games, and it reminded me why physical media still matters

Today I went out hunting for old PC games and came home with 44 games for 181 DKK — about $28 / €24 / £21. That works out to around 4.11 DKK per game — about $0.63 / €0.55 / £0.48 each.

Some were common filler, some were duplicates, some were kids’ games, some were sports games, and some were surprisingly good finds. The funny part is that two games that look like ordinary football-manager shelf junk jumped straight into the high-value part of my CLZ list: Championship Manager: Season 01/02 and Football Manager 2014. I paid 2 DKK — about $0.31 / €0.27 / £0.23 — for Championship Manager: Season 01/02, and 3 DKK — about $0.46 / €0.40 / £0.35 — for Football Manager 2014.

Other finds included The Settlers VI: Rise of an Empire – The Eastern Realm for 2 DKK — about $0.31 / €0.27 / £0.23 — Hitman: Codename 47 for 1 DKK — about $0.15 / €0.13 / £0.12 — Alpha Protocol for 1 DKK — about $0.15 / €0.13 / £0.12 — Age of Mythology for 10 DKK — about $1.54 / €1.34 / £1.16 — Far Cry 3 for 5 DKK — about $0.77 / €0.67 / £0.58 — Stronghold Legends for 9 DKK — about $1.39 / €1.20 / £1.04 — Silent Hunter 5 for 3 DKK — about $0.46 / €0.40 / £0.35 — Ship Simulator 2008 for 3 DKK — about $0.46 / €0.40 / £0.35 — several The Sims expansions around 7 DKK each — about $1.08 / €0.94 / £0.81 — and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King in the cardboard box for 8 DKK — about $1.23 / €1.07 / £0.93.

Some of them are not perfect. My Medal of Honor: Allied Assault copy is missing disc 1, so it is more of a donor copy for now. But for 2 DKK — about $0.31 / €0.27 / £0.23 — even that is useful if I later find a damaged copy with the missing disc.

My physical PC game collection is getting large now, and I am putting real work into it. This is no longer just a random pile of old discs. I use CLZ to track condition, completeness, prices, stores, notes, and cover art. I am also slowly replacing bad covers with cleaned-up 1:1 versions based on the original cover, not AI redesigns. The point is not to make fake new covers. The point is to restore what is already there: crop it correctly, clean it, straighten it, remove glare or dirt, and make it useful as proper database artwork.

This has become more than just collecting cheap old games for me.

I have been gaming for more than 25 years. I grew up with older games, discs, manuals, boxes, weird installers, patches, config files, broken controls, and games that sometimes needed work before they behaved. I am also a Linux user, and that changes how you look at games. On Linux you get used to solving problems yourself. Proton, Wine, old launchers, community patches, widescreen fixes, no-CD patches for games you legally own, offline installers, backups, old hardware quirks — that is part of the culture. You do not just accept that something is dead because a launcher, DRM system, or publisher says so.

That is why physical games and preservation matter more to me now than they did years ago.

The modern industry keeps pushing players toward a future where we do not really own anything. Games are tied to accounts, launchers, remote activation, online services, disappearing DLC, expiring licenses, server shutdowns, subscriptions, and legal grey areas. Even normal game features like user-created files, imported music, mods, custom content, or old multiplayer support can become a licensing or policy problem later. The game stops being a game and becomes a permission slip.

The whole Stop Killing Games discussion exists because of that problem. It is not about forcing publishers to support every game forever with new content and live-service updates. It is about the basic idea that if a game was sold to customers, it should not be deliberately made unplayable when the company decides it is done with it. The Ubisoft The Crew situation made that very clear. A paid game was shut down, it had no proper offline mode, and people who bought it were left with nothing useful. That is not preservation. That is a product being erased.

Then you get the subscription logic: “get comfortable not owning your games.” No. I do not want to get comfortable with that. I do not want my library to become a temporary access list controlled by companies that can change terms, remove content, ban accounts, close servers, delist titles, or decide that a game is no longer worth keeping alive.

This is why old physical PC games feel more honest to me, even when they are flawed.

A disc is not magic. Physical media does not solve everything. Some old PC games still need activation. Some keys are used. Some discs are scratched. Some games need patches that are not on the disc. Some multiplayer modes are gone. Some games are broken on modern systems. Some boxes are damaged, some manuals are missing, and some copies are only useful as donor copies. But at least there is something real there: the disc, the manual, the case, the cover, the version, the history. You can document it. You can preserve it. You can try to make it run. You can keep it outside a corporate account system.

As a Linux gamer, that matters. I do not collect only because of nostalgia. I collect because I do not trust the direction the industry is going.

Modern AAA gaming is full of monetization, launchers, DRM, live-service design, battle passes, accounts, online-only systems, subscriptions, and “you own a license, not a product” language. We have seen this kind of market rot before in different forms. Back in the old console crash era, the market was flooded with low-effort junk and the trust between players and the industry broke down. Today it is more advanced, more digital, more polished, and more legally protected, but the feeling is similar: too much product, too little respect, and too many companies trying to control the customer after the sale.

So yes, I am buying old PC games from thrift shops, flea markets, charity shops, and second-hand stores.

I am documenting them.
I am cleaning up the covers.
I am tracking condition and missing discs.
I am keeping physical copies where I can.
I am preserving the kind of games that might otherwise end up in the trash.
I am building a collection that still exists even if a publisher account disappears.

Maybe the gaming industry will not collapse in my lifetime. Maybe it will just keep getting worse slowly. Maybe laws will change. Maybe movements like Stop Killing Games will force publishers to provide offline modes, private server tools, or real end-of-life patches. I hope so.

But I am not going to sit around and wait for the industry to decide whether I am allowed to keep my games.

For me, physical PC collecting is not just nostalgia. It is a small personal answer to a bigger problem: games should be preserved, not erased. And if modern publishers want us to get comfortable not owning games, then I am going the other way.

I am getting more comfortable owning what I can.

fox i hate SecuROM why do Crysis Warhaed have that worst thing ever made and it did nothing to stop it i mean i can get a crack that ignore it so what was the point in the first place

Turning my Canon HF G70 into one of the most expensive webcams I will probably ever use

In my Dead Space stream, I started using my Canon HF G70 as a webcam.

Stream example:

And yes, this is one of those setups that is both stupid and practical at the same time.

I bought the Canon HF G70 about two years ago, around 2024, and I have barely used it. I honestly kind of regret buying it. Not because it is a useless camera, but because I never really liked the recording quality enough for the kind of videos I wanted to make with it.

So instead of letting an expensive camera sit there doing nothing, I decided to use it for something.

A webcam.

A very, very expensive webcam.

I paid around 6,666 DKK for it when I bought it, which is roughly €891.82 / $1,034.32. Today I have seen it around 7,490 DKK, which is roughly €1,002.06 / $1,162.18.

So yes. If we are going to be dramatic about it, this is probably one of the most expensive webcams a normal person can accidentally end up using.

But the annoying part is that, as a webcam, it actually makes sense.

The video quality is much better than a normal cheap webcam. It is a real camcorder, not a tiny plastic webcam pretending to be a camera. It has proper optics, better control, better image handling, and it simply looks more serious than a basic webcam.

One big reason the Canon HF G70 still makes sense for streaming is the autofocus.

It has face detection / face tracking autofocus, so when I am sitting in front of it, it should detect my face and keep focus on me instead of drifting to the background. That matters when gaming, because I am not sitting like a statue. I move, lean back, look at the screen, react to the game, and sometimes probably look like the Ishimura itself is draining my soul.

A normal cheap webcam can easily look soft, flat, noisy, or just generally bad. With the G70, the picture side is much more solid. It can keep my face in focus, and that means the camera can actually behave like a high-end webcam.

So the video side is not really the problem.

The problem is sound.

The Canon can send video over USB-C as a webcam/UVC device, and that part works. But in my setup, USB-C only gives me the video. I do not get usable microphone sound from the camera through USB.

So the picture works.

The sound does not.

Because of course it cannot just be simple.

This means I had to build a workaround, because I still wanted to use the camera’s built-in microphone somehow. The camera has a headphone output, so my test setup is:

Canon HF G70 built-in microphone
→ camera headphone output
→ 3.5 mm jack male-to-male cable
→ Yamaha AG06/AG03 mixer input
→ Yamaha mixer sends audio over USB
→ PC / OBS / stream

So instead of the camera sending audio through USB-C directly, I am taking the camera’s audio from the headphone jack and routing it into the Yamaha mixer. Then the mixer acts as the USB audio interface and sends the signal to the PC.

It is very “Linux gamer with too much old hardware and not enough sleep,” but technically it should work.

The video path is simple:

Canon HF G70
→ USB-C
→ PC

The audio path is the cursed one:

Canon HF G70 built-in mic
→ headphone out
→ 3.5 mm jack cable
→ Yamaha AG06/AG03
→ USB
→ PC

The Yamaha mixer is made for streaming and audio-interface work, so that part makes sense. It can take audio sources, mix them, and send them to the PC over USB. So the Canon handles the video, and the Yamaha handles the audio.

The main downside is obvious: the built-in camera mic is still a built-in camera mic.

It is not close to my mouth. It is about an arm’s length away from my face. So the sound is going to have some room tone. It will pick up more of the room, keyboard, chair, game audio leakage, and general background space than a real close microphone would.

That is not really the camera’s fault. That is just physics. The farther the microphone is from your mouth, the more room you hear. A mic close to your face will almost always sound better for voice than a mic sitting on a camera across the desk.

So yes, the sound will probably be more roomy.

But if it works, it is still better than nothing.

The real test will not be whether it works in a silent local recording. The real test is whether it still sounds usable when game audio is under it, especially in a game like Dead Space, where the sound design is full of vents, metal, monsters, whispers, machinery, alarms, and general psychological damage.

That is where bad microphone audio can drown fast.

I did some basic testing, and so far it seems usable. The question is how well it holds up during an actual stream when the game audio is running and I am talking over it.

If the sound is acceptable, I can live with it for now.

Because the other option is buying a new microphone, and I am not really in the mood to spend 500–800 DKK on that right now. That is around €66.89–€107.03 / $77.58–$124.13.

A small camera-mounted or clip-on mic could be around 149 DKK, roughly €19.93 / $23.12, and that might already improve the sound if placed better. A more serious mic around 700 DKK, roughly €93.65 / $108.61, would probably sound better, especially if it is more directional and has some kind of windscreen or filter.

But even then, distance still matters.

If the mic stays on the camera, it is still an arm’s length away. A better mic pointed at me would help, but it will not magically behave like a proper close microphone near my mouth.

So this is where I am right now:

I have an expensive Canon HF G70 that I regret buying for normal recording.
I do not like letting expensive hardware sit unused.
As a webcam, the video side actually makes sense.
It has proper camcorder image quality, face tracking / face detection autofocus, and should keep my face in focus while I stream.
USB-C gives me video, but not proper mic audio in my setup.
The workaround is routing the camera’s headphone output into the Yamaha mixer.
The Yamaha sends the audio to the PC over USB.
The audio may sound roomy, but it may be good enough for now.

And honestly, that is very much my kind of setup.

Not clean.
Not perfect.
Not “professional studio polished.”

Just a gamer trying to make the hardware he already owns actually do something useful.

If it was not around 4 in the morning and I did not have to be up again in a few hours, I probably would have tested it properly right now with local recordings, game sound, voice testing, OBS levels, and all the usual “just one more setting” nonsense.

But I also know myself.

That is exactly how you go from “I will just test this for 10 minutes” to “why is the sun coming up and why am I still adjusting audio filters?”

So the real test will probably be in the next episode.

If it works, then my Canon HF G70 becomes my absurdly expensive webcam.

If it does not, then I am back in the endless technical swamp of Linux streaming, audio routing, camera workarounds, mixer settings, and asking myself why I keep doing this to my own brain.

But for now, the plan is simple:

Use the Canon for video.
Use the face tracking so my face stays in focus.
Use the Yamaha mixer for audio.
Accept that the built-in mic may sound a little roomy.
Avoid buying another mic unless I really have to.
And keep streaming.

Because at the end of the day, the setup does not have to be perfect.

It just has to work well enough that I can play games, talk, and not sound like I am broadcasting from the bottom of the USG Ishimura’s ventilation system.

I started a new run of the original Dead Space from 2008, playing the physical disc version I picked up second-hand for 5 Danish kroner. That is roughly €0.67 or $0.78.

So yes, less than one euro for one of the best sci-fi horror games ever made.

I have completed Dead Space somewhere around 10 times already across different platforms and versions, so this is not really a blind run or a “can I beat it?” run. I already know this ship. I already know the vents. I already know the mistake of shooting the body instead of the limbs. I already know the Ishimura does not welcome anyone politely.

This run is mostly for two reasons:

First, I want to test that my physical disc copy actually works properly.

Second, I want to mark the game as completed in my CLZ collection. I am trying to actually go through the games I own instead of just letting them sit there forever as another unfinished pile in the backlog abyss.

And honestly, Dead Space is one of those games that deserves to be completed again.

The episode starts with Nicole’s message to Isaac. It is the perfect opening for this kind of game: personal, broken, and already full of dread. She is sorry, everything is falling apart, and Isaac is watching the message again and again because he clearly still cares about her. Then the Kellion arrives at the USG Ishimura, and right away the game starts building that heavy atmosphere.

The Ishimura is just sitting there dark.

No proper running lights.
No response.
No normal communications.
A massive planet-cracker ship that should have around a thousand people on board, but nobody is answering.

That is classic Dead Space. It does not need to scream at you immediately. It just shows you a dead ship and lets your brain do the rest.

Then the docking goes wrong. The guidance system is damaged, the Kellion gets dragged in, they hit the Ishimura, and suddenly this “routine repair job” is already turning into survival. The port booster is gone, comms are down, autopilot is gone, and the crew is stuck with a ship that is clearly not just having technical issues.

Once Isaac and the others get inside, the Ishimura feels wrong instantly.

The ship’s welcome system still talks like everything is normal, explaining the Ishimura’s history and its planet-cracking record, while the actual ship is empty, damaged, and clearly falling apart. That contrast is one of the things I love about the original game. The corporate voice keeps pretending everything is fine while the walls are basically breathing death.

Then the quarantine hits.

The first real Necromorph encounter still works even after all these years. You are not a soldier. Isaac is an engineer. The game does not hand you a normal shooter power fantasy. It teaches you very quickly that panic-shooting the body is a waste. You cut off limbs. You dismember them. That was the rule in 2008, and it is still the rule now.

The stream also had the usual slightly cursed subtitle/transcript moment where “shoot the limbs” became “shoot the nips,” which is very much not the correct tactical advice, but it did make me laugh. The actual rule is simple: cut them apart.

Most of this first episode is the opening Ishimura setup and the tram repair section. Isaac has to get the tram system working again while Hammond and Kendra argue, panic, and try to keep the mission from collapsing completely. The game sends you after the data board, introduces stasis, shows the vents as the enemy’s highway system, and keeps reminding you that the crew is gone but not really gone.

The tram repair section is still a good early-game design. It teaches movement, map use, stasis, limb damage, locked doors, elevators, maintenance rooms, and how the Ishimura works as a connected space. It is not just random corridors. It feels like a real industrial ship where every system is half-broken and everything is trying to kill you.

After the tram comes back online, the game gives you one of those classic horror moments: you think maybe things are stabilizing, then the Kellion gets destroyed. The shuttle was the way off the ship, and then it is gone. That changes the entire situation.

At that point, it is not “repair the ship and leave.”

It is “you are trapped here.”

Then the episode moves into the medical deck. The captain, Benjamin Mathius, is listed as deceased, and Isaac has to get his rig so Kendra can access the locked command systems. That section pushes the horror more into body horror and madness. Medical logs talk about the colony, the Marker, Unitology, hallucinations, depression, insomnia, violence, paranoia, and people transforming into something else.

That is where Dead Space becomes more than just “monsters in space.”

It is not only the Necromorphs. It is the entire collapse around them. Religion, science, corporate greed, mining, the Marker, the colony, the ship, the crew, the doctors, the captain, all of it gets tangled together. The Ishimura is not just infected physically. It is mentally and spiritually rotten by the time Isaac gets there.

The episode also goes through the thermite and shock pad objective, zero-g sections, kinesis, medical storage, and the morgue. You get more logs, more screams, more signs that Nicole was there, and more evidence that whatever happened started on the colony after they found the Marker.

By the end of the episode, Isaac gets the captain’s rig codes, the executive lockdown is lifted, and Hammond finds out the bigger problem: the ship’s engines are offline and the Ishimura’s orbit is decaying.

So the first part ends with the game basically saying:

Congratulations. You survived the introduction.

Now the ship itself is dying.

That is why I still respect Dead Space so much. Even after completing it many times, the pacing still works. The opening gives you the personal hook with Nicole, the mystery of the Ishimura, the first Necromorph attack, the repair objective, the loss of the escape shuttle, the medical horror, the Marker hints, and then the bigger ship-wide crisis.

It is a very clean first act.

And playing it from the disc version makes it feel even better to me. No modern live-service nonsense. No battle pass. No giant storefront shoved in my face. Just a physical game, installed and played because I own the copy and wanted to see if it still works.

That is the kind of old-school PC gaming I still care about.

A 5 kr disc.
A broken mining ship.
An engineer with bad luck.
A dead crew crawling through the vents.
And one more run through the Ishimura so I can mark the game completed in CLZ properly.

I already know what waits in the dark.

But the Ishimura still deserves the respect of being finished again.

Horse & Pony: Riding School — an educational horse game that Linux did not want to forgive

I streamed more of Horse & Pony: Riding School, and I think I am stopping here for now.

Streams:

This game is originally part of the Swedish Häst & Ponny series. The original title is Häst & Ponny: Ridskolan, released around 2007, developed by Upside Studios AB and published by PAN Vision. It is not really a normal arcade-style horse game. It is closer to an educational riding-school game made for people who want to learn about horses, horse care, and basic riding theory.

That is actually the strongest part of the game.

It feels less like “ride around and be cute” and more like a horse-theory test. In some parts it almost feels like taking a driving test, just with horses. The game asks you questions about horse care, riding, tack, stable work, and how things are supposed to be done. If you get too many answers wrong, you fail that section and have to try again. You also get horseshoes that work like lifelines/help points, so the game does try to support beginners instead of just punishing them.

If someone is new to horse riding, or young and dreaming about owning a horse, I can actually see the value in this game. It goes over a lot of basic information, and it even has a built-in wiki/encyclopedia-style section where you can read about horse-related topics and how things work.

As someone who is trained as a zookeeper and has taken care of horses before, I still got some of the questions wrong. But most of the time, when I slowed down and actually thought about it, I knew the answer.

One example is mounting a horse.

In real-world riding, you are normally taught to mount from the horse’s left side. That is the traditional “near side.” You put your left foot in the left stirrup and then swing your right leg over the horse. You also normally dismount to the left. Part of the reason is consistency: it is easier for both rider and horse when the same routine is used, especially for beginners and riding-school horses.

If you think about most riding videos, riding-school lessons, or basic horse-handling instruction, you usually see people mounting from the left. That is not random. It is standard beginner practice.

The mistake I made was answering too fast. I said you use the right leg when stepping onto the horse, but that is not correct in the normal beginner-school method. You use the left foot in the left stirrup, then swing the right leg over. I knew that. I just answered before I let my brain catch up.

And that is honestly what makes the game interesting. It does not just test whether you like horses. It tests whether you actually know the little practical details. Which side do you mount from? What do you do first? What equipment matters? How should you treat the horse? It is basic, but it is real basic knowledge.

So as an educational horse game, I respect it.

But as a Linux experience?

It is a mess.

I ran it through a Wine/Proton-style environment, and it was not stable for me. I do not know if the problem is missing old Windows components, DirectX behavior, old system calls, timing issues, file paths, codec problems, or just weak game code that Wine exposes more clearly. I cannot prove exactly what is wrong.

What I can say is that it does not behave well on my Linux setup.

Sometimes I had to go in and out of an area several times before a trigger worked. Sometimes the game crashed randomly. Sometimes I had to run around or jump around an area just to make something activate. Some horse interactions worked early on and then later stopped working properly. I tried messing with save files and other small fixes, but nothing really solved the core problem.

I got about 50% through the game, and that is where I am stopping.

Not because I think the game is worthless. Actually, I think the game has a decent idea behind it. But there is a point where Linux tinkering stops being fun and starts becoming mental damage.

I do not mind fixing old games. I use Linux. I am used to Wine, Proton, old DirectX issues, broken launchers, old installers, missing files, and weird compatibility problems. Sometimes getting an old game running is part of the fun.

But this one feels different.

This does not feel like a clean technical challenge. It feels like the game is fighting me every few minutes. It becomes less “let us preserve and play an old PC game” and more “how much frustration can one wolf take before he throws the saddle into the sun?”

So my conclusion is mixed.

As a horse-care/riding-school game: surprisingly good for beginners.
As a theory-test style educational game: actually interesting.
As someone with real animal-care background: it got enough real-world basics right that I had to respect it.
As a Linux/Wine game: unstable enough that I am done around halfway through.

If you are on Windows and you like horses, horse riding, or educational horse games, I could actually recommend giving it a try. Especially if you are a beginner or someone who wants a game that teaches more than just “press button to ride horse.”

But on Linux, at least in my case, it was rough.

I wanted to finish it, but sometimes you have to know when to stop before a broken old PC game turns into a full psychological endurance test.

So I am calling it here.

The horse won.

Linux did not.

My current physical PC game list — old games, Linux tinkering, and why this still matters to me

I have been rebuilding and cataloguing my old physical PC game collection, and this is basically my current game list as it stands right now.

The list is around 150 catalogued physical/boxed PC games, mostly old PC titles, with some Steam/Blizzard boxed releases mixed in. Most of them were found second-hand for very little money. A lot of them were in the 1–10 Danish kroner range, which is roughly up to about €1.34 / $1.55 per game. That is part of the whole point for me: old PC gaming does not have to be expensive if you are patient and willing to hunt through second-hand shops, charity shops, flea market shelves, and places like Kirppu here in Denmark.

This list still does not fully include the newer games a friend found for me, including Diablo II, Total War: Rome II, Crysis 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, I have the first one. Crysis 3 is a nice one because it was the only main Crysis game I was missing. The list already had Crysis, Crysis Warhead, and Crysis 2, so now that part of the series finally feels complete.

For me this is not just collecting plastic boxes.

I have played somewhere around 8,000 games in my lifetime for sure. Maybe more, but 8,000 is the number I can say without feeling like I am exaggerating. I have been gaming for most of my life, and when I look at this list, it is not just a shelf of old discs. It is basically a map of my own gaming history.

There is a lot of RTS history in the list: Age of Empires, Age of Empires III, Command & Conquer, Red Alert 2, Empire Earth, StarCraft, Warcraft III, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Sins of a Solar Empire, Caesar IV, Lords of EverQuest, and more.

Age of Empires 1 is still one of the big emotional ones for me. I grew up with that game. I can still hear the monks trying to convert units in my head almost as clearly as if I had the game running right now. AoE2 may be the more popular and better-supported game today, and I fully respect that, but AoE1 has that raw nostalgic feeling for me. It takes me back in a way very few games can.

Then there is Black & White and Black & White 2. Those are exactly the kind of games that make physical collecting feel important. Black & White is one of those strange old Lionhead-era games that does not really have a modern replacement. It was weird, ambitious, messy, creative, and very much from a time when PC games were allowed to be strange. I paid more for Black & White 1 than I normally would, because that game is just harder to get your hands on now.

The shooter side of the list is also very much my era: Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Call of Duty, World at War, Black Ops, Black Ops II, Far Cry, Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, Crysis, Crysis 2, Crysis Warhead, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Operation Flashpoint, STALKER, Soldier of Fortune, Sniper Elite, and others.

That old PC shooter period has a very different feeling from modern live-service shooters. A lot of those games were not trying to sell me a battle pass every five minutes. They were games first. Some were rough, some were broken, some were janky, but they usually felt like products made to be played, not engagement systems made to keep me logged in.

Counter-Strike is also in the collection, and that one is personal. I spent around 24 years with Counter-Strike in one form or another. From the old days to Source, CS:GO, and then CS2. I am not going to pretend CS2 did not damage that connection for me. CS:GO was already slipping, but CS2 was the point where the magic finally felt dead. Still, having physical Counter-Strike boxes means something. That is history, even if the modern direction pushed me away.

Dead Space is another one that stands out. Dead Space 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games. That kind of atmosphere, sound design, tension, and sci-fi horror is the sort of thing I still respect. Seeing Dead Space on the shelf feels right. That game earned its place.

There is also a whole simulator/management side: The Sims, The Sims 2, The Sims 3, The Sims 4, SimCity, SimCity Societies, SimLife, Zoo Tycoon 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002, Theme Park World, Transport Giant, Train Empire, Euro Truck Simulator 2, and more.

That is another thing I miss about older PC gaming. PC used to be full of these slower, stranger, more specific games. Not everything had to be cinematic. Not everything had to be a massive open-world map. Some games were just about building, managing, experimenting, failing, and learning the systems.

And then there are the oddities and lost things: No One Lives Forever 2, Battle Realms, Space Rangers 2, Rayman 3, LEGOLAND, Monsters Inc. Scare Island, Shrek 2, Horse & Pony: Riding School, and a lot of other titles that are not exactly modern Steam front-page material.

That is what makes the list fun to me.

It is not just “the best games ever made.”

It is a real old PC collection. Good games, broken games, weird games, childhood games, forgotten games, damaged discs, missing manuals, cracked cases, and titles that probably need ten different fixes to run properly today.

And as a Linux user, that part does not scare me.

Some of these games will need Wine, Proton, Lutris, Bottles, old DirectX files, dgVoodoo, patches, no-CD fixes, community fixes, virtual machines, or just patience. But honestly, that is part of the appeal. Getting an old game running on Linux sometimes feels more rewarding than installing a modern game that still wants three launchers, online accounts, telemetry, and a 100 GB patch before it even respects my time.

That is where I am mentally with gaming right now.

I am not done with gaming. I still love games. I have played too many games and spent too much of my life with this hobby to pretend otherwise.

But I am tired of modern gaming as an industry.

I am tired of games being treated like services instead of products. I am tired of launchers inside launchers. I am tired of online requirements in games that should not need them. I am tired of battle passes, FOMO, microtransactions, unfinished releases, server shutdowns, and digital “ownership” that often feels more like temporary permission.

Old physical PC games are not perfect. They can be scratched. They can be incomplete. Some DRM is dead. Some installers are annoying. Some games are a fight to run.

But the disc is there.

The box is there.

The manual is sometimes there.

The history is there.

And for me, that feels more real than a lot of modern gaming does now.

This collection is partly nostalgia, partly preservation, partly Linux tinkering, and partly just me going back to what made me love PC gaming in the first place.

Not everything old is better.

Not everything new is bad.

But when I look at this game list, I see something modern gaming often lacks now: personality, physical history, and the feeling that a game was allowed to simply be a game.

Title: I think I am getting tired of modern gaming — physical old PC games feel more real now

I think I am reaching the point where I am almost done with modern gaming.

Not gaming itself. I still love games. I have been gaming for most of my life, and my Steam account is a good example of that. I have over 2,300 games on Steam, hundreds of reviews, screenshots, videos, and years of activity behind it.

My Steam profile:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/KibaAngelSnowpaw/

Steam Replay also shows that I am still actively playing games. In 2024 I played 137 games, and in 2025 I played 157 games.

So this is not coming from someone who barely plays games and just wants to complain. This comes from someone who has spent a large part of his life supporting gaming, buying games, testing games, reviewing games, and trying to keep games working — including on Linux.

But the more I look at modern gaming, the more I feel like the industry has moved away from what made gaming special.

Today, many games feel less like products you own and more like temporary access controlled by accounts, launchers, DRM, servers, subscriptions, battle passes, microtransactions, online-only systems, and company decisions. You buy a game, but in practice you often only buy permission to access it for as long as everything around it keeps working.

That is one of the reasons I have started looking more seriously at old physical PC games again.

I recently bought 152 physical PC games for 980 Danish kroner. That is around 6.45 kroner per game, or roughly less than 1 euro per game.

For that price, I got a whole shelf of old PC games: shooters, strategy games, RPGs, racing games, older AAA releases, forgotten titles, weird experiments, and pieces of PC gaming history.

You cannot really get that kind of value from modern digital stores unless you are buying very cheap indie games or extreme sale items. And even then, the digital games are usually still tied to an account and a license.

Now, I am not saying physical PC games are perfect.

Some old disc games need patches.
Some need cracks or no-CD fixes because of dead DRM.
Some need compatibility work.
Some need Wine, Proton, Lutris, Bottles, virtual machines, dgVoodoo, old DirectX files, or community fixes.
Some are more work than just pressing “Install” on Steam.

But as a Linux user, that part honestly does not scare me much.

Linux gaming has always involved some amount of tinkering. Wine, Proton, Lutris, DXVK, VKD3D, community patches, old installers, registry fixes — that is part of the fun for some of us. Sometimes getting the game running is almost a game in itself.

And with old physical games, at least I feel like I am preserving something.

The discs are there.
The boxes are there.
The manuals are sometimes there.
The history is there.

They are not just icons in a launcher. They are not fully dependent on a modern storefront deciding what I am allowed to access. They are not asking me to buy a battle pass. They are not trying to sell me skins. They are not designed around FOMO or engagement metrics.

They are just games.

That is what I miss.

I miss when a game was mostly just a game. You bought it, installed it, played it, maybe patched it, maybe modded it, and that was it.

Modern gaming too often feels like the game is only one part of a larger business system built to keep you logged in, spending money, accepting less ownership, and tolerating more control.

Again, I am not saying all new games are bad.

There are still good modern games. There are still good developers. There are still indie developers who care more about the game than the business model.

But the mainstream industry has become exhausting.

Always-online requirements in games that should not need them.
Launchers inside launchers.
Games released unfinished.
Huge day-one patches.
Microtransactions in full-price games.
Battle passes everywhere.
Digital-only ownership that is not really ownership.
Server shutdowns that can kill games completely.
Companies changing terms after people already paid.

At some point, I think players need to stop rewarding this.

If we keep buying everything anyway, companies will keep pushing further. They know people complain, but they also know many people still buy the next big release.

That is why my old physical PC game shelf feels almost like a small protest.

152 games.
980 kroner total.
Around 6.45 kroner per game.

It is not just cheap. It is gaming history.

And right now, that shelf feels more real to me than a lot of modern gaming.

I am not done with gaming.

But I am getting more and more done with the modern gaming industry.

Old games, physical media, Linux tinkering, Wine, Proton, community fixes, preservation, and actual ownership feel a lot more interesting to me now than another full-price game filled with DRM, launchers, online requirements, and monetization systems.

Maybe I am just becoming old-school.

But honestly, old-school gaming feels healthier than where modern gaming is heading.

Picked up a Havit KB496L mechanical Bluetooth keyboard for 50 kr

Today I grabbed a used Havit KB496L mechanical keyboard for only 50 Danish kroner, which is roughly €6.7 / $7.8 USD. For that price, it was hard to say no.

The keyboard itself works, but getting it working properly on Linux was a bit of a pain.

I am running Kubuntu on my gaming PC, and at first Bluetooth looked like it was working. The service was running, BlueZ saw my Bluetooth controller, and bluetoothctl show reported:


But the keyboard did not show up in normal scanning.

The keyboard reacted to the pairing commands, though:


The keyboard started blinking, and my phone could see it, so I knew the keyboard itself was not dead.

The useful breakthrough was using btmgmt instead of only relying on bluetoothctl:


That finally showed the keyboard:


After that, I went back into bluetoothctl and paired it manually by address:


Once paired, Linux reported it correctly:


So yes, it works now.

The annoying part was that it did not clearly appear at first in the normal Bluetooth UI or basic bluetoothctl scan. It looked like the dongle or Linux Bluetooth was broken, but the lower-level scan showed the keyboard as a BR/EDR device with the name KB496L.

For 50 kr, I cannot really complain. It was cheap, mechanical, and now it works on Linux. But this was definitely one of those classic Linux moments where the hardware works, the system works, but you still have to dig through the stack manually before everything finally connects.

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I built my own Linux audiobook manager because I could not find anything that handled local audiobook collections the way I wanted.

Most audiobook software focuses on playback.

Mine focuses on managing the whole collection.

This is not just an audiobook player. It is a full audiobook library tool built for people who actually maintain their own files, folders, covers, metadata, series progress, and review tracking.

---

What it can do

• Audiobook gallery — browse authors and series visually with cover tiles.
• Metadata editor — edit MP3 tags directly from the app.
• Cover manager — use folder covers, artist covers, sidecar covers, and embedded artwork.
• File renamer — rename tracks cleanly based on metadata.
• Read / watched tracker — track what has already been read or listened to.
• Ownership tracker — see what you own and what is missing from a series.
• Goodreads tracker — track whether Goodreads has been updated.
• Audible review tracker — track whether an Audible review is done.
• Multi-folder library support — scan multiple audiobook folders into one combined gallery.
• Portable tracking — the newer local version can store tracking data inside MP3 files using custom ID3 fields.

---

Why I think this is different

There are audiobook players.

There are tag editors.

There are media servers.

There are file renaming tools.

But I wanted one Linux tool that could handle the actual work of managing an audiobook collection:

• Covers
• Metadata
• Clean filenames
• Series progress
• Read status
• Ownership status
• Goodreads status
• Audible review status
• Multiple library folders

That is why I made Audiobook Shelf Manager.

It is not made to be another media player. It is made to be a library-control tool.

---

Current status

This is still alpha software.

The GitHub version may not always be as new as the version I currently have installed on my own OS, but the core idea is already working.

For my own use, this is honestly the best audiobook manager I have found — because I had to build it myself.

---

Links

Project page:
https://kibasnowpaw.blog/2026/05/16/audiobook-shelf-manager/

GitHub:
https://github.com/kibasnowpaw/AudiobookShelfManager

---

If people are interested, check it out, give feedback, star it, open an issue, or just let me know.

If enough people care about it, I may put more time into cleaning it up and pushing the newer version properly.

Dungeon Keeper has always been one of my favorite games.

I just installed it again on Linux, this time using KeeperFX, and honestly it runs the way it should. That is always the best feeling with old games. Not just “it launches,” not “it works after five hacks and half the game is broken,” but actually playable.

Dungeon Keeper is still one of those games that feels different from almost anything else. It is not just a strategy game where you build rooms underground. You are managing a living dungeon full of creatures with bad attitudes. You dig out rooms, build your economy, attract monsters, train them, slap imps when they are being useless, defend against heroes, and slowly turn the map into your own evil little kingdom.

What makes it special for me is the personality. The game has that old Bullfrog humor and atmosphere that modern games almost never get right. It is dark, funny, weird, and still has that “evil manager simulator” feeling where half the game is strategy and the other half is just controlled chaos.

I played through the first four levels again and streamed it. It took me almost two hours, which says a lot about the gameplay. Dungeon Keeper is not really a game you rush through if you are actually playing it properly. You build, expand, train, defend, explore, and sometimes just sit there planning what part of the dungeon to improve next.

KeeperFX also adds a lot more than I expected. It is not just a compatibility fix. It has extra missions and improvements too, so this is probably the best way to play Dungeon Keeper today if you still love the original.

My plan is to go through the original campaign again, then maybe move into the extra missions after that. This is one of those games I do not just want installed for nostalgia. I actually want to complete it again.

First 4 levels live stream, about 2 hours:

Getting there slowly, one game at a time.

This is my little Wine/Lutris shelf right now, and everything you see here works.

Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island from disk works.
Conflict: Desert Storm 2 from disk works.
Delta Force: Black Hawk Down from disk works.
Dungeon Keeper Gold from GOG works, and I also installed KeeperFX.
Of Orcs and Men from disk works.
StarCraft from disk works.
StarCraft with cnc-ddraw works.
Epic Games Store works in Wine.
TextAloud 3 works in Wine.
Winamp works in Wine.

I have even live streamed most of them for about an hour each just to prove they are not only launching, but actually playable. The only one I have not streamed this time around is Dungeon Keeper, because I just installed it again, but I do have an old stream from the last time I played it.

It has not all been plug and play. Some of the old games have needed the usual Linux/Wine fighting: DXVK off, MangoHud off, old resolution handling, Wine virtual desktop, sound fixes, old installers, broken online registration junk, dead services, and all the other classic old PC game nonsense. But that is also kind of the fun part for me. I grew up with PC games on disk, and I like getting them running again instead of just letting them sit on a shelf doing nothing.

My plan is to slowly build up a proper old-game setup on Linux with as many of the games I played through the years as I can get working. I also want to install all the physical disk games I still own. If I fall over more old PC games at a price I actually want to pay, I may pick them up too.

I am not trying to make the cleanest or most modern setup. I am trying to rebuild my own old PC gaming history, but running on Linux.

One game at a time.

Old PC game installer tries to speedrun contract law

So I was installing Code of Honor 2 in Wine, and the installer does something I have to laugh at.

On the first setup screen there is an option called:

Express Install

Sounds normal enough, right? Just a quick install option.

But under it, the installer says:

Choosing the “Express install” mode is equivalent to accepting the license.

Click to expand...

And the best part?

It is ticked by default.

So according to this installer, I did not click “I accept the license agreement.” I did not get a proper license screen. I did not actively agree to anything. The installer just put a default tick in a box called “Express Install” and then said, “Congratulations, you agreed.”

That is not consent. That is the installer doing legal parkour.

There is a reason most companies use wording like:

I accept the terms of the license agreement

Click to expand...

or make you press an actual I Agree button.

They do that because it is much cleaner legally. The user can see that they are accepting a license, and the company can later say, “You clicked accept.” It is not hidden inside some default install option that most people would understand as “install this faster.”

If companies could safely get away with “we pre-ticked a setup option, therefore you accepted the contract,” far more of them would do it. They love removing friction when it benefits them.

But this one is just funny.

Express Install: installs the game faster.
Also Express Install: apparently makes me sign a legal agreement by existing near the Next button.

Old PC gaming really had everything:
bad DRM, weird installers, questionable DirectX errors, and now legally ambitious checkboxes.

My first gameplay test had sound problems, because for some reason when I started streaming with OBS, the sound would mess up and just disappear.

So I finally set up my dedicated streaming PC, something I had not gotten around to doing before. That ended up taking about 4 hours, mostly because making a bootable Windows 10 USB from Linux turned into way more pain than it should have been. Ventoy gave me problems, the ISO/USB setup caused issues, and I ended up having to do it the manual way with the Windows ISO, FAT32, and split install files before it would finally boot and install.

But I got Windows 10 installed, got the NVIDIA driver working, got the AVerMedia 4K PCIe capture card working, and got OBS running on the streaming PC.

I also had to clone the screen instead of using passthrough through the capture card. I think that is part of why things got a little messy, or maybe it is because I could only clone the screen properly on X11, at least with the method I know. For some reason X11 also gives me problems with fullscreen in some games. Some games just do not want to behave properly in fullscreen, and that is not something I want to fight with right now.

So for now I am just playing in windowed mode and letting the streaming PC handle OBS. It was annoying to set up, but it works.

Old multi-disc Windows games in Wine can still be a pain.

I was installing Conflict: Desert Storm II through Lutris/Wine from the original physical CDs. Disc 1 installed fine, but when the installer asked for Disc 2, Wine seemed to keep the optical drive busy. Because of that, Linux could not properly unmount/remount the drive in a way the installer would accept.

The system could see Disc 2, but the installer still refused to continue. The mount path also got messy, where it still looked like the old Disc 1 mount even though the label showed Disc 2.

Instead of fighting Wine and the physical CD drive, I worked around it by making an ISO of Disc 2 and mounting that manually. That way Wine could keep using what it thought was the same CD drive, but the content was actually Disc 2.

Basically:

1. Install from Disc 1.
2. When the installer asks for Disc 2, create/mount a Disc 2 ISO.
3. Point Wine/Lutris at the mounted ISO path.
4. Continue the installer.

It is one of those classic Linux/Wine moments where the game itself is not really the problem — the old installer and disc swapping are.

Still, I got around it. Physical old PC games can be annoying under Wine, but with Lutris, ISO mounting, and a bit of manual work, they can still be made to run.

Running old programs through Lutris is honestly one of the reasons I still keep messing with Linux.
Some of my older programs still work fine, but only if I go back far enough in Wine.

That’s also why I’m using Wine 8 in Lutris for some of them.
A lot of the newer Wine setups moving over to WOW64 is not something I’m a fan of at all. I hate WOW64. For newer stuff it may be fine, but for old programs that already barely work, it just becomes one more thing that can break them.

So yeah, while others move forward, I’m over here dragging myself back to Wine 8 just to keep my old programs alive and running the way I want.

At the moment I’ve got stuff like TextAloud 3, Winamp, Epic Games Store, and Of Orcs and Men sitting in Lutris, and honestly it feels a bit stupid and a bit beautiful at the same time.
If it works, it works.

Sometimes Linux is not about using the newest thing.
Sometimes it’s about finding the one old setup that still does the job and refusing to let it die.

this is why i use a phone as a camera

When i was on vacation in my own contra i fall over Of Orcs and Men on original Disk never been a fan of games like this really but i don't mind try new kind of games so i installed it on wine and it worked.

Small update on my Audiobook Shelf Manager project.

I made some big changes to the app and it is finally starting to work the way I wanted.

What changed:

• Moved the old “Set Library Root” action out of the main toolbar
• Added a real Settings menu
• Built a proper Settings window with left-side navigation, kind of like a game settings screen
• Added support for multiple library folders instead of only one
• The app now remembers those folders when I open it again
• Multiple folders are scanned into one combined gallery
• Added better support for duplicate artist names across different roots
• Artist grouping now works better for albums with multiple authors/artists
• Albums can show under more than one artist when the metadata has multiple names
• Grouping now prefers Album Artist, then falls back to Artist, then folder names if tags are missing

This was a pretty big quality-of-life upgrade for me because I had been jumping back and forth between folders before. Now I can keep things like my homemade audiobooks and other audiobook folders together in one place.

I’m running it as a Flatpak on Ubuntu 26.04 with KDE X11, and it’s feeling a lot closer to how I wanted the app to behave from the start.

Still more I want to improve, but this was a huge step forward.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a small update on my app, Audiobook Shelf Manager.

This is still a work-in-progress audiobook metadata app, but I made some nice improvements to the UI.

The biggest update is the artist view. I changed the artist cards so they now show series completed out of total series directly on the card in a cleaner way. Before, the artist tiles felt more cluttered and repeated information. Now the layout is tighter, easier to read, and fits the style of the rest of the app much better.

I also updated the app name to Audiobook Shelf Manager, which reflects what the app does a lot better.

Right now the app is focused on:

• editing audiobook metadata
• cover/gallery handling
• tracking progress
• organizing audiobook libraries better

Tracking is still going to improve over time, but the UI is starting to come together in a way I am much happier with.

Here is what I worked on in this update:

• renamed the app to Audiobook Shelf Manager
• improved the artist card layout
• added a cleaner series completed X/Y display on artist cards
• tightened spacing so the artist view looks less loose and more polished
• kept the album/series cards working the way I wanted while only tightening the artist UI

It is still under development, but it is getting closer to the look and feel I wanted.

Feedback is welcome.
Github

What I am sick of is not change by itself. It is things being forced before they are ready for the people still using what already worked.

Wine is the best example I have right now. Wine 10 introduced the new WoW64 architecture as experimental, and Wine 11 moved further in that direction by saying pure WINEARCH=win32 prefixes are deprecated and not supported in the new WoW64 mode. On top of that, the separate wine64 loader is gone in favor of one wine loader. That may look clean on paper, but for older 32-bit software and older install chains it is not a harmless change. It breaks assumptions people have been relying on for years.

I ran straight into that with TextAloud and an old NextUp/Acapela voice. My old working setup only worked because I had already built a real 32-bit prefix the old way. That was not some random lucky install. It took time to get right, and once it worked, it worked because it was a proper 32-bit environment. With the newer WoW64 path, I could still get TextAloud itself to launch, but the setup no longer behaved the same. I had to force-install speechsdk, and even then it only half-worked. The built-in voices showed up, but my own installed voice did not register properly, so the program could not use it the way it did before. That is not a real replacement. That is a partial workaround that breaks exactly where it matters.

And what makes it worse is the mixed messaging. Winetricks will throw warnings like “You are using a 64-bit WINEPREFIX. Note that many verbs only install 32-bit versions of packages,” and there is a current issue specifically about speechsdk still insisting on a WIN32 prefix. That is exactly the sort of thing that tells users the transition is not finished, no matter how much people want to pretend it is. If the new path was actually ready, it would not be tripping over old 32-bit speech components and old verbs like this.

I tried more than just one thing. I tested the newer WoW64 route. I forced speechsdk. I compared the registry from the old working prefix with the new one. I copied over the parts that were obviously missing. I manually added Acapela-related registry entries. I got far enough that TextAloud opened and the default Microsoft voices appeared, but the custom voice still would not come through properly. In the end, the only thing that actually worked for me was launching the app through Lutris with Wine-GE 8-26 x86_64. That is the only path I found that got me back to something usable. Everything else on the new forced path either failed outright or only half-worked.

That is why I hate this kind of forced transition. I do not care how nice it sounds in release notes if the real effect is that older working setups get turned into debugging projects. If something worked before, and the replacement still cannot cover the same ground, then it is being pushed too early. That is not “fear of change.” That is people being told to accept regressions because the project wants to move on.

And it is not just Wine. KDE has already said Plasma 6.8 will be Wayland-only, with the Plasma X11 session supported only into early 2027 through the Plasma 6.7 line. So the same pattern is showing up there too: the old path is being shut down, and users are expected to move whether their use case is fully covered or not.

So my view is simple. If developers are going to force people off an old path, the new path needs to be ready first. Not “good enough for most users.” Not “fine unless you use older 32-bit software, old voices, old speech components, or old workflows.” Ready. If it is not ready, then they should not force it yet. And if enough real use cases break, then people should keep filing bugs, keep making noise, and keep pushing back until the replacement actually does the job.

Wine Bug Report