kibasnowpaw

I have been building an automatic disc launcher for my GOG offline installers

I recently came across a video showing how to put GOG offline installers onto physical discs. I liked the idea, but I wanted to make something more complete, reusable and mostly automatic on Linux.

Over the last couple of days, I have therefore been building my own game-disc launcher and ISO builder on Ubuntu.

The main launcher is a Windows .exe compiled with NSIS on Linux. It can run normally on Windows or through Wine on Linux. The ISO is created with xorriso, so the entire building process is performed on Ubuntu.

The system now scans the files inside my project folder and automatically builds the launcher based on what it finds.

What it currently does

• Detects the game title from the GOG Windows installer.
• Falls back to creating a readable title from the installer filename.
• Automatically uses a smaller font and two lines for long game titles.
• Detects Windows .exe installers.
• Detects Linux .sh installers.
• Shows separate Windows and Linux installer buttons when both are available.
• Uses the game cover as artwork in the launcher.
• Analyses the cover and automatically creates a matching colour scheme.
• Detects multiple PDF manuals.
• Detects ZIP files, normal files and folders placed in the Extras folder.
• Provides a bonus-content menu where files can be copied to the computer.
• Copies ZIP archives without extracting or modifying them.
• Automatically creates autorun.inf.
• Names the ISO after the detected game.
• Gives the mounted disc a matching volume label.
• Creates a native Start_Linux.sh launcher when a Linux installer is included.

Reusable folder structure


After replacing the installer, cover, manuals and extras, I only need to run one command:


The script then:

1. Detects the game title.
2. Finds the Windows and Linux installers.
3. Analyses the cover colours.
4. Compiles the customised NSIS launcher.
5. Creates the Linux launcher when needed.
6. Updates the AutoRun information.
7. Creates an ISO named after the game.
8. Sets a matching disc-volume label.

Games I have tested so far

• Empire Earth Gold Edition
• Soldier of Fortune: Platinum Edition
• Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix – Gold Edition
• Mina the Hollower

Each launcher gets its own colour scheme based on the cover instead of using the same fixed design for every game.

For example, the Soldier of Fortune launcher received dark brown and beige colours from its cover, while Mina the Hollower received a dark red theme.

Windows and Linux installers on the same disc

When both installer versions are present, the launcher displays:


The Windows installer can be launched directly from the NSIS menu.

The Linux side required a slightly different solution. The menu itself is a Windows program running through Wine, so it cannot reliably launch a native Linux shell script.

When the Linux button is selected, the launcher explains that the user should close the Wine menu, open the mounted disc in Linux and run:


Using bash also works when the optical disc has been mounted with the noexec option.

The Linux GOG installer can then read its data directly from the disc and install the game to a writable location on the hard drive.

Bonus content system

The launcher automatically counts the manuals and extra items found on the disc.

The bonus-content page lists all detected items and allows the user to:

• Copy one selected item.
• Copy every manual and extra.
• Choose a destination folder.
• Copy folders recursively.
• Keep ZIP files in their original form.

By default, the files are copied somewhere similar to:


I decided not to install extras directly into the game directory because mods, patches, manuals and soundtracks often require different locations.

Physical-disc test

I tested the full process by creating and burning a 662 MB Empire Earth ISO onto a CD-R with my ASUS BW-16D1H-U Blu-ray drive.

The disc was written with:


I then verified the burned disc against the ISO:


The verification completed successfully. The custom menu ran directly from the disc, and the original GOG installer launched and installed normally.

Purpose of the project

This is mainly a personal archival project for my legally purchased GOG games.

I am not modifying or redistributing the GOG installers. The original installer files and matching BIN files remain unchanged. My custom launcher only detects and starts them.

It started as a basic menu with one installation button, but it has gradually developed into an automatic system for creating customised physical GOG game discs entirely on Linux.

I Saw a Video About Making GOG Game Discs — So I Built My Own Better Version on Linux

I recently came across a video showing how to create a custom installer for GOG games and burn it to a disc. My first thought was: I can make something better than that on Linux.

After around 30 minutes of experimenting with NSIS, I had the basic design working and looking the way I wanted.

The result is a custom disc menu that includes:

• A separate design, cover image, title and description for each game.
• A button that launches the original game installer.
• Automatic detection of manuals and other bonus content.
• A bonus-content menu where individual files can be selected and copied.
• A “Copy All” option for copying everything at once.
• ZIP files are copied without being extracted.
• A default destination folder based on the game title.
• A counter showing how many manuals and extra items were found.

The main part I wanted was automation. I can replace the game installer, cover image, manuals and bonus files, then rebuild the disc menu without rewriting the program. It reads the new files and builds the menu around whatever is present.

That means every game disc can have its own appearance and content, while the underlying code remains unchanged. I only need to prepare the folder for the game and run the build process.

The game installation itself still uses the original installer, including its normal language-selection window. My menu simply acts as a cleaner front end for installing the game and accessing the archived extras.

This is mainly for my personal physical PC game archive. I like having the installer, manuals and bonus files together on a properly organised disc instead of just storing an installer file in a random folder.

---

Yesterday, 15 July 2026, I visited a second-hand shop called Loppen. I expected to look through a few shelves, perhaps find one or two interesting games, and then go home.

Instead, I walked out carrying 54 physical PC games.

The entire haul cost me approximately 440 Danish kroner.

That is roughly:

• €59 EUR
• £50 GBP
• $67 USD

That works out at only around 8.15 DKK per game, or approximately:

• €1.09 per game
• £0.93 per game
• $1.25 per game

My back was not especially pleased with this decision, but the old gamer inside me certainly was.

---

I Did Not Simply Buy Everything

Loppen had many more games than the ones I brought home. I could probably have filled several more bags, but I am extremely selective when buying second-hand games.

Cheap does not automatically mean worth owning.

I have been gaming since the 1980s and, by my own count, have played around 8,000 games. After that many years, I have learned that there is no reason to fill my shelves with games I do not care about merely because they cost almost nothing.

My normal limit is 10 DKK per game. Most of this haul cost either 5, 8 or 10 DKK per title.

I generally refuse to go above 10 DKK unless it is something difficult to find or a game I specifically want.

One exception in this haul was The Sims 2: University at 25 DKK.

I would rather leave twenty games behind than buy twenty games that mean nothing to me.

---

The Strategy, RPG and War-Game Pile

This part of the haul alone felt like opening a time capsule from several different periods of PC gaming:

• Anno 1602: Creation of a New World
• Atlantis III
• Battlefield 1942
• Battlefield 2
• Blitzkrieg Collection
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
• Codename: Panzers – Phase Two
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
• Emperor: Battle for Dune
• Forgotten Realms: Neverwinter Nights – Shadow of Undrentide
• Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark
• Railroad Tycoon 3
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
• Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific
• Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
• Warhammer: Mark of Chaos

There are some proper pieces of PC gaming history in that group.

Seeing Morrowind, Warcraft III, Battlefield 1942, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Emperor: Battle for Dune sitting together in a second-hand shop is the kind of thing that makes an old PC gamer stop and begin digging through every single case.

These games came from a time when PC releases regularly arrived in large boxes or DVD cases, often with manuals, reference cards, multiple discs and enough installation problems to turn the player into an unpaid computer technician.

---

Simulators, Sport and Management Games

The management and simulation side of the pile included:

• Circus Empire
• Fly! II
• Championship Manager: Season 03/04
• Football Manager 2010
• Football Manager 2012
• Madden NFL 07
• Pro Cycling Manager 2006
• SimCity
• SimFarm
• Spore: Galactic Adventures
• Total Club Manager 2004
• Zoo Park Tycoon

This is a wonderfully strange section of the collection.

One moment you are operating a farm. The next you are managing a football club, running a circus, controlling a zoo, flying an aircraft or attempting to build an entire city without bankrupting it.

Old PC gaming was never afraid of extremely specific ideas.

Today, many large publishers chase the same fashionable genres. Older PC shelves could contain a submarine simulator, a cycling-management game, a city builder, a flight simulator and a collection of 25,000 Sudoku puzzles sitting directly beside one another.

That variety is one of the things I miss.

---

The Maxis and Sims Avalanche

A very large part of this haul was devoted to Maxis and The Sims:

• The Sims: Livin’ Large
• The Sims: House Party
• The Sims: Unleashed
• The Sims 2
• The Sims 2: Bon Voyage
• The Sims 2: Celebration! Stuff
• The Sims 2: Family Fun Stuff
• The Sims 2: Nightlife
• The Sims 2: Open for Business
• The Sims 2: Seasons
• The Sims 2: University
• The Sims 3: En introduktion

Together with SimCity, SimFarm and Spore: Galactic Adventures, this became a substantial Maxis-related haul.

There is something slightly absurd about returning home with this many Sims expansions from one second-hand shopping trip.

I did not plan to begin excavating an entire section of Maxis history, but apparently that was what the shelves had waiting for me.

Physical Sims releases are also a good example of why cataloguing matters. There are base games, large expansions, smaller Stuff packs, different regional editions and cases that may contain the wrong disc.

A box on a shelf can look complete until you open it and discover that half of the actual game is missing.

---

Disney, Hugo, Racing and the Wonderfully Strange Leftovers

The remaining games were an equally mixed collection:

• Fætter Kanin til Premiere
• 25,000 Sudoku Puzzles
• Agent Hugo
• Agent Hugo: Roborumblen
• Asterix: The Gallic War
• Disney’s Lilo & Stitch: Trouble in Paradise
• Disney’s Meet the Robinsons
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
• WALL-E

That is the beauty of buying old PC games second-hand.

A serious strategy game can be sitting beside a Disney platformer, a racing game, a Danish children’s title and enough Sudoku puzzles to keep someone occupied until the end of civilisation.

Disney’s Meet the Robinsons was even catalogued as being in mint condition, despite costing only 5 DKK.

---

The Less Glamorous Part of Collecting

A large haul always looks impressive when everything is stacked together for a photograph.

The reality is less glamorous.

It means dust, fingerprints, scratched discs, cracked cases, water damage, missing manuals and occasionally discovering that somebody has placed the wrong game inside the box.

A few of these games already have problems:

• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is missing a disc.
• Football Manager 2012 is also missing a disc.
• Emperor: Battle for Dune has damage to disc one.
• The Sims 2: Celebration! Stuff has water damage.
• WALL-E has severe scratches.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is a loose copy.
• The base version of The Sims 2 is also a loose copy.

That is why I am still cleaning, checking and cataloguing everything.

The lists I have completed currently contain 49 entries, although I bought 54 games in total. The remaining games have not yet made it through the cleaning and cataloguing process.

Every disc must be examined.

Every case must be opened.

Every multi-disc game must be checked to make sure all the discs are present and actually belong to that release.

---

My New Collection Categories

I have also started separating problematic games from my normal collection.

Account Lock

This category is for physical games that still require an online account, launcher or activation service.

They may come on a disc, but the disc does not necessarily make the game independent.

Genkøb — Buy Again

This category is for copies that are missing an essential disc or are damaged badly enough that I eventually need to replace them with another copy.

Af med — Get Rid Of

This category is for duplicate or incomplete copies I no longer need after using parts from them to create one complete set.

This prevents a damaged, incomplete or account-dependent release from silently sitting among the fully functional games as though everything is fine.

---

Then Comes the Linux Battle

After everything has been cleaned and organised, the next question is how many of these old games can still be made to run on Linux.

Modern Linux gaming discussions normally concentrate on Steam and Proton.

Physical PC games are a different type of challenge.

They may involve:

• Old 32-bit installers
• Legacy DirectX components
• Disc-based copy protection
• Obsolete launchers
• Missing video and audio codecs
• Old configuration programs
• Installers designed for versions of Windows that disappeared many years ago

Some will probably work through Wine or Lutris with very little effort.

Others will fight me every step of the way.

That fight is part of the attraction.

Installing an old retail PC game on a modern Linux system can become a form of digital archaeology.

You are not merely pressing an install button.

You are examining what the installer expects, what files it needs, what protection system it uses and which parts of its original software environment have vanished.

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Fifty-Four Pieces of PC Gaming History

Not every game in this haul is rare.

Not every copy is complete.

Not every title will remain permanently in my collection.

But for 440 DKK, I brought home 54 physical pieces of PC gaming history.

Some are classics.

Some are strange budget releases.

Some are children’s games.

Some are simulations that only the old PC market would have dared to publish.

Some require repairs, replacement discs or a great deal of patience.

That is what collecting means to me.

It is not about buying everything in sight.

It is about digging through hundreds of ordinary cases until something makes you stop.

It is about preserving the games that deserve a place, documenting exactly what is inside each box and discovering whether software from twenty or thirty years ago can still be persuaded to live again on a modern Linux machine.

i just got my hand on this game on disk.

I was looking at an old page from Privat Computer PC, 20th year, issue 7, June 30th 2004, and it reminded me of something I think a lot of people forget when they talk about Linux today.


Many people say Linux is difficult because you sometimes have to install drivers, understand your hardware, use the terminal, fix permissions, read error messages, or search for the right solution. But for those of us who grew up with computers through the MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP era, that kind of struggle was not unusual at all. That was just normal PC life.


Back then, Windows was not this polished thing where everything just worked. You could install Windows and still have no sound, no proper graphics driver, no network, no modem, no printer, and sometimes not even the correct chipset drivers. Device Manager could be full of yellow question marks, and you had to figure out what the machine actually had inside it before you could even begin to fix it.


One of the most ridiculous problems was when you needed to go online to download a driver, but the driver you needed was for the modem or network card. So Windows was basically telling you to use the internet to get the driver that would allow you to use the internet. I have been there many times. You had to use another computer, find the driver, save it to a floppy disk, burn it to a CD, put it on a USB stick, or later download it on a phone and move it over with a USB cable. And even then you just hoped Windows could read the device you copied it from.


That was normal. That was not some strange advanced-user thing. If you had a PC in that era, you learned that computers were machines you had to understand a little. You learned what a graphics card was, what a sound card was, what a modem was, what DirectX was, what drivers were, and why the exact model number mattered. You learned by fighting with the machine until it finally worked.


This is why I think the way some people talk about Linux is a little unfair. Linux today is not perfect, and yes, it can still be difficult depending on your hardware and what you want to do. But a lot of what people call “too hard” in Linux is very similar to what Windows users had to deal with for years. The difference is that many modern users only know Windows after it became much more automatic.


If someone started using computers in the Windows 7, Windows 10, or Windows 11 era, I can understand why Linux feels strange. They are used to the system hiding most of the ugly parts. They are used to drivers being pulled from Windows Update, software being installed with one click, and hardware usually being detected automatically. But for people who lived through the older PC years, Linux does not feel like some alien world. In many ways it feels like the old PC world never fully disappeared.


You still sometimes have to know what hardware you have. You still sometimes have to read documentation. You still sometimes have to search forums. You still sometimes have to fix something manually. That can be annoying, but it also means you are closer to the machine. You are not just clicking through a locked-down system and hoping the company behind it allows you to do what you want.


The funny thing is that Windows used to teach people computers because it was messy. Today Windows hides the mess, while Linux still lets you see it. That is probably why Linux feels harder to some people. Not always because it is impossible, but because it expects the user to be involved in a way many people are no longer used to.


For me, the old Windows era from MS-DOS to XP was a training ground. It taught patience, troubleshooting, drivers, file systems, boot disks, safe mode, command lines, and the pain of trying to get online when the modem driver was missing. So when people say Linux is difficult, I often think that yes, it can be, but old Windows was difficult too. People have just forgotten because they remember the nostalgia more than the problems.


Linux today is not really the strange one. In some ways, Linux is just closer to what personal computing used to be: open, messy, powerful, sometimes frustrating, but also far more honest about what the computer is doing.


And maybe that is why I respect it. Not because it is always easy, but because I remember when Windows was not easy either.

I was looking through an old Danish CD-ROM magazine page from CD-ROM 3rd year, issue 11, covering the period from October 15 to November 11, 1998, and it hit me how different PC gaming and software culture used to be.


This page is not just nostalgia. It is almost like a small time capsule from late 90s PC gaming.


On the page you can see games like Railroad Tycoon 2, Caesar III, Get Medieval, Carmageddon 2, Superbike World Championship, and Speed Busters. These were the kinds of games that made PC gaming feel massive and varied. Strategy, racing, arcade action, medieval fantasy, simulations — all living side by side on one magazine CD.


What really stands out to me is how much practical value these CD-ROMs had. This was not just a demo disc. It had tools, patches, fixes, walkthroughs, trainers, savegames, video clips, and extra files.


Under the software section, there are things like:


Netscape Communicator 4.05
Netscape Navigator 4.05
for Windows 95 and Windows 3.x


That alone says a lot about the era. Netscape was still important. The browser war was alive. The internet still felt new, strange, exciting, and not yet fully controlled by a handful of giant platforms.


The page also lists useful programs like DirectX 6.0 for Windows 95 and 98, GameSpy 1.52, ICQ, WinZip, Panda Antivirus, Apple QuickTime, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0.


That is such a late 90s software snapshot. You needed DirectX because games often required the newest version. You needed WinZip because files were everywhere in archives. You had ICQ for chatting. GameSpy was part of online multiplayer before everything became built directly into Steam, Discord, launchers, and modern matchmaking systems.


Then there is the patch section, and this is where the old PC gaming feeling really comes back.


The CD includes patches for games like:


Blade Runner
Descent 3dfx
Extreme Assault
Final Fantasy VII video fix
Panzer Commander v1.2
Quake II v3.19
Rainbow Six v1.02a
Sanitarium Level 2 Fix
Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries
Tonic Trouble savegame patch
Unreal editor runtime files


This is the kind of thing that reminds me how PC gaming worked back then. You did not always just click “update” and let a launcher do everything. Sometimes you had to get the patch from a magazine CD, a website, an FTP server, or a friend. A patch felt like an event. It could fix a broken level, improve compatibility, add 3dfx support, or simply make the game playable on your machine.


There is also a “Secrets” section with walkthroughs, trainers, savegames, and cheats for games like Dune 2000, House of the Dead, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, MechCommander, Rage of Mages, X-Files, Need for Speed 3, Wargames, and others.


Today, most of that would be scattered across websites, wikis, YouTube guides, mod pages, and old forum posts. Back then, it was all bundled together on a physical disc. You bought the magazine, took the CD-ROM home, put it into the drive, and suddenly you had a whole little world of gaming material to explore.


The screenshots also say a lot.


Railroad Tycoon 2 represents that older style of deep PC strategy and management gaming.
Caesar III is classic city-building from an era where PC strategy games had a very distinct identity.
Get Medieval shows that late 90s fantasy/action style.
Carmageddon 2 is pure chaotic old-school PC attitude, from a time when games were allowed to be rough, violent, weird, and controversial.
Superbike World Championship and Speed Busters show how racing games were also part of that PC CD-ROM culture.


The page even has a video section mentioning ECTS footage. That was another part of the old gaming world: getting small video clips from trade shows and previews on CD-ROMs because streaming video online was not realistic for most people yet. A short video on a disc could feel special.


Looking at this now, it is hard not to compare it to modern gaming.


Today everything is faster and more convenient, but also more disposable. Updates happen automatically. Games are tied to accounts. Launchers control access. Physical manuals are mostly gone. Demo discs are gone. Magazine CDs are gone. Even patches do not feel like something you collect or archive anymore.


Back then, PC gaming felt more hands-on. You had to understand your system. You had to install drivers, DirectX, patches, sometimes even mess with compatibility. It could be annoying, but it also made you feel closer to the machine. You were not just consuming a product. You were maintaining your own little gaming ecosystem.


This page is from 1998, but it shows a whole culture:


physical media,
offline access,
patches you could keep,
tools you could install,
games you discovered by browsing a disc,
and a feeling that PC gaming was something you explored instead of something that was simply delivered to you by a launcher.


For me, this is why old CD-ROM magazines still matter. They are not just old paper and plastic. They are archives of how gaming and computing used to feel.


A single page like this can bring back an entire era.


The late 90s PC world was messy, unstable, experimental, and sometimes frustrating — but it had character. And when I look at something like this, I miss that character.

look like it got it all op and working

Back With a Real Mic After About 4 Years Without One

For around 4 years, maybe a bit more, I have mostly livestreamed without a proper microphone. I finally fixed that now.

My old setup started back on 1 November 2016, when I bought an Audio-Technica AT2020 cardioid condenser microphone from Amazon UK. This was back when the UK was still part of the EU, so ordering from Amazon UK to Denmark was a lot less annoying than it became after Brexit.

The AT2020 order cost me:

£79.99 for the mic
£19.99 postage and packing
£99.98 total
DKK 861.55 paid total

Around the same time I also bought my first proper audio interface setup from Amazon UK:

Focusrite Scarlett Solo 2nd Gen USB Audio Interface
Neewer NW-35 boom arm / scissor arm stand
Mudder double-layer pop filter

That order cost:

£109.18 item subtotal
£6.94 postage and packing
£116.12 total
DKK 1,000.63 paid total

So it was not random cheap gear. It was a real entry-level recording setup, and for a time it worked.

But I never really liked the Focusrite Scarlett Solo 2nd Gen that much. About a year or two later, I got a Yamaha AG01 instead. I do not remember exactly where I bought the AG01 from, and I do not have the exact receipt in front of me, but from memory I think it was around 800 DKK or something close to that.

The strange part is that I originally thought the Yamaha AG01 might have been the problem. I had opened it before, moved it around, had it in boxes, and it had not exactly been treated like museum gear. But after testing it now, it seems the Yamaha was probably not the real problem.

The old AT2020 setup started giving me weird issues when I was livestreaming on Linux. Sometimes my voice would almost disappear and sound like it was underwater. There would still be a low hum or noise, so the mic was clearly “on”, but my voice was almost impossible to hear properly. I changed XLR cables a lot near the end, maybe once a year and later maybe even twice in one year, but the problem kept coming back.

So I stopped trusting it.

At some point I just threw the AT2020 out and never really got around to buying a new mic. After that I mostly just livestreamed without one.

Now I finally got a new setup.

Delivered 4 July 2026:

SE ELECTRONICS V7 Black - Vocal Microphone
NearStream ST20 Microphone Boom with 360° rotating swivel arm
AA AUDIO ACCESSORY XLR Cable, 2 m, pack of 2, with Neutrik REAN connectors

The new mic is different from the old AT2020. The AT2020 is a condenser microphone, which is more sensitive and can pick up more room noise, keyboard noise, breath and plosives. The sE V7 is a dynamic vocal microphone, which makes more sense for how I use it: gaming, livestreaming, talking close to the mic, and not yelling like a YouTube salesman.

I tested the new setup with my Yamaha AG01 in a CS2 livestream, and it worked like a charm. No random underwater sound, no weird dropouts, no sudden dead mic. The only issue was that my voice was a bit too low compared to the game audio, but that is more about gain, game volume and how I talk. I am not a loud talker.

Here is the test stream:


There is also a Denmark/EU angle to all this. Back in 2016, buying from Amazon UK was still fairly normal for me because the UK was still inside the EU. A lot of audio gear prices people talk about online are also US or UK prices, but when you live in Denmark the real price is the final price after shipping, VAT, currency conversion and import rules. That is why I like keeping the real numbers from my own orders.

For me, this was not about having studio gear for music. I just wanted something reliable for Linux gaming livestreams. I have been gaming for decades, I run Linux, and I just want my voice to be there when I talk over gameplay. The old setup became unreliable, so I gave up on it. The new sE V7 setup already feels like a better fit for what I actually do.

My Ubuntu Server home network setup + testing a security camera

I still find it a bit strange that I managed to build this setup, because I would still call myself limited when it comes to deep networking knowledge. But somehow I got it working, and I keep learning as I go.

My server is not just a normal NAS or media box anymore. It is basically the main brain of my home network.

It runs Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS and handles several jobs:

• Router
• Firewall/NAT
• Pi-hole DNS filtering
• DHCP
• Plex Media Server
• Docker/services
• Local storage
• Backups/SFTP/rsync-style transfers
• WireGuard/VPN-style access

So instead of letting a normal ISP router handle everything, the Linux box is in control. My fiber/ONT box goes into the server, then the server goes out to my LAN/switch/Wi-Fi access point. Pi-hole controls DNS and DHCP, and the firewall decides what is allowed in or out.

I try to keep the setup local-first and locked down. I do not want random services exposed to the internet unless there is a real reason. Plex is what I use for media. Jellyfin may be installed, but Plex is the active one. For remote access, I prefer a VPN-style setup instead of opening a bunch of ports.

The next thing I want to test is a security camera.

I have ordered one camera first, just as a test. If it works well, I may build a proper camera setup for the whole apartment. Not because I have had major problems. I have lived here for around 20 years and have never had a break-in. But for most of that time, there was usually someone in the apartment. The last few years I have lived alone, so having a camera system would give me a little extra peace of mind, especially when I am away.

My plan is not to make the camera some cloud-connected mess if I can avoid it. The safer design I want is something like:

• Camera on LAN
• Server records video
• Camera does not get open internet access unless needed
• Remote viewing only through VPN/trusted access
• No unnecessary port forwarding

Basically, I want the camera to be part of the local network, not another random smart device talking to the internet all day.

I know my setup is not a professional enterprise design. It is a self-built home server that grew over time. But it works, and the structure makes sense to me: Linux router/firewall first, Pi-hole for DNS/DHCP, Plex for media, storage for backups, and now maybe local camera recording.

The main things I still want to improve are documentation and hardening:

• Document all services and ports
• Backup firewall, Pi-hole, and mount configs
• Check what is listening on the network
• Keep cameras isolated as much as possible
• Avoid exposing admin panels to the internet
• Make sure remote access is VPN-based

It is rough and self-made, but that is also what I like about Linux. I did not buy a closed black box. I built something, broke parts of it, fixed parts of it, and learned from it.

Now I just need to test if the camera side can be added without making the whole setup messy or unsafe.

my crysis review of the game
https://kibasnowpaw.blog/2026/06/29...ion-review-the-monster-that-ate-my-gpu-twice/

This is a old gameplay i never was a fan of AC7 i played a handful of them included them to PS1

Age of Mythology on Linux – Gameplay Part 1, First Two Missions

I recently got back to this game after someone mentioned it to me while I was playing Empire Earth. A few days later I found a physical copy in Kirppu, a second-hand store here in Denmark, for only 10 kr., which is roughly $1.45 USD / €1.34 EUR.

At that price, I had to grab it.

I have to be honest: I was never really a huge fan of Age of Mythology. I think I only played it a handful of times back in the day. But replaying it now on Linux made me appreciate where it sits in RTS history.

The best way I can describe it is this:

Age of Mythology feels like a transition game.

It came out in 2002, developed by Ensemble Studios, the same studio behind Age of Empires. Visually, it feels like the period where RTS games were moving away from the older look of games like Empire Earth and toward a more polished 3D style. You can see that in the water, lighting, terrain, and unit models.

But mechanically, it still feels very much like that older RTS generation.

The sounds, pacing, resource gathering, unit control, and general flow still remind me a lot of Empire Earth and other early 2000s strategy games.

That is what makes it interesting to revisit now.

It is not my favorite RTS.

It is not the game I personally connected with the most.

But it is absolutely part of that golden RTS era where developers were still experimenting, still taking risks, and still trying to push the genre forward.

This first video covers the opening missions, so it is more about getting back into the game, testing how it runs, and seeing how it feels today on Linux.

For an old physical copy found cheap in a second-hand store, I think that is pretty cool.

I got Crysis 2 working in wine disk version idk if that's how the game works or not but in dx11 then HD Texture Pack don't work but in dx9 then HD Texture Pack do work since i didn't read if it needed to be dx9 i chose dx11 over the HD Texture Pack

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.