I’ve got some DOOM WADs I have been meaning to play so I would probably grab Trench Foot, Total Chaos, and the sequel to Ashes 2063, Ashes: Afterglow with a portable install of GZDoom to play them.

After that I’d probably bring Star Trek TOS and a MOBI copy of Neuromancer by William Gibson combined with a portable install of VLC and Calibre in case the computer didn’t have applications that support the file format.

What about you?

I wanted to phrase this in a way where it isn’t a prolonged or desert island style question where the responsible idea would be to bring Wikipedia ZIMs and educational PDFs. It’s just an awkward amount of time to kill. The mid 2000s office desktop stipulation is just an additional challenge so you can’t just bring in a copy of Baldur’s Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077.

Edit: By mid 2000s I meant around 2005; the XP or Vista.

  • warlaan@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    Boy, this question hurts.

    For anyone above a certain age with kids below a certain age this isn’t a punishment or a challenge, this is A DREAM!! Heroes of might and magic 3, system shock 2, Anno (any version up to 1503), Morrowind, Civilization 3, Age of wonders shadow magic, Baldur’s gate 1 and 2…

    Whenever my wife finds the time she goes to her room to play Morrowind. She just got a new laptop and the first thing I did was install OpenMW and copy her save file.

    It goes without saying that you couldn’t finish any of those games in those 12 hours, except for System Shock 2.

  • wahming@monyet.ccEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    awkward amount of time to kill

    For how long? Because that’s probably the most important factor.

    There’s also a million indie games that run perfectly fine on mid 2000 desktop hardware. Even games that look crazy computational intensive like Factorio.

  • alphafalcon@feddit.deEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    There should be an external hard drive full of portable game installs in some drawer that fits the time period.

    Should easily kill a week.

  • Megaman_EXE@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    This kind of feels like every work day. Except I can’t use the pc for fun. Lol help me :')

    +1 on roms and Doom. Maybe the sims. Tbh I’m not too familiar with that generation of PC gaming. There’s probably a lot I don’t know about

  • massive_bereavement@kbin.social
    0·
    7 months ago

    Dungeon Keeper, Diablo II, StarCraft maybe, Morrowind, Uplink, Civilization II, Sim City 2000 or 3000 (depends on what will run), quake.

  • blindsight@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    Diablo 2 with a mod: Project Diablo 2.

    I’d download an offline copy of the wiki, too. And a build guide; 12 hours isn’t enough time to come up with a build and play the game!

  • starman2112@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    FTL: Faster Than Light would run on a computer that old, yeah? Probably bring that and a couple animes to watch while I play it.

    Oh shit, if it’s XP then I’d be good just playing pinball for the full 12 hours

  • Petter1@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    Since size of harddisk is not specified, I’d take all Nintendo consoles roms that work with emulators on that desktop. May some genesis, Atari and some PSP, basically I take myrient erista on my drive 😂

      • Petter1@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        7 months ago

        Well, yea, I have most likely spent more time installing stuff on my 3ds than actually playing with it

        But in all honesty I would likely kill most time with Zelda, Mario, and pokemon (any generation of each)

        Thank you very much for the link to that community, it feels just like home 🤩

  • sleepybisexual@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    So, just a PC? No controllers or anything?

    I might get a few 8 and 16 bit ROMs

    And mainly movies, I’d get around to watching Rambo and get some other stuff

    • viking@infosec.pubEnglish
      0·
      7 months ago

      A 2000’s office PC has a CRT screen (or first generation TFT, but they suck), so good luck watching movies in a proper resolution…

      • sleepybisexual@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        7 months ago

        Any resolution is good, I mean, why not 240p

        Wait, CRT?

        I could use a keyboard as a controller and play retro games. Might as well play punch out for nes

        • ElectricMachman@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          0·
          7 months ago

          I think they’re referring more to the aspect ratio - watching a 16:9 film on a 4:3 display isn’t the most optimal method, to put it charitably

          • sleepybisexual@beehaw.orgEnglish
            0·
            7 months ago

            Oki

            Wait, this is stupid but what are the specs of our hypothetical PC. Can I put Linux on it to kill an hour?

            • ElectricMachman@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
              0·
              7 months ago

              If it’s an office desktop, we’re probably talking a low-end Intel Pentium with 256MB RAM. If there is a discrete graphics card, it’ll be one of those ultra-basic ones, but chances are it’ll be onboard only. There’s probably a CD-ROM drive (DVD drives were still quite expensive!) and USB 2.0.

  • Most Auspicious@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    Copious amount of ebooks or web novel downloads, as well as my lofi folder for background music. All preloaded on a boot drive with a Linux distro capable of both running on the hardware and viewing everything I brought, if I can figure out how to do that. Plus however many snacks I can sneak in.