A New Warlock and an Old Computer

With Knojaw's death last week it was of course time to roll up a new character. And since I'd spent most of my time playing Rogue a bit jealous of the caster classes, and of Warlock specifically, I decided to roll one up. Yes, a old man Human Warlock. A bit boring, I suppose, but I rolled him mostly because I've not leveled up as a Human for some years.

So far, Harridon has only made it to level six, which wasn't the most riveting experience. Yes, the human starting zones sure do involve a lot of thugs. And kobolds. And then higher level thugs, and higher level kobolds. But they are, at least, not much of a threat…until I get to Westfall, I'm sure.

While Elywnn Forest is a classic but basic zone, the Warlock class is great from the very start. By level four you have a pet, a nuke, and two damage-over-time spells. It's a powerful setup with good variety and great class flavor. I've always been partial to pet classes, and Warlock is one of the best.

I've also spent a few hours editing my next video for the Computer Gaming Yesterday channel. This is an exciting first for my channel: a video about a computer.

I picked up an IBM PS/1 Essential in good condition at a yard sale last summer. The computer was nearly spotless though, when I got it home, I found it wasn't quite working for two reasons. First, the battery had died (of course) so the BIOS configuration couldn't be saved, leading to an error. Second, and more serious, was a failed hard drive. Though a bit disappointing, it's also hardly unexpected for a machine this old, and I opted to replace it with an IDE to SDcard converter for ease-of-use.

With the hardware sorted out, I also wanted to get it back up to its original software spec. Fortunately, the Internet Archive came to the rescue, as someone had uploaded the original restoration floppies. I have a USB floppy drive, so I copied the restoration disks over to floppy disks and installed it the old-fashioned way, which took about an hour.

And, well, we're in business.

I've already installed a few games on it. Lemmings has captured my attention.

My family bought first bought a PC in 1996, so I generally didn't play games in DOS, as most had switched to Windows 95 by then. Lemmings was among the many early-90s hits that never came on my radar. I have heard of Lemmings many times over the years, though, and my wife has fond memories of playing it on her family computer.

And for good reason! It's a charming, funny puzzle game. I suspect it would've felt like quite a revelation on its release in 1991. It's the sort of game that promised to simulate an entire world, albeit a small one. And while the interactions of the Lemmings with their surroundings, and the various abilities you can bestow them, don't seem too complicated by modern standards, I imagine it felt very clever at the time.

Playing it today, though, I appreciate the game's relative simplicity and ease of play. It loads quickly, has a clear goal, and each level has a time limit that (so far) is often just five or six minutes. That makes for satisfying shorter sessions. I can just play it for 30 minutes and likely beat or level or two.

Tomorrow, I leave for the Consumer Electronics Show, where I'll be writing coverage for a few publications include PC World and IEEE Spectrum. So, I won't have much chance to play PC games. I will be taking my Switch, however, where I'm playing Balatro and Unicorn Overlord…so don't be surprised if my next post has something to do with them!