Classic gaming on the go

Nov2009

I’ve been having a great time playing contemporary games like Demon’s Souls, Uncharted or Call of Duty: World at War. But every so often, I pick up a classic that most new generation gamers probably haven’t heard of, and that many older players have forgotten. PC games like Space Quest and Richard Garriott’s Ultima series from the 1980s, or Dune, Day of the Tentacle and UFO: Enemy Unknown from the early 1990s.

It’s funny what we consider “classic,” though. I’ve been moving further into late 20th century releases, and recently decided to pickup Fallout 1 and 2. What’s great about older games is that they run well on low-spec hardware. I bring my netbook everywhere with me these days, and it’s an ideal platform for classic gaming. What’s more, there are often high-definition upgrade packs available, as Ars Technica recently pointed out in one of their features.

Fallout 1 and 2 are no exception. You can get the games off Steam (a downloading service here, though I’m sure you can find it elsewhere), and find the HD patches here and here.

However, if you’re running the newly released Windows 7, you may run into the rainbow effect, which essentially distorts the graphics in the game. The first step to solving this problem is to install the HD packs. The second step is to edit the ini files. Here’s how to do it.

For Fallout 1, edit f1_res.ini with:

# if AUTO_SCRN_SIZE = 0 - Screen Width and Height are set with SCR_WIDTH & SCR_HEIGHT.
# if AUTO_SCRN_SIZE = 1 - Screen Width and Height are set to current desktop resolution.
AUTO_SCRN_SIZE = 0

#Set the screen resolution here
SCR_WIDTH = 640
SCR_HEIGHT = 480

#Set the number of colours here
# 8 for 8bit(original)
# 16 for 16bit colour(loading screens don't show in this mode)
COLOUR_BITS = 16

For Fallout 2, edit f2_res.ini with:

;Set the screen resolution here
SCR_WIDTH=640
SCR_HEIGHT=480

;Set the number of colours here
; 8 for 8bit(original)
; 16 for 16bit colour (set only if your not using Sfall with graphics modes 4 or 5)
COLOUR_BITS=16 

;Position of the Hi-Res Settings Button in the Main-Menu: valid positions are 1-7.
HI_RES_BUTTON_POS=5

I picked up these quick tips from around the web, and hope that they can help get your feet wet mixing classic games with contemporary machines. Be sure to checkout repositories like Abandonia for more games that should bring back memories for some, and stir interest in others.