recommendations: lan game for old machine

[Wade]

Hi folks...

Recently bought an old compaq 1230 (Cyrix 233, 96 megs ram, 1 meg vram)for my wife to mark her students' assignments with.

Having got the home lan all set up and working now, she asks me what games we can play together now that we have two computers talking to each other.

I'm stumped... with the setup on this old laptop, I can't think of any games that she'd be into that would run on this beastie... I guess I can just teach her how to play Hearts... any suggestions?

My main machine is a K6-3(450), 256 megs ram, G400-32 dualhead... no barnburner itself, but mostly capable for what I want to do.

 

[GhettoFob]

Doom 2 or Duke3D those games will run great on those two systems.

 

[Balt]

Duke3D is EXCELLENT over LAN, although I typically played it with three people, not two.

Doom/Doom2 were.... OK.

 

[pen^2]

starcraft is perfect for that kinda environment

 

[Wade]

Thanx for the suggestions guys... my wife isn't really into 3d shooters, so for our immediate purposes, duke3d & doom2 are out, although I'll probably give it a try just for when other friends come over.

Any other ideas for games with a bit less action?

She was really ticked when we discovered that the venerable old networkable MS Hearts doesn't function fully in W2K. I think she was into tetris too... maybe I'll check out tucows and see if there are any tetris clones that work head to head over lan or something.

 

[Rankor]

Probably the real time strategies games are her cup of tea.

Someone alluded to Starcraft. There's also C&C, C&C Red Alert, and WarCraft 2.

Maybe even the original Diablo'll play on the system.

 

[datalink7]

Would Total Annihilation run at low resolution? That is a great multiplayer game. Just played some yesterday with my friends. It still rules even though it is getting old. It is good enough to entice me, and my friends, away from other multiplayer games to play it on occasion. And I can run anything with my righ (1.33ghz T-Bird, Geforce3, etc.). I would reccomend it if you can run it.

 

[SleepyGuy]

Starcraft, diablo 1, quake 1 maybe 2, duke3d, shadow warrior, mechwarrior 2, descent 1 and 2... bought all that comes to mind... oh yeah, and of course TetriNet. Esp give shadow warrior a try in multiplayer... it's the most fun FPS i had besides AvP. Take care.

 

[Balt]

Well, I would suggest Civ II Gold... but when you are accustomed to playing it with the computer, waiting for a human opponent to finish their turn is enough to cause insanity.

I'd just search around for some freeware/shareware stuff like you planned to.

 

[Staver]

I'd say Heroes of Might and Magic which is a fun turn-based fantasy/strategy game where there is some basic rpg elements, treasure finding and non-bloody tactical combat. You can save off to continue for next time. My Boss <3 levels up> played alot of cards when she'd come in doing major system compiles for mainframes. She seen me playing the game and asked what it was. Next thing I know I hear some familiar music coming from .... Btw, she's over 55, so I figure she knows what she likes. You can get a playable demo and more info here.

 

[sandorski]

Though I heard a lot of great games mentioned, I don't think she would be into Total Annhilation, C&amp;C, or those kind of games. What you could try is Hoyle card games or Scrabble, although I don't know if they work in Win2k. She might like Railroad Tycoon2, but it's no card game so I don't know. I wish I remembered the name of the shareware card game program I found for my sister-in-law a few years back. It had hundreds of card games from solitaire to poker to and practically every card game in between. I'm sure if you look on a shareware site you'll find something, but you could try Happypuppy as well.

 

[Wade]

Thanx again folks... some great suggestions... I think she'd love Warcraft II (which I'm sure I've got kicking around a closet somewhere here) and I can certainly pick up some of the other old strats cheap... the problem with those games is getting enough time for her to do the whole learning curve kinda thing... she's a busy mamma... but I think once that's done, she'd enjoy them much.

Meanwhile, I'll check out some sw/fw card games that she can pick up in a minute and have a halfhour diversion now &amp; then.

 

[Thump553]

I'm not sure, but maybe one of the earlier Worms games would run on that system. Great lan game, can be easily found in bargain bins.

 

[NIelkc]

Yeh get a copy of Worms, that is some fun stuff

 

[rcraig]

We use to play Myth on some older computers at work. It has a software mode that still looks pretty good and I don't think needs too much power. I think I had a P200 w/ 32 megs ram and a 2 meg vid card and it played fine.

 

[MysticLlama]

Age of Empires / Age of Kings will both work on that speed of a system.

Or you can always get them both on the net and go to Yahoo or MSN Gaming zone to play all kinds of card games and such.