Trying to relive my youth

Posted by ZonalSquid@reddit | retrobattlestations | View on Reddit | 18 comments

After years of playing Xbox and consoles I long for the days of Rollercoaster Tycoon, Black and White, Stronghold the classics!

I can't justify paying 1000s for a laptop and I'm clueless to be honest.

What laptop should I be looking at that will run games from 2000 - 2015ish era?

Nice one people appreciate any help 👍👍

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hdhddf@reddit

you could get a desktop for free, look on Freecycle. a laptop won't cost much. if you need a proper GPU in it then it will cost more but you can play a lot of old games on an integrated GPU on a laptop

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AdamTheSlave@reddit

Perhaps all you need is a steam deck/rog ally x/lenovo legion go, etc. Under 1000, plenty of power to play anything from 2000-2015. On my ally X, I play games that came out in 1995->2025. On my steam deck much the same. If you want, you can hook up a bluetooth keyboard and connect it to a monitor if you need. Another thing you could do is just grab an older gaming laptop, something with like a 1060 6gb, or gtx 1660, that will cover any game from that era as well. Check your local facebook marketplace or ebay.

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BackToPlebbit69@reddit

Depends, how are you playing these? With WINE? Or are you booting up Batocera or something similar?

Or are you flat out using a DOSBox emulator that has Windows 98 built in?

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AdamTheSlave@reddit

Well, if you are on a steam deck, yes, with wine or more likely proton. The compatibility for older games is quite good since wine and proton have been in development since the '90's, it seems to work better on some older games than even windows. But there is also the windows handhelds, like the ROG Ally X, that are windows by default if you don't want to go down the path of steam os. And I have a great time on that on older games as well. But I find when it comes to older games I have a better time on steam os due to the high compatibility, and the ease of setting up controls using steam input built into the OS and having dual touchpads.

But there's other options as well... It doesn't take super beefy hardware to play a lot of older games. Your standard average lenovo work laptop can play a LOT on just a integrated gpu when it comes to old games.

Batocera is good for emulating consoles and arcades, but I wouldn't use it for pc games that may require things like a 3DFX wrapper or something.

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BackToPlebbit69@reddit

So just to confirm you're straight up trying to load old games purely through the Steam interface and just using Proton directly on the Steam Deck with SteamOS?

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AdamTheSlave@reddit

Well, for the steam deck and linux in general there's lots of tools to install and run old games.

For real old games of course, like dos games, there's dosbox.

For windows games there's lutris/heroic games launcher/etc. But also I have been able to install using steam itself as well.

Usually things are smoother from lutris or heroic games launcher though. I have installed from old media using cd's even and a usb dvd burner. But I can also use ISO's I've made from my discs on my desktop as well, or if that game is on steam (which many are) or GOG it's pretty easy to install :)

Everything is done from desktop mode on a steam deck, then you add these as non-steam games to your library so you can access them in game mode. I also have a usb floppy drive to help with games on that medium as well. I find if I tinker enough I can get about any game to boot up that I have media for or is on gog or steam. Unless a game has kernel level anti-cheat (think COD Warzone or Fortnite), it will probably work.

For a good listing of the working games, you can check out protondb.com for a complete listing of how to get it working.

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xnotx2@reddit

Grab an Xbox 360 and RGH it. There's lots of help out there if you need it.
360hacks subreddit is a good place to start.
you can d/l the games here https://r-roms.github.io/

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connor2600@reddit

Get a thinkpad, maybe a t400?

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jhaluska@reddit

The T400 will be a under-powered for the later games. W540/W541 should fit the bill.

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connor2600@reddit

Yeah you're right, for retro gaming it would be perfect but most games from 2015 probably not

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BackToPlebbit69@reddit

You can run these games on Pentium 4 or Core 2 Duo hardware with Windows XP / 98.

Easier route, get a Pentium 4 era Dell Optiplex and pop a era specific video card in there.

Harder route, go Core 2 Duo and use R.Lowe patches to allow Windows 98 to handle additional RAM.

Semi harder route, buy a used modem gaming PC, go on the 86Box discord and grab some configs for 86Box and just use those to play some games on an emulated Windows 98 machine.

You could also find a VirtualBox VM on Archive.org for Windows XP and use that as well.

Hope the above helped.

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fa1sedan@reddit

Anything from the mid 2010s can run a lot of those games pretty well, as well as some later stuff of course. You could also build a desktop capable of playing modern triple A titles in 1080p for well under $500- just shop smart and used! I'm currently building a budget system for my gf and I scored an i5 8500, Z390 mobo, an RX6600XT, 512gb M.2, 2TB hard drive, 650w PSU and 16gb of RAM for just under $400.

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Apprehensive_Newt911@reddit

If I were you I'd put Windows 10 *32-Bit* on it for maximum compatibility. You won't need more than 4 Gigs of ram nor would you need anything particularly strong in a cpu. I'd get something like a 5 year old Acer, HP, Lenovo or Samsung with an AMD processor between an A8-A10.

That should suffice. 32-Bit Windows 10 is key for compatibility. It will run pretty much anything from the past.

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