Adventure Gamers - Forums

I was reminiscing the other day about how Simon the Sorcerer 1 & 2 used to run sooooo slow for us on our very first Windows PC. Good times…

We got our first Windows PC from my dad’s sister, which had Windows 95 on it and only 600MB of hard disk space; I think it only had 16MB of RAM too. Both games ran VERY slow in a LOT of areas; it took Simon over a minute or so just to walk from one side of a screen to the other! Thinking back now, I’d say the games were unplayable to be honest. Never-the-less, it never stopped us and we always played/re-played them anyway.

If I had the computer knowledge then like I do now, I could have got those games running relatively smooth. I remember that there was so much crap installed on the machine that took up space, not to mention programs that hadn’t been installed/uninstalled properly.

Titanic: Adventure Out of Time was also prone to crashing unexpectedly a lot, too.

When I finally got my own computer (the first had to be shared between my brother, my dad and myself), which was bought off a guy who had built it and advertised it in our local paper, it had Windows 98 on it and was a somewhat better machine (but not by much). I think it had 32MB of RAM, 1GB of hard disk space, and a 133MHz processor… At long last, both Simon games ran nice and smooth! However, Broken Sword 1 & 2, which I had bought around that time, were running choppy instead. I remember stumbling across a solution for BS1, which involved leaving the game paused for 30 minutes until it went into standby mode. After that, it ran smooth! I never worked out why it did that.

Anyone else have any similar experiences/stories you’d care to share?

Grim Fandango when it originally came on 2 CD’s, or was it 3 or 4? Either way the first copy of that which I was given as a Christmas present from my parents - that was extremely slow. I would really love to play a seamless version, because trying to play it back then was very painful.

Considering that was late 90’s however, most games on my PC were still DOS based pretty much, all the traditional adventures didn’t take much to load at all. (Of course, there were a few that needed a specific boot-disk that made sure your PC loaded into DOS with mem-high or whatever it was back then!)

With GF being technologically advanced it was no wonder it came on various CD’s and was a slow loader. I was never sure if I had an abnormal copy or something because literally, I would have to wait up to 20 minutes when it requested the next CD or had to do some serious loading from CD. It sucked (but the game was good!).

The only other one would’ve been LBA2, but that was only because the first time round I didn’t think to save all the voice files to the computer. With that option selected, there was no problem at all after that.

Thanks m0ds for actually contributing! But again, another thread that I’ve created and it’s died… I don’t think I’ll bother creating any more threads in future!

And it’s funny: there are certain members who are constantly creating threads and get posts/contributions within minutes! Am I contagious or something?

I got Myst 3 when my comp was very out of date, and it ran so very choppy. I think that game convinced me to spend money on an upgrade. But then by the time Uru came out I needed an upgrade again, so that game was running slow as well.

DustyShinigami - 06 June 2012 09:18 AM

Thanks m0ds for actually contributing! But again, another thread that I’ve created and it’s died… I don’t think I’ll bother creating any more threads in future!

Give it time, I’m sure you’ll have some successful threads! Is that you dressed as Lara Croft on twitter? That’s pretty neat!

All the best.

m0ds - 06 June 2012 10:05 AM

DustyShinigami - 06 June 2012 09:18 AM

Thanks m0ds for actually contributing! But again, another thread that I’ve created and it’s died… I don’t think I’ll bother creating any more threads in future!

Give it time, I’m sure you’ll have some successful threads!

I don’t know… I can’t recall any successful threads I’ve made during the time I’ve been here.

Is that you dressed as Lara Croft on twitter? That’s pretty neat!

I’m a guy. XD But no, it’s not Lara Croft. She’s very similar though; just more violent and psychotic. Her name is Revy and she’s one of the main characters from a series called Black Lagoon.

The slowest for me was playing Armed and Delirious on my 486. It wouldn’t play on either of my faster computers, apparently because it had a problem with DirectX 7a (which was the current one at the time). Only the 486 had Windows 95 with an older version of DirectX, so that’s the computer the game didn’t crash on and the one I used. I ended up using a walkthrough to avoid having to walk back and forth experimenting. The minimum requirements were for a Pentium 100, so you can guess how slow it ran on a 486. I used to have more patience than I do now. I’d had trouble locating the game and was not going to let a little thing like being dreadfully slow put me off playing it.

TimovieMan - 06 June 2012 02:25 PM

The only game I can think of is The 11th Hour. It ran slowly when I just bought it, but my PC was just below the minimum specs back then. Six months later I upgraded my system and it ran perfectly then…

But I always tried to have a reasonably high-end system, so…

That’s funny.  The first adventure game I remember running slow for me is The 7th Guest.  I remember it stuttering along.  But it was still awesome.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  I just started playing Alan Wake, and I have to use the lowest settings to get it to play smoothly in 1920x1080.  That fact, and this thread, have spurred me to upgrade my graphics cards.  High settings, here I come.

Yeah, 7th Guest for me too. The in-game animation was okay, but the cut scenes stuttered as hell, with annoying cracking sound that made it hard to make out the dialog.