Not too recently (actually more than half a year ago) my 360 bricked. I didn't want to deal with the hassle of sending it in to Tech Support, and wasn't particularly inconvenienced at the time (my roommate also had one), so I never got around to getting it repaired. After my roommate left, I grew more attached to my computer as a gaming device, particularly when I discovered the wonderful world of Steam.
This holiday season, while shopping for a holiday gift, I stumbled across one of the joys of my youth, in the form of the Myst 10-Year Anniversary Edition. I'd played Myst a lot (from the comfort of my father's lap), and so immediately snatched it up for some good ol' nostalgia gaming.
The problems began almost as soon as I popped the disc in the drive.
Ok, so maybe it wasn't that quickly that things went south. It took a while for the hell to really begin: I popped the disc in, installed the game and the version of Quicktime that it came with (I hadn't had to use Quicktime prior to that) and I was off. It started off fun: I was solving basic puzzles, getting into the game, and then BOOM: the first horrible random crash to desktop occurred. I thought that this was just a chance occurrence, and started the game back up immediately, but these (utterly random) crashes continued to plague me for some time.
After I managed to get a bit into the game, I decided to try and save. Everything worked fine the first time I tried it, and I didn't think anything of it till later... especially since I ran into the next horrible problem shortly after that. You see, the basis of Myst is that you touch books to traverse between worlds, and I had found several of these travel books: but whenever I opened them, KABOOM: crash to desktop.
In an attempt to solve my crashing problems, I attempted to run the game in several compatibility modes. While one of them seemed to work, it made the sound completely terrible. Disturbed by this turn of events, I turned to the internet for a solution. Lo and behold, not five minutes later, I had found a patch which apparently would fix all of my problems. I eagerly downloaded it and ran it... only to run into a brick wall. Windows 7 apparently doesn't like it when you try to mess with things in Program Files.
Unperturbed, I swiftly uninstalled the game and reinstalled it to a folder I created on my Desktop. The patch successfully ran this time, and I started the game up... only to find something like this staring at my face:
Windows NT? What the hell is this thing smoking?
After switching between all the compatibility modes available, and recieveing the same error message each time I tried to start the program up, I came to the conclusion that the patch was what had fucked me, and uninstalled/reinstalled the game to get rid of it (the patch had no uninstall feature.) I decided that playing the game with crappy sound was better than nothing, and attempted to run the game again. I got a ways in, attempted to save, and the game self-destructed. It appeared that this compatibility mode didn't just fuck with the sound: I wasn't even going to be able to properly play the game.
I decided that solving the problem with the crashes connected to the traveling books was a better course of action than messing with the compatibility modes any longer. I tried upgrading Quicktime to the latest version, thinking that it might just be a matter of 7 hating the older version. When I next ran Myst, I got nothing more than a black screen.
Well, at least it's not an error message...
I went around the house seething for the next few minutes, trying to figure out my next course of action. When my dad asked me what was wrong, I told him this little tale, and he asked to see the game in question. I gave the disc to him, he promptly installed it on his own laptop (running Windows XP)...
And it worked perfectly. So instead of messing about with my computer any more, I played the game on his laptop through to completion.
[HEADING=1]And so, the thread topic: what craziness have you endured trying to get games (both old and new) to work on your computers?[/HEADING]
This holiday season, while shopping for a holiday gift, I stumbled across one of the joys of my youth, in the form of the Myst 10-Year Anniversary Edition. I'd played Myst a lot (from the comfort of my father's lap), and so immediately snatched it up for some good ol' nostalgia gaming.
The problems began almost as soon as I popped the disc in the drive.
Ok, so maybe it wasn't that quickly that things went south. It took a while for the hell to really begin: I popped the disc in, installed the game and the version of Quicktime that it came with (I hadn't had to use Quicktime prior to that) and I was off. It started off fun: I was solving basic puzzles, getting into the game, and then BOOM: the first horrible random crash to desktop occurred. I thought that this was just a chance occurrence, and started the game back up immediately, but these (utterly random) crashes continued to plague me for some time.
After I managed to get a bit into the game, I decided to try and save. Everything worked fine the first time I tried it, and I didn't think anything of it till later... especially since I ran into the next horrible problem shortly after that. You see, the basis of Myst is that you touch books to traverse between worlds, and I had found several of these travel books: but whenever I opened them, KABOOM: crash to desktop.
In an attempt to solve my crashing problems, I attempted to run the game in several compatibility modes. While one of them seemed to work, it made the sound completely terrible. Disturbed by this turn of events, I turned to the internet for a solution. Lo and behold, not five minutes later, I had found a patch which apparently would fix all of my problems. I eagerly downloaded it and ran it... only to run into a brick wall. Windows 7 apparently doesn't like it when you try to mess with things in Program Files.
Unperturbed, I swiftly uninstalled the game and reinstalled it to a folder I created on my Desktop. The patch successfully ran this time, and I started the game up... only to find something like this staring at my face:
Windows NT? What the hell is this thing smoking?
After switching between all the compatibility modes available, and recieveing the same error message each time I tried to start the program up, I came to the conclusion that the patch was what had fucked me, and uninstalled/reinstalled the game to get rid of it (the patch had no uninstall feature.) I decided that playing the game with crappy sound was better than nothing, and attempted to run the game again. I got a ways in, attempted to save, and the game self-destructed. It appeared that this compatibility mode didn't just fuck with the sound: I wasn't even going to be able to properly play the game.
I decided that solving the problem with the crashes connected to the traveling books was a better course of action than messing with the compatibility modes any longer. I tried upgrading Quicktime to the latest version, thinking that it might just be a matter of 7 hating the older version. When I next ran Myst, I got nothing more than a black screen.
Well, at least it's not an error message...
I went around the house seething for the next few minutes, trying to figure out my next course of action. When my dad asked me what was wrong, I told him this little tale, and he asked to see the game in question. I gave the disc to him, he promptly installed it on his own laptop (running Windows XP)...
And it worked perfectly. So instead of messing about with my computer any more, I played the game on his laptop through to completion.
[HEADING=1]And so, the thread topic: what craziness have you endured trying to get games (both old and new) to work on your computers?[/HEADING]
Later on, while mucking about trying to get Riven (the sequel) to work, I discovered that the black-screen problem was solved by uninstalling the new version of Quicktime, reinstalling the old one, and setting it to Safe Mode. Unfortunately, I still can't get Riven to run properly (the window it runs in is painfully small, and it crashes randomly), and I want the damn thing to work on MY machine this time, so I guess it'll be a while before I can continue playing it.
This whole saga has reminded me of that bout I had with City Of Heroes(and the NCSoft website) [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.109521] a while back...
This whole saga has reminded me of that bout I had with City Of Heroes(and the NCSoft website) [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.109521] a while back...
