To be fair, your username kind of suggests you want to look inside everything anyway

Hail to the King, baby!

Obligatory shout-out for any Bullfrog games of that era, especially Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2. Lionhead’s Black & White is 1 year out of your window, but such a good game.

Also:
Syndicate Wars
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Grim Fandango
Rollercoaster Tycoon
Descent
Grand Theft Auto

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes ranks number one for me; the original story with updated control scheme and graphics is awesome. Then it’s a toss up between 2 and V. 2 is a solid game in the same mould as the first, but V allows me to Fulton extract unsuspecting enemies which is a genius mechanic that allows me an immense range of fuckery.

That may well be the thing I’m looking for, thanks for the pointer!

You don’t understand because I didn’t state why 😅 I have enough time and energy to set up and manage containerised applications. 20 years ago I might have had the drive to set up a local dev version, manage the dependencies and set up local init scripts, but not anymore.

KDE Connect is a great idea, thanks!

My absolute favourite controller of all time. No contest.

Take your pick from the Linux family tree

Bonus points if you can get them to preserve all the NSFW mods as well.

I’d say it’s time to push the argument that the Library of Congress needs to be preserving games as part of the cultural history of the USA. If the legislative branch won’t abide private efforts then it’s time to make the government do it.

Upskill. I’m not ‘upskilling’ someone, I’m training them.

Would you settle for a single clergyman?

I’ve consistently enjoyed and come back to the following for years:

• “Make it Sweet” by Milkcan (Um Jammer Lammy soundtrack), 35 mins
• Forgotten Worlds arcade OST by Kawamoto Tamayo, ~45 mins

I also like to boot up and listen to the Amiga title music for SWIV and the Mega Drive/Genesis soundtrack of Revenge of Shinobi.

This was also my first Linux distro after having used Sun’s Solaris while at uni. I think I tried out Slack and Suse at around the same time, but stuck with RedHat and related distros for about 6 years.

The culture novels, such a good pick!

I played the game back when it originally came out. Like any media based on a book, it was slightly frustrating for a while that the graphics didn’t match the visuals I had imagined whole reading the book. I still have the discs somewhere, might see if I can get it running somehow. I suspect I’ll find the game mechanics to be clunky but today’s standards.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been a movie made yet.

Other people who’ve read it and who I’ve talked with seem to be split over whether the first book is better than the sequels, or the other way around. I prefer the sequels, my wife prefers the original. Do you have a preference?

Game: Super Mario Galaxy
Book: The Rama series, Arthur C Clarke
TV: The West Wing
Movie: The 5th Element