My current computer is ~5yrs old and thus unable to run the newest titles. Wading through reviews of old games to find the best ones that can run on my machine is harder than it should be. One method is to look at "best of" lists for the year I bought the computer, but this does not consider the varying graphics demands of titles from the same year, and neglects older but more awesome games.
I propose the following website interface: 1. Choose graphics card from drop-down list 2. Choose search parameters (review score, genre, etc.) 3. Press "search" 4. View the list of titles with links to reviews and online stores.
The website owner would need to generate a huge, searchable database of minimum system requirements for various games, and links to reviews. However, if the site was limited to the ~20 best-selling titles from each year, this task becomes manageable.
Computer games and computer semi-obsolescence will be around for a long time, so this idea could help a lot of people find fun games.-- sninctown, Sep 09 2009 (?) 68kMLA http://68kmla.net/The 68k Macintosh Liberation Army [BunsenHoneydew, Oct 10 2009] (?) System 6 Heaven http://www.euronet....ystem_6_heaven.html [BunsenHoneydew, Oct 10 2009] System 7 Today http://main.system7today.com/ [BunsenHoneydew, Oct 10 2009] OS 9 Forever http://www.os9forever.com/ [BunsenHoneydew, Oct 10 2009] Collosal Cave 3d https://www.colossalcave3d.com/This is pretty much not needed, but i appreciate the mid-90's webpage design [mylodon, Oct 30 2022] Kind of baked now https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/ [scad mientist, Nov 02 2022] It would be preferable for the graphics rendering to be abstracted so that the cleverness of the 3-D rendering of a particular game is due not to the programming of the game but to the graphics capability of the machine. So a game which presents as a 3-D first-person shooting game with multiple light sources and photo-realistic shading on the latest hardware will appear as a 3-D wireframe on lesser hardware, as a 2-D 256-colour 'plan view' game on your mid 90's 120MHz laptop, as ASCII graphics on your 486, and a text-based adventure on anything older.-- hippo, Sep 09 2009 Still running my OS 9 strong. The original nanosaur and bugdom come with the older iMac, and the older issues of MacAddict included discs of trials of games. They're all great. Not that anyone else in this big lonely world runs Mac OS 9... Bun.-- jellydoughnut, Sep 14 2009 Awesome idea -- the biggest stumbling block recently has been new versions of DirectX on Windows machines -- older gfx cards simply can't process new pixel shaders &c. You can probably run most of the games that require <9.0c-- CaptainClapper, Sep 14 2009 Ironically, the "systemrequirementslab.com" website looks really bad on my Mac.-- jutta, Sep 14 2009 Play Hostile Waters.-- Bad Jim, Sep 15 2009 I just did. Hostile Waters is fun and about right for my computer. Thanks.
How long will it be before this is baked? This seems like a natural thing for Dell or Amazon to do.-- sninctown, Oct 08 2009 Au contraire, [jellydoughnut] [link]
/edit/ Nothing for OS 8? Curious.-- BunsenHoneydew, Oct 10 2009 Ironically, 'Doom' causes my 3 year old mac to overheat and crash.-- spidermother, Oct 11 2009 My computer no longer meets the suggested requirements for upcoming games. #firstworldnerdproblems-- Voice, Oct 29 2022 Not computer games for middle-aged people then?
"Here, this number indicates the amount of mines that are right beside you in any direction..."
"How do I know which direction? What does this button do? I'm so confused..."-- RayfordSteele, Oct 30 2022 As a middle aged person, I find the games I am most interested in, couldn't stress my watch, much my desktop.
All you really need is vt-100 support and a couple colors.-- mylodon, Oct 30 2022 Speaking of which, someone is trying to make this difficult. The king and queen of difficult.-- mylodon, Oct 30 2022 //OS 9 Forever ... Oct 10 2009//
Very good (for all cases of forever < 13 yrs)-- pocmloc, Oct 30 2022 // computer games for middle-aged people //
hmmm.-- sninctown, Nov 02 2022 PcGameBenchmark has kind of baked this. I say kind of, because the only processors and graphics cards that can be selected are significantly better than the one I have. That makes it pretty useless for me.-- scad mientist, Nov 02 2022 random, halfbakery