J4MES OX4D

So despite never having a vastly powerful computer when I was younger, our house saw a few windows computers pass through it. I remember there being a windows 98 machine and it being my first forray into pc gaming. When I say my first forray my parents never really bought us any games and I made do with some dodgy copies mostly that a friend used to give me at school.
 
This thread is just to discuss some of those experiences and moments and seeing if anyone else here was gaming in the 90s / early 2000s.
 
So to start this off I am going to look at one of the games that came with the computer and led to one of my first experiences of football manager games -
 
Ultimate Soccer Manager 98/99 -
 

 
Now I have opted for this one because I have been going through the abandonware website looking at old games with the hope of getting a few running. This one worked straight away with no faff and the screenshot above is from my machine this evening 😄
 
The things I always remember about this game was that it wasn't just the coaching side of things but you used to be able to upgrade the ground, look at sponsorship deals and such. We won't forget some of the incredible players back then as well -
 

You've got it wrong there, he just thought he was at home dusting his shelves 😂

This has just released, but in early access for some reason. The game is a bit threadbare right now so not one for me, at least not yet...
 
 

Gary Mabbut, Darren Anderton, Stefan Freund and Les Ferdinand. 😜

Hoffenheim is a big game for Spurs if they want to get through without the extra two games. But squad is a joke right now so who knows who'll be playing on Thursday 🙈

It gets worse
Absolute manchild 

Ange has to go now. Spurs are an absolute shambles and the relegation zone isn't all that far away especially if teams below pick up a win or two. Losing to a weakened Arsenal was one thing but then losing to a poor Everton side a week after almost getting humiliated to Tamworth has to be the final straw. 

I treated myself to the Bond box set at Christmas so I’ll look out for those 👍

I used to have a huge collection of DVD's but ended up offing most to Music Magpie to declutter years ago. I'm tempted to start rebuilding again as streaming just feels so soulless and even if you 'own' a purchase that is streamed, it can still be taken away from you at any time down the line *cough Sony. Some DVD's used to have awesome extras on them especially the James Bond films. 

Woman scammed out of £700,000 after believing she was dating Brad Pitt
METRO.CO.UK  

Woman scammed out of £700,000 after believing she was dating Brad Pitt
METRO.CO.UK  

Woman scammed out of £700,000 after believing she was dating Brad Pitt
METRO.CO.UK  

I used to have a huge collection of DVD's but ended up offing most to Music Magpie to declutter years ago. I'm tempted to start rebuilding again as streaming just feels so soulless and even if you 'own' a purchase that is streamed, it can still be taken away from you at any time down the line *cough Sony. Some DVD's used to have awesome extras on them especially the James Bond films. 

I have started doing this with blu rays for the same reason, I dont have to worry about them disappearing on me. I have a little collection should the internet ever go down n such and generally the quality is better along with extra features n such

CDs are coming back out for me. The ease of Spotify and streaming music is great for certain scenarios but if I'm chilling at home in the shed, then a CD in the background is a far better option as its a choice to do something you want to do specifically rather than get a curated playlist continually retune your needs.
 
 
ooo I'd love to see tapes make a comeback! Probably not worth the hassle unfortunately but would be ace to play on the odd occasion.
 
As we love games, I'll obviously say all my old consoles and handheld devices are a great alternative for an evening of gaming. Makes you appreciate the gaming industry, especially when lately it feels like new good games are a thing of the past.
 
Actually, to finish I'd also say one more thing...I got Hayley a Tamogochi for Christmas! 🤣 They were ace back in the day, just to pass abit of time. These days we use continuous never ending free games on our phone but this feels like a cool way to get off those things to help you back into the real world and not lose too much time into the those awful mobile games.
 

Not quite a technology of yesterday but Blu-Ray DVDs.
Instead of streaming old films (and some new ones) that I want to watch I buy them on E-Bay for about the same cost of a stream and then I own them. They won't disappear overnight if I leave Netflix, etc or the streaming service doesn't host them any more

Ubisoft have pushed back the release date once more - probably to avoid conflict with vastly more popular games like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds. Unfortunately they have decided to choose the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo subway attack to release the game which is probably the final insult to Japan after already pissing them off already so much, with bullshit meaningless translations and making in-game assets out of prohibited cultural artifacts they didn't know the meaning of, which caused national outrage. Let's not forget this was the company that included hip-hop music in the trailer because they thought it would be 'appropriate' as the protagonist is black despite the game being set in the 16th century!
 
I don't think there is any company on the planet dumber than Ubisoft and the sooner they get taken over and culled the better. Another total shitshow from them. 

What's funny is that his level 98 character died and then he ended up having another one 3 days later pop up and it was in-game whilst he was giving a live talk to some Germans🤣 
 
The man has spent his entire life taking credit for other people's work but it's hilarious how offended he gets when people question his gaming skill and not his backseat input with Tesla or Space X that is dominated by very smart people who don't get any recognition whatsoever. Man should just continue focusing on being a useless father, smoking weed and getting on any gutter podcast possible for attention. He's even got extremely rattled after humiliating old photos resurfaced of him that he keeps trying to scrub from the internet using technologies that belong exclusively to law enforcement!
 
People are really beginning to see what a prick he is and that he has zero personality and a fragile ego to boot. 

Winning at Millwall away first day of the year can’t be bad😎

This is so cringe but not the worst thing about the man to be fair 🤣🤣🤣
 
 

Ubisoft have pushed back the release date once more - probably to avoid conflict with vastly more popular games like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds. Unfortunately they have decided to choose the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo subway attack to release the game which is probably the final insult to Japan after already pissing them off already so much, with bullshit meaningless translations and making in-game assets out of prohibited cultural artifacts they didn't know the meaning of, which caused national outrage. Let's not forget this was the company that included hip-hop music in the trailer because they thought it would be 'appropriate' as the protagonist is black despite the game being set in the 16th century!
 
I don't think there is any company on the planet dumber than Ubisoft and the sooner they get taken over and culled the better. Another total shitshow from them. 

Ubisoft have pushed back the release date once more - probably to avoid conflict with vastly more popular games like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds. Unfortunately they have decided to choose the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo subway attack to release the game which is probably the final insult to Japan after already pissing them off already so much, with bullshit meaningless translations and making in-game assets out of prohibited cultural artifacts they didn't know the meaning of, which caused national outrage. Let's not forget this was the company that included hip-hop music in the trailer because they thought it would be 'appropriate' as the protagonist is black despite the game being set in the 16th century!
 
I don't think there is any company on the planet dumber than Ubisoft and the sooner they get taken over and culled the better. Another total shitshow from them. 

It's powerful granted, but I wish they would stop using so many artificial elements to inflate performance figures. I miss the days when a card could be tested in its basic form and it would get 60-120fps and a 50% performance boost on the last gen and everyone would be happy. Nowadays its all DLSS + Frame Gen and other factors and sure, a game like Cyberpunk may push out 300fps at ultra settings but with all the back-end upscaling on the card, it's literally just 1080p upscaled 4 times to buggery and the image may end up looking blurred or of a lower quality than if you just ran everything maxed out on a 3080 with all upscaling factors turned off and the resolution flat-native. Yeah, the frames may be cut by two thirds and Nvidia's marketing gets blown to shit but at least it's an honest depiction. 
 
Literally going the same way as the iPhone and these gimmick performance bolstering elements exclusive to cards are actually covering up bad optimisation or giving a false experience just to convince users the card is better than it is. I always turn off all this shit even if it means getting XXfps less because I know the image quality will be an accurate representation of the game and not hardware bloat. 
Nvidia announces the RTX 50-series, led by the $1,999 RTX 5090 with 'twice the performance of the 4090' | PC Gamer
WWW.PCGAMER.COM With more AI acceleration than ever even the RTX 5070 is claimed to offer RTX 4090-level performance for $549.  
The 5070 also looks a mild improvement on the pretty lame as it is 4070 but the price isn't too bad. 
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5070 at $549 — How does it stack up to the previous generation RTX 4070? | Tom's Hardware
WWW.TOMSHARDWARE.COM Same price, different architectures, and some big tech changes.  

There's Civilization 7, Monster Hunter Wilds and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 all coming out in the next several weeks. Nothing ground-breaking but it's something early on at least. There's also Mafia The Old Country, Death Stranding 2 and Doom: The Dark Ages plus the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake. Kinda wish there was a new Resident Evil out this year or even a remake but that doesn't seem to be the case and I expect GTA6 will be good to go towards the end of the year. 
 
I just hope devs aren't scared off about GTA releasing in Q4 and it becoming really dry industry-wide with 2026 push-backs and calendar clutter. Also could mean other titles are rushed for release in the summer. There's probably more happening in Q1/2 this year. 

Winning at Millwall away first day of the year can’t be bad😎