Gaming on a 25 YEAR OLD Laptop!!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,754 words · ~13 min read
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Yes sirree Bob, my friends.
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In today's video, the young whippersnappers in our audience
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are gonna have a look at how the previous generation lived
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because believe it or not,
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we did have your mobile computers.
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It's just that to say that they weren't quite as sleek
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and sexy as a modern Ultrabook
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would be a gross understatement.
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So step one, I guess, is to get this puppy booted up.
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Now, this might not stand out to some of you,
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but one of the first things I noticed about this thing
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is the power cord.
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Fascinating, isn't it?
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It's just a normal power cord.
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There's no external power brick.
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This thing has an internal power supply.
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Are you kidding me?
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All right, I'm gonna get this plugged in.
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Now, Brian, the electrician,
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who I borrowed this thing from,
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he's got like a tech museum in his basement, that guy.
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He actually told me the battery on this thing does work,
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but lithium batteries don't age very well.
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So I'd be surprised if it stays on longer
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than a couple minutes.
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So we're gonna run off wall power here.
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This is like so exciting.
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He also told me that he preloaded my favorite game on it,
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which I don't remember talking to him
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about retro games at any point.
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So let's see what he put on here.
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Wow.
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Is that 80 megs of RAM?
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That's actually pretty respectable
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for a computer of this era.
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I mean, it's not amazing, but it's okay, you know?
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Windows 95.
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So that makes this thing significantly older than Jake.
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Like we literally have people working here
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who are younger than this laptop.
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I haven't heard that sound in so long.
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All right.
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So this is it.
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This is the desktop experience.
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Does it go any brighter?
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No, it does not.
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Wow.
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That is not a fantastic display.
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So I just wanted to check that RAM amount
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and I realized I don't actually remember
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how to access task manager in Windows 95.
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You can't just right click the task bar.
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Monitors the system resources your programs are using.
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Like any program, the resource meter uses system resources,
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when it's running.
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This may cause your computer to run more slowly.
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Isn't that great?
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Back when we had like 100 megahertz CPUs,
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your computer would warn you
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about opening up resource monitor
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because it could affect your resource consumption.
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Wow.
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That is a fairly rudimentary resource meter.
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Well, your system resources, they're 86% free.
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As for your user resources, same thing.
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Why don't we try one of the other similar looking things?
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Here.
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How about system monitor?
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Okay, that's more like it.
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So we are using about 40 megs of RAM on what?
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We don't know.
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I tried to two finger swipe to scroll
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and all I did was move my icons around.
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Just like, yeah, yeah, sure.
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You know what?
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It gives you an appreciation for, you know,
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modern grid arrangements
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and everything snapping into place, right?
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How big is our drive?
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Wow.
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Four gigs.
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Fat 32 storage.
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Isn't that beautiful?
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I mean, to put that in context,
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this Ultrabook has four times that in system memory.
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All right.
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So we're fired up.
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Let's get into what Brian thinks is my favorite game.
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And actually, okay.
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There's no way he would have guessed this,
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but I actually played so many hours of 1602 AD
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back when the only gaming computer I had was a Pentium,
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the 90 desktop that I inherited from my uncle.
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Is the sound on?
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If you don't happen to have something playing
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while you're making adjustments,
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you can press down for a test tone.
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I'm gonna need a mouse though,
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in order to play this game.
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USB didn't come around until Windows 98 SE,
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if I recall correctly.
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This laptop doesn't have USB.
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Actually, no, hold on.
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Okay.
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My pinky.
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So that's labeled mouse keyboard.
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That is a PS2 port.
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And I happen to have in my bag of wonders,
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a PS2 to USB adapter.
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I'm gonna have to go digging deeper into the bag of wonders
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and see if I have a PS2 mouse.
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Okay, well, we didn't find a PS2 mouse,
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but I did find a ball mouse with USB.
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So I am hoping that this will...
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Not bad.
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Yes, my friends,
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these were great for all sorts of things.
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Picking up all the dust off your desk
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and putting it in one convenient place
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to be picked off and disposed of later.
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Throwing these nice heavy rubber balls
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at people you didn't like.
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Oh man, got like hair and gunk wrapped around this.
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Before I settle in for my nostalgic gaming session though,
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actually, why don't we like take a closer look at this thing?
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It's got some real problems compared to modern computers.
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These bezels take up like as much of the top of the unit
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as the freaking screen does.
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They're so big.
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This touch pad is abominable.
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Though with that said,
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I do appreciate the inclusion
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of dedicated left and right clicks here.
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Speakers suck.
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And this thing is freaking heavy.
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Like it is, it is chunky.
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Like you were carrying a briefcase if you had one of these,
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but it has some advantages compared to modern devices.
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So even though we weren't really able to plug in our,
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you know, modern mouse to it very easily,
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it's still a pretty good thing.
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And the audio on this thing is substantial.
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So check this out.
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You've got your floppy disc reader.
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You've got not one, but two PCMCIA expansion slots.
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So these could actually be used back in the day
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to add new ports to laptops.
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Go figure, right?
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We've got our RJ11 modem port.
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We've got the PS2 port we ended up using.
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Check this out.
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That my friends, yes, that is infrared.
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I believe though,
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instead of being used as just like a remote control
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or to like control your TV,
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this was actually for wireless data transmission.
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Yeah, I know, right?
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We've got our printer port.
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We've got a dock port, VGA out, serial.
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And then, oh, moving around.
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Finally, my ARM is like actually falling asleep,
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holding this thing up like this.
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We've got our CD-ROM drive.
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And finally, headphone microphone jacks.
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Yes, my friend,
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headphone jack and check this out.
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Here's a feature you haven't seen in a while.
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A removable battery.
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Now, I mean, 2.7 amp hours.
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That is not a lot.
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And it obviously isn't gonna work very well anymore,
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but hey, it had it.
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Oh wow, seriously?
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When there's an auto run,
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you can't click anything behind it.
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Multitasking.
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There's so many things.
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I completely take for granted these days.
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All right, let's fire up some Corel WordPerfect.
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So back to the things that are good about it.
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This keyboard is amazing.
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Compared to modern keyboards,
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you might as well have a mechanical keyboard in your laptop.
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Like this is flipping awesome.
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The layout's great.
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It's got dedicated keys for home and page up, page down.
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It's got, look at this travel.
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Listen to that.
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Like that.
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That is a laptop keyboard.
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And check this out.
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It's even got remappable shortcut buttons.
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Like come on, 1996 wasn't such a bad time.
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I mean, yeah, there's no Windows key.
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You know what though?
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1602 actually can be run on relatively modern machines.
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And there is a game that I legitimately have not played
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since like 2002 when the classroom computers
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actually ran Windows 95, Windows 98.
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And it's called Liero.
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Unfortunately, getting it seems
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like it might be a little tricky.
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So a lot of you might not realize this,
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but check this out.
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Windows 95 is actually pre like
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the blue Internet Explorer icon.
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This is when like Internet Explorer was the name
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because it was Internet Mail, Internet News,
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and Internet Explorer.
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What does Internet News even look like?
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What do you, please select a folder
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where Internet Mail should keep your message up.
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What are you even talking about?
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Internet News is the best way to keep your messages online.
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news configuration.
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Holy crap.
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So we're gonna have to download the game separately
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and then just copy it over to here,
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except one small problem.
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Even though the game is small enough
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to fit on a single floppy disk,
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I don't have any floppy disks.
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Does this pop out?
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Is this floppy drive removable?
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Holy crap it is.
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There must be like a catch somewhere for it.
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It definitely, anyway.
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Also, RJ45 was considered a fancy pants feature back then.
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None of that.
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And of course, even if Windows 95 did support USB storage,
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it doesn't have any USB ports.
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And Wi-Fi, oh, forget about it.
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That was still a twinkle in the eye
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of an engineer somewhere.
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Like that, that's not a thing.
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I'll be right back.
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Fortunately, what is a thing
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is this old external CD burner that I have.
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And this spindle of CDRs
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that I happen to have kicking around.
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Like I still remember, when if you had a CD burner,
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you were the coolest kid in class.
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Like, yeah, they were slow and the software was atrocious.
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Also, the blank disks were expensive.
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So when a burn failed, it was like actually a big deal.
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Like, okay, there goes a few more dollars, great.
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Thanks for that.
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but you could move a whopping 650 megabytes of data
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in between machines or store it safely.
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And that is exactly what we are gonna do.
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Now, I don't actually have burning software installed
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on this laptop because why would I?
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But I seem to recall Microsoft building it in at some point.
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Okay, how do you wanna use this disc?
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With a CD, DVD player, Riero.
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Manage, finish burning.
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Okay, I'm burning a CD.
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It's been a while.
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Now, when I say these things were slow,
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like I really mean it.
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I'm going at a speed that is about eight times
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what we would have had back then
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in the early days of CD burning.
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I'm only writing like a mega files
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and it's still taking this long
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because there was the preamble
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and the like the finishing process
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that had to be done on the disc
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regardless of how much you wrote to it.
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So let's see if this works.
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Fortunately, if it didn't,
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I've got this whole spindle
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that definitely is not earmarked for any other purpose.
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So Brian must have actually burned this for me.
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That's awesome.
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Thanks, dude.
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Hey, there we go.
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Holy crap, I think it worked.
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Liero Windows 98.
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Give her a second here.
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Gotta ramp up that disc.
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Okay, is this gonna work?
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Oh, IRQ5.
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Extended memory successfully initialized.
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Press any key.
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Oh yeah, Liero V1.33, baby.
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Hey, Jake, you wanna play some Liero?
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Liero.
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So it's local multiplayer only.
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Oh, so am I like WASD and you're?
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Well, you're RFDG
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and then you need fire, change weapons, and jump.
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If it helps at all, mine's really not much better.
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So there's a mini map down here.
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Wait, I think I played this before.
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Nah, there's a way to dig fast.
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Ah, there it is.
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You hold the direction you wanna go
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and then you press back.
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So you, like, you spam back.
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I think this keyboard has ghosting issues.
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Oh, I see.
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So only one of us can like dig at a time.
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Just get some explosives going on up in this biz.
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I'm stuck, oh no.
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Oh crap.
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That was not what I meant to do.
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Oh, get slaughtered.
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That slow reload is killing me here.
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No, I can't even aim.
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Oh no.
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Oh, right, the hook shot.
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What?
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I can't change my weapons
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because you're holding down keys.
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Yes.
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No.
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This is a match.
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I can't change my weapon.
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Nah, you're done.
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We have 14 lives, we're gonna be here all day.
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Yeah, when you're better at the game
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and the controls are working,
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it actually goes pretty quick.
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Oh, the grasshopper's really powerful.
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What the hell?
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Okay, next point wins, I guess.
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Yeah.
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Shoot.
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I shouldn't have said that.
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And I'm done.
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Thanks, bud.
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Now, one of the other things I used my laptop for
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when I was a teenager was looking at pictures.
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So the problem, though, is that when you...
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Did that just use Internet Explorer to open a picture?
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It did.
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It is downloading it from the CD-ROM drive.
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Give her a minute.
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Oh, yeah, there it goes.
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She's loading.
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She's loading in.
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Skin tones were really not handled very well
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on the default setting.
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So you can hardly tell
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because the display is so bad,
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but if you zoom in on this,
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can you tell how little color depth there is to this thing?
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Yeah, it's pretty bad.
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Look at it, like, loading in on the edges of the frame
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as you...
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Did you see that?
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Yeah.
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Oh, it's spectacular.
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Now, fortunately, many older computers,
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if you went into the properties,
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much like you would today,
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allowed you to, here we go,
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change the color palette from the default 256 to high color
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or even true color.
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Now, with that said,
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that didn't actually seem to do much for me.
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And it might've been Windows 98
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where they had a built-in picture viewer.
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Can I open this with something else?
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Like, is this something that's been altered?
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Yeah, this is clearly no better.
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The bottleneck here may actually be the display.
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You guys will just have to take my word for it.
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16 or better yet, 24-bit color
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was definitely a much better experience
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when looking at pictures on your laptop.
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A better representation of skin tones, for sure.
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That is assuming that your dial-up internet connection
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could even download anything high res, high color.
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I think that's enough of me fooling around with this thing.
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Let's get down to business and play some 1602 AD.
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Is the sound not working?
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Did that turn it off or something?
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It's not a form of DRM or anything.
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It's just that the sound assets were too big
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to actually copy over to the hard drive.
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In-game music wouldn't work without the disk in.
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Let's go ahead and close down the program.
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Try that one more time.
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Isn't that great?
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Single player.
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Oh, lame.
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The yellow and blue player got big ships to start.
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So settling a Southern island is good late game
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because you've got like cotton and all that kind of stuff,
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but actually Northern islands
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were better for food production.
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We have to explore the island.
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One moment, please.
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Ooh, cocoa and cotton, 100% yield.
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Oh, and there's ore!
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There we go.
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Build a warehouse.
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The controls are like so unintuitive.
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Man, I might go home tonight and like legit play this game.
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Let's get a Forester's hut going on over here.
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I won't subject you guys to any more of that though.
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So that's pretty much it.
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That's a look at not the laptop that I owned as a kid,
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but one that is pretty darn close.
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It was a hand-me-down actually from my half sister's dad.
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So it was all-in-one.
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It was already worthless then,
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and it's even more worthless now.
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Well, thanks for watching you guys.
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Thanks to Brian for giving me this old clunker of a laptop
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to play with here.
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And if you guys enjoyed the video,
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you can hit that like button.
18:22
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18:24
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But we're gonna have, wow,
18:27
I did my entire outro out of order, whatever.
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Go buy merch and join our forum.
18:33
Yes.