Evidence of this popularity can be seen in pubs around the nation, which almost always have a dedicated pokie room. The only problem is that it is against the law to get one of these machines installed at home without a license.

We can now play these games in the comfort of our own home, and there’s no need to spend a cent. This is supposedly thanks to someone internal to Aristocrat releasing these ROMs to the public. These are not remakes, but the actual ROMs that are used in the machines that are played in clubs all across Australia.

There are 4 ROMs in all to download. These include 50 Lions, Atlantis, Orchid, and one of my favourites, Indian Dreaming (shame about the included link feature). Each ROM comes with an emulator which represents the buttons on a real Pokie machine.

The ROMs are downloaded from RapidShare, so if you are not a member, you may need some patience for the download to be made available to you.

Read more, see more screenshots, and get the links for the ROMs from the Reproserv.

I used to play them a lot on camping trips with the family, so they bring back lots of memories. Unfortunately, these games are hard to find these days, and if you are successful finding them, you will need to pay top dollar.

I was very excited when I came across a site where quite a few of these games had been recreated for you to play on your PC. There are around 20 of these classics for you to enjoy.

Everything that the original game gave us is included in these packages. The sounds have been recorded and the graphics have all been scanned and touched up. The only main difference is that you control your character with your keyboard.

While most programs used to play old games are emulators, the programmer of these games was not able to get his hands on the required processor information that could have been used to make an emulator. I read on his site that each game has a unique processor. Instead of making an emulator, he recreated each game by hand. Each game is a separate entity. What this means is that the game may not run exactly the same as the original. Saying that, I couldn’t tell the difference in the games I tried out.

The site also contains a lot of interesting information about converting your hand held games to the PC format, if you would like to give the programming a go yourself. I might have a go at remaking Fire!

Get your favourite games from Madrigal Design.

The reason I looked into this was so that I could control Windows Media Centre from my couch. I had all sorts of problems finding a suitable tool. Eventually I came across this gem. After installing it, I found out that it could do much more than I initially wanted. There is no reason why it could not be configured to control first person shooter games.

It is highly configurable, allowing you to change almost every aspect of it. You can use it to control any application. The only drawback I found was that there was no option to disable/enable this utility from the controller. Disabling it is possible by exiting the program, but without the program open, you can no longer use your controller to re-launch the program.

Logitech users would probably be best using the profiler software which can be downloaded from their website. This will allow similar functionality.

Joystick 2 Mouse 3 is available for free from the authors website, or get it from Tucows.

The graphics and audio are fantastic for its time and the game is quite easy to get the hang of, even on our small screens.

There is a lot to the game and it will keep you tapping away very busily to work your way through it. There is so much going on in this game.

The install is straight forward, just double click on the installer and your computer and device will do the rest. The game worked flawlessly on my Ipaq rw6828. It is well worth giving this game a try.

This game is available for free from SMK Software where you can also read up on a bit more about the game.

In comes Kevtris 2.0 for Windows Mobile. I have played this a lot in the last few hours and love every aspect of it, and am unable to find any bad points at all. Where do I start the praise?

The game has great graphics and nice sounds. The blocks flow very smoothly which is often a problem with Windows Mobile games. You can even upload your scores to an online rankings chart.

There are multiple skill levels, and the progression of levels is done very fluently. Some other Tetris games I have played, work fine at level 9 but then when level 10 bears its face, it becomes unreasonably hard. Kevtris allows you to keep going past level 10 without any huge speed jumps.

You can change which buttons on your device move and rotate the pieces. If you press the wrong button, the game will pause ensuring you do not lose where you are up to.

This game will be very well used on my phone. Move over Gameboy!

Download it from Inspect My Gadget.

Many of Sierra’s adventure games and LucasFilm games were designed with this system, meaning they can be played using SCUMMVM. All we need to do is copy the relevant data files across to our device and SCUMMVM will decode and run it, just like you would see on a desktop computer.

After the “Abandonware: What’s all that about?” article I put up on the site a few days ago, I got thinking that I could legally download some of these games, for free, and run them on my Windows Mobile Device.

I used to love playing many of the Sierra games as I was growing up. I can play them all again, at my own convenience, as they will always be with me on my phone. Even though they are 10–20 years old, they are much more enjoyable than what most Windows Mobile games offer us.

The games were released at a time when our desktop computers had similar power to the Pocket PC’s of today, making our devices a perfect tool for playing these games.

I tried out “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and “Beneath a Steel Sky” and both worked flawlessly. The graphics look great on a Pocket PC at full screen and the sound is also fantastic. Both of the screenshots were taken on my Ipaq rw6828.

1. To get it all running on your device, download SCUMMVM from scummvm.org.
2. Pick the download which is suitable for your device.
   Copy the SCUMMVM to your device.
1. Ensure your device is connected to your computer via Activesync or WMDC.
2. Unzip your download
3. Right click on the SCUMMVM folder on your computer and select copy
4. Open ActiveSync, select Explore.
5. Navigate to some free space on your device, probably your storage card, right click and select “paste”
3. Find a supported game using abandonia.com and scummvm.org
1. Check out SCUMMVM for a list of compatible games
2. Many are available from Abandonia
3. Download the game
4. Unzip the game
5. Copy it to the same location as you copied SCUMMVM
4. Navigate to SCUMMVM on your device.
5. Select “Add New”
6. Point SCUMMVM to the folder you copied the game to
7. SCUMMVM should then find the game, all you need to do then is select your game out of the list and select start.

I hope you have had success in getting this up and running on your device. If you are still having problems, have a good look around the SCUMMVM website as there is plenty of support available. Once you have successfully installed one game, you will find the next much easier.

The games are all quite long and well suited to Pocket PC’s. Ideal for train trips or a boring meeting.

Because of this, the term “Abandonware” started. There are a whole heap of games that were made before 2000 that can now be downloaded and played for free.

I didn’t have a chance to play many games while I was growing up and felt I was missing out. Now I have a second chance to waste my valuable time. These games a lot of fun and bring back a lot of memories.

Many of the available games were hits in their time. The lists of available games are very long so I won’t list them here, however I did find a few highlights such as Grand Theft Auto, Ironman’s Offroad, Street Rod, Dune II and Syndicate Wars.

Applications have come a long way over the years and are also available as abandonware. You may find an application that will do the job for you, but with huge advances in technology, you would probably do better using newer versions. Many of Microsoft’s very early Office applications such as Word 6.0 and Publisher 2.0 are available.

There are bound to be some compatibility issues with some of the games, but using compatibility mode and some extra applications, you will be able to run them. The games I listed above all worked without any tweaks. You can often get the manuals to get past any crack protection.

This is all completely legal and above board. Abandonia which has a database of these games are very specific about what is available for free, and what is licensed so start your search for games at Abandonia.com. They have just celebrated their 8^th Birthday so know more about abandonware than most.

To be fair to Vista, most of the problems I came across were related to video card drivers which have nothing to do with Vista itself. I started off this experiment using the drivers that came with my video card. I soon found that an update was required and this allowed most games to work without any other tweaking.

This article will look at a broad range of games which have been popular over the last 8 years. I will also explain my successes and difficulties installing each of these. All games are legitimate copies and cross many genres.

I don’t claim to be a big gamer, though the games that I have, I like to run smoothly. I have not bothered running benchmarks on these games. All that matters to me is if the game loads up alright and then runs at a speed which makes the game usable. If the game crashes with all updates, I treat that as a failure.

Inspect My Gadgets Test System:

I recently bought a new computer to run Vista. I didn’t want to spend the big money so I got hardware which I thought would be adequate. It turns out that it is more than enough to run Vista comfortably.

Hardware includes:
Intel Core2 Duo Processor: 6600 @ 2.40GHz
2GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 7600GT 256MB Video Card
Vista Ultimate

I have updated all the drivers to the most recent I could find as of 01/06/07

The games and how they installed and played:

Deus EX: We are going back a few years with this one. Installation was very clean and there was not one problem with getting this running. Once in the game, it ran smoothly and made use of the hardware that I had in the Vista computer.

I ran through the training mission and Deus Ex worked flawlessly.

MDK2: Another game which takes us back to the start of this decade is MDK2. Installation was quick and easy and Vista did not complain about anything. I played through the early stages of this game and there was no lock ups. Yet again, another flawless installation.

Colin Mcrae Rally 2005: This game installed fine and there were no apparent problems during the install. As I tried to run the game, it reported that I was using an unsupported operating system.

I went to the Codemasters website and downloaded and installed Update Patch 1. This did not solve the problem.

I then proceeded to install the 64bit patch also available at the codemaster website. This allowed the game to launch and run smoothly on my computer. Once I was in the game, I came across no problems.

Medal of Honor, Pacific Assault: The install went flawlessly. The game loaded with the first attempt and I started the first mission. I had a lock up at the same spot, very early on in the game. I retried this 3 times and each time it locked up at a similar spot.

I installed the patch from the EA website and tried running the game again. The lockup happened, this time earlier than before. It was at this stage I tried to update my Video Card drivers. This solved the issue and the game ran well. I love the Drill Instructors speech at the start. It was good to hear it again.

This was a really nice game to see running under my new Video card. The image quality was much better than I had in XP using a 6600 GT.

Medal of Honor Warchest, Allied Assault: The install and gameplay were both flawless. There is nothing else to say. This may be due to having the latest video drivers installed. It is quite an old game now, so I expected success with this. With this success, I expected the expansions below to work smoothly also.

Spearhead Expansion Pack: This Installed painlessly. I had a couple of problems with video settings of Spearhead. The graphic defaults had set themselves to be ridiculously low. After adjusting these in the game, everything was fine. Being an old game, I installed the update patches which went on without fault. I worked my way through this whole game and there were no problems. With the new video card, it was like I was playing a new game.

Breakthrough Expansion Pack: This was the trickiest of all the installs I am covering in this article. My computer was reporting that I needed a Video Card that could handle certain textures. I already had the latest drivers on by this stage. I had to download nhancer which allows you to change some video settings for particular games, working closely with the Nvidia drivers. Once this was installed, I did not need to make any changes to the games profile, as it loaded the best settings. The game then ran really well in single player.

This was the only game I tested under multi-player and I did not have a great deal of luck with this. The game loaded and I could see the buildings fine, but it appeared as if the other players in the game were sharking (dropping under map) and this made it very hard to play. It was still possible to get a few kills but frequently I would find someone popping up directly in front of me, out of nowhere. I am sure this will be fixed with future Video Driver updates but currently, I will have to play this in XP. Many players have had success with his game in Vista.

Need for Speed Carbon: This is one of the more recent games I have tested for this article. The install went well and the game loaded without any problems. I was able to play single races fine but in career mode, when I was in a police chase, the game would lock up. This happened to me twice out of around 4 chases. I assume this is a video problem also and in the future, this game will work fine on my machine. Many other people have reported complete success with this game.

Call of Duty 2:When I tried to install this, Vista reported that there were known compatibility issues. The installer allowed me to continue and the install went through without problems. I was able to play through a few levels of this game and it ran great. I think the new video drivers may have made the previous issues non existent. This was a great game to play utilising the new hardware in my system.

FIFA 2005: The install for this ran very well and there were no warnings or errors throughout. The game loaded fine and I was able to play a couple of matches. FIFA 2005 ran very well and I came across no problems.

Spellforce II – Shadow Wars: This game came with my Video Card. It is the most recent game I have. I had trouble installing it initially but yet again it turns out the Video drivers were initially at fault. It is odd though that a video card company will give you a game with their card to show the cards capabilities, and then give you drivers that aren’t up to date enough to run the game. This game ran flawlessly also. I didn’t get out of starting town because I got bored but everything in the town was fine. This game didn’t impress me much, and I don’t know why it was included as the example to see what you can get out of your video card, as the graphics were not spectacular.

All Seeing Eye: This program is used to connect to multi-player games, allowing you to see which players are on what servers in the games you predefine. This software downloaded and installed well. I was able to test it with Medal of Honor Breakthrough and I came across no problems.

Conclusion:

I had a really high success rate from installing and playing all of these games in Vista. The only dramas I had in the end were playing multi-player “Breakthrough” and “Need for Speed Carbon” locking up occasionally. The nice thing about Vista is that when it locks up, you don’t need to restart your computer, it will kick you back to the desktop. This is obviously a good thing.

The most common solution for getting any games running in Vista, is to install the latest video card drivers, generally available from Nvidia or ATI websites depending on your cards chipset, otherwise your computer manufacturer. These companies have not yet had enough time to enable all games to work flawlessly. They have come a long way since the very early days of Vista and they both release new driver updates regularly.

If you are not comfortable with computers and like to get straight into your games, you may come across some problems that you won’t be able to fix. The majority of games will work straight up, others you may need to search the web for solutions or ring up someone who knows about computers (family friend, not complicated enough for a computer tech) and they should be able to help you get up and running in whichever game you choose.

You can be confident that in 6 months, all new games will run under Vista and they will be spectacular at that.

If you enjoyed this article, please check out some of my other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

This version will allow you to have all the levels available with you on hand with an easy enough to use interface. It is quite playable. Not compared to playing on your PC, but I did get through the first map without any problems and the secret doors and sounds all worked just as they do in the original.

Give it a try and see how it runs on your device. It was flawless in the time I played it. Available from PocketInsanity.