It’s back: Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

Quick 3.5 hour life recap. If your not interested in old school (12 years old, I’m only 22) strategy games, don’t bother reading, just pretend this wasn’t posted.So, I used to be a huge fan of Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares. Unfortunately once I upgraded my machine back in 2003 (my pre-mac era), Moo2 stopped running, or better yet it ran, but was quite grainy, crashy, and frankly unplayable (the game was designed for DOS and Win ’95). So I gave up on one of my favorite games of all time. Since then I would occasionally try it, thinking maybe something changed and I’d get lucky. But unfortunately no dice.Then tonight happened, and for some reason I had an inclination to give it another go. But this time I was thinking. In the past, I never did search to see if there were work arounds, duh. Never did search to see what other people were doing (keeping old boxes around or what). The place I discovered hope: Wikipedia. This entry specifically.People are using an open source Dos emulator, DOSbox, to play the game; brilliant! You may be well aware of all this, but I definitely wasn’t.My actual install steps after the break.3 and a half hours later and this game still rocks. You know how sometimes you’ll play a older game you haven’t player in years, that you used to love, only to become quickly bored and disappointed? Well that definitely didn’t happen for me, I still love this game, hands down.By now your may be wondering, wow Ethan, it’s Friday night: First off, what the heck are you doing trying to get a 12 year old, strategy, turn based game working? Second off, what the heck are you doing playing a 12 year old, strategy, turn based game? Well that’s just who I am. Why not tonight? Furthermore. I’m trying to conserve every dollar right now, for SXSW. My whole mind is currently occupied by SXSW. I’ve been planning, strategizing and investigating. More on all that later.