It was just a joke referencing the fact that my first two stories were thematically similar. And anyway, has it been a week? I'll be damned, it has. Well, "(Whatever) of the Week" has never actually been weekly. It's always been as and when.

I just used whoohoo.co.uk for the dialect, by the way. I can't believe that site still exists. And there's no Welsh option so I just went with Irish. It's close enough, I figured.

Recently downloaded: Civilization 2: Test of Time. Man, how did I miss this? I played Civilization 2 more than any other game up until I got Team Fortress Classic many years later. And now Team Fortress 2 is my most played game.

But I was a huge Civilization fan. From what I can gather, Test of Time was a little-known game, hurriedly released to compete with Activision's unrelated game called Civilization: Call to Power.

You can tell that this thing was a rush job. It's just Civilization 2 with some added crap. I played the "extended" game today. In normal Civilization 2, technologies stop at around the genetics which gives you the Cure for Cancer wonder. But in the extended version of the game, there's some future technologies. You can build tougher units and whatever. Maybe there's also some added city improvements and wonders. You can also fight the aliens on Alpha Centauri using a transporter or something.

I haven't really figured it out. But I played as the aliens. It's boring. It's just you on the planet. You start with a bunch of advanced units (which are just wacky animals) but then you research the exact same shit as the humans do. And you build the same city improvements as they do. And the same wonders. Why is an alien going on Crusades? How is it even possible when there's nobody to crusade against? And I forgot that the Crusades were even a Wonder back in Civilization 2. You couldn't get away with that these days. As a kid, I didn't even know what "King Richard's Crusades" refered to, I just knew that it gave you an assload of resources.

I'd be willing to put more time into it, check out the wacky fantasy mod and the wacky science fiction mod but...here's the crazy thing: this game is just as slow today as it was 20 years ago. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE? I'm running on a computer a thousand times faster. I don't actually know how much faster it is, but let's say 1000. IT'S JUST AS SLOW.

It's madness. Why am I waiting 30 seconds between turns? What calculations need to be done that my supercomputer can't do in a nanosecond?

And talk about a pain getting this thing to run at all on Windows 10. The game was designed for Windows 95.

First of all, the pirated version is a CUE file. Remember those? I think it's a proprietary file type of Nero.

So fine. I'll just download a bootleg copy of Nero to open this shit. I did that. It was from some Russian site. I try to install, put in the hacked serial number, and nothing doing.

Then I go to Google Translate to try to figure out what the Russian instructions say. Turns out, it was one of those deals where you're supposed to disconnect from the internet before you install the software because the software dials into the Nero website and adds some anti-cracking shit to your computer. So now I can't install it because I don't know where they put this anti-cracking shit.

Well, Power ISO also works. So I found a bootleg copy of Power ISO. Managed to install it, no weirdness with having to be offline. But the thing keeps telling me that the game is corrupted.

I look on the internet. Everyone on the abandonware sites are complaining about this same issue. "DON'T DOWNLOAD THIS GAME! DOESN'T WORK! WASTE OF YOUR TIME!"

Anyway, I eventually figured out how to get this shit open with Power ISO. I don't remember what I did. Then I installed the game. But...when you try to start it, it says, "file type not recognised" or something.

I tried administrative mode and Windows XP mode and Windows 95 mode and everything.

Then I look up some Civilization forums. They say that you need to run this game in DosBox with Windows 3.1 installed. God, this is a lot of work. I already have DosBox but it's a huge pain in the ass already. Now you want me to also install Windows 3.1 WITHIN DosBox? It's ridiclous.

But I really wanted to play this game so I did it. No, nothing. Game doesn't work. I was able to get Windows 3.1 running in DoxBox, though. That may be useful at some point if I suddenly want to play old WIndows games.

Anyway, that's everyone's answer. "Install Windows 3.1 in DoxBox". But then I downloaded a no-cd crack from GameCopyWorld or whatever. It's been years since I went to that site. Yeah, that got it going. I was able to start the game but then it crahsed when it got to the screen where you type in your name.

Searched online and found other people with the same problem. They say, "Download the Windows 64 patch that somebody made."

So that's what I did. I tracked down the Windows 64 patch that some nerd made and put it in my Civilization 2 directory. Patched the game. Try it out. It works! And no DoxBox crap required.

It's just a shame that the game is so slow and everything looks muddy. It's still better than Civilization 3.