I’m not ashamedto tell youthat
connecting the Packard Bell tower to a
modern 16:10 monitor andbootingto
vanilla Win98felt wrong in away that
made me genuinely disappointed in
myself,like I’d snuck into my parents’
bedroom and uncovered my Christmas
presents on the first week of December.
The right monitor, a 17-inch Packard Bell
748 0 outputting at 1600x1200,
summons memories you’d forgotten.
It’slike looking directly at 1998, in a way
that’shypnotic and mesmeric.
And then, around four years after I
started this ridiculous questin 2017, the
master CDs came up. Windows 98 isn’t
special tothe retro gamer – we all know
it far too well.But Windows 98with all
the bloatware we mucked around with,
and all the branded desktop
backgrounds we perused,is another
level still of immersion.
Now whenI play Unreal, I don’t just
enjoy some retro graphics. Ienjoy the
sound ofan old PC booting, the
anti-static boom of the screen, the tinny
audio of its built-in speakers,and the
feel of headshotting with aheavyold
ball mouse. It’snirvana. No remake
could possibly compete.
Phil Iwaniuk
101
ABOVE: Old classics look radically different on CRTs at era-appropriate resolutions.BELOW: Eat your words, Thomas Wolfe. You can go home again.