Best Games Madeline Blondeau Played On A 2010 ThinkPad In 2023 | Winter Spectacular 2023
[Content Warning: This article contains brief mentions of digital sexual violence and rape]
I played new video games this year. (I promise.)
But that wasn’t where I found the most joy. Rather – the modern state of gaming filled me with dread, every time I checked in. Seventy-dollar price tags? Constant layoffs? Unabated acquisition? All of my favourite websites, dead or restructured – and Geoff Keighley is still here?!
Take me back to being ten years old and too dumb to understand capitalism, thanks. There was fun to be had this year, but the joy I got from new, full-priced releases was minimal.
That joy hasn’t disappeared, however. This year, it took the form of a 2010 Lenovo ThinkPad X100e. Thanks to a video from This Does Not Compute (courtesy of my partner), I learned this particular model was both affordable and adept at handling older games. It took a bit of scouring to find one in decent enough shape; as the video recommended, I also purchased extra RAM to adjust for some sluggish performance, and replaced the pre-installed Mint OS with Windows 7.
Gaming on the X100e has been a joy. There’s a good 20 years of PC gaming barely accessible through Windows 8, 10, or 11, with 7 as a last hold-out of many lingering design choices from the DOS era. The architecture of the OS has a broader range of compatibility with older programs that haven’t made the jump to later versions. Running XP was also an option, as most of the games you’ll see here would run plenty well on it – better than 7, in some cases. That’s actually still in the cards; I’m just more familiar with 7 from high school and college, and decided to start there.
There’s a lot more information available on why older operating systems and retro computing are the definitive way to play many older titles. YouTube channels like LGR, Adrian's Digital Basement, Macintosh Librarian, Amelie Doree, and so many more devote time, effort, and resources to documenting both old technology and the games that run on it. But I’m no tech guru – just a simple girl who wants to play her gay little games. So let’s talk about where I had the most fun doing that in 2023 on a Lenovo ThinkPad X100e!
Tomb Raider II
Video game design doesn’t get much better than the platforming dioramas of the first few Tomb Raider titles. Lara’s movement is bound to a grid in these older entries, which makes platforming more satisfying and less like the game rewarding players for a blind leap. If you time a jump, flip, or just about anything badly, the consequence is likely a hasty death.
It’s this fragility that defines classic Tomb Raider. There’s right or wrong – do or die – and you have to figure it out with arcane hints and camera pans. Later entries would sand these edges off in service of nebulous ‘accessibility’, the efficacy of which could be debated until the frostbitten butlers thaw out.
That aside, Tomb Raider II remains the majestic high point of that initial 1996 - 2003 run of the series. Settings like Venice and China strike a perfect balance between challenging and encouraging. Their verticality and compact structure – combined with well-placed death traps – make for devious but rewarding exploration. Better yet, running this through Windows 7 on the Lenovo made many of the lighting effects that don’t work on modern rigs look tremendous!
Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Touhou 6)
Each Touhou entry is a testament to the growth of its creator, Zun. The solo dev has been slowly building his colourful world of shrine maidens and aristocratic demons since 1996. In each entry his expressive and earnest art grows, his understanding of level design deepens, and – most crucially – his musicianship expands far beyond his early efforts. He’s one of gaming’s most prolific talents, and a testament to taking a risk on the art you believe in.
Embodiment of Scarlet Devil is a marked turning point in the series, and the entry I remember most fondly from my 2010 summer break. That was the first summer I spent too much time on 4Chan and Exhentai – both of which I learned about Touhou from. Whether it was from memes or erotic illustrations, I got attached enough to these characters well before I actually downloaded the games they belonged to. It was that attachment that made me finally download, play, and fall in love with each of them up until that point.
Scarlet Devil remains my favourite entry for how it finally perfects Zun’s shoot-em-up ambitions. The bullet patterns are meticulously organized, with colourful firework spreads that clutter the screen and spell certain doom with one wrong move. Music is fast and energetic, yet laced with a backing track of existential dreaminess that fits the story of venturing into a house of devils. After a slow evolution from its PC-98 days, Touhou exploded onto the XP with a challenging, complex shmup that few have matched still.
Galaxy Angel
Galaxy Angel has a weird history in the West. All of the Broccoli game’s anime – and most of its manga – have been released in English. (Some several times!) I’ve watched the show since 2004, when I picked up the first volume of the Bandai release at a rural Wal-Mart. Yet to this day, every single game in the series remains unreleased outside of Japan. Fortunately, the first trilogy – Galaxy Angel, Moonlit Lovers, and Eternal Lovers – has been translated and cracked by fans abroad.
Also fortunate is the fact that an early aughts visual novel SRPG hybrid runs great on a thirteen-year-old ThinkPad. I finally got around to the initial entry on my new-old laptop, and it was everything I’d hoped for.
The 2002 PC title (also released for PS2 and Xbox) is unique in how it balances real-time strategy theatrics with accessible design and a comprehensible story. Being a dating sim first and foremost, it leads with characterisation to ground its world. The result is a story that has tangible, personal stakes outside of its rote exposition. Its real-time strategy portions never get too lost in the weeds, either; a snappy and simple UI makes weaving through colourful Itano circuses a breeze. Akin to an intergalactic Sakura Wars, Galaxy Angel functions as both a charming snapshot of early aughts otaku ephemera and just a flat-out great game.
Taimanin Asagi
By a certain praxis, Taimanin Asagi is reprehensible sleaze that eroticizes sexual violence in service of disenfranchising its female leads. By another, it’s a morally complex story of complicated women doing ugly things to each other with mild sociopolitical underpinnings. The kunoichi melodrama raises messy but layered points about the intersection of class and race when it comes to policing, and how vindictive bad- faith actors can weaponize long-standing animosities for their own gain. There’s also a lot of really fun and gross sex!
On a deeper level, I appreciate these games’ willingness to complicate their female leads. Women are essentialized on a biological level by the game’s narrative, but not necessarily a philosophical one. Oboro is an interesting antagonist in that she isn’t necessarily in the wrong – she’s just diametrically opposed to the hegemonic national order. For that, she’s willing to employ inhumane and unethical warfare against the government-contracted Taimanin. Loyalty and solidarity towards your own gender fall to personal trauma.
Or maybe it’s just gross rape porn. You probably won’t get a whole lot of intellectual gratification out of Taimanin Asagi – it’s mainly about putting powerful heroines up against gnarly odds and watching them struggle for titillation. But it’s very good at doing that – and kunoichi are, objectively, very cool. As Taimanin finally finds its North American foothold as an edgy casual game for wider audiences, it’s fun to revisit its bawdy, nasty roots. It’s been officially translated for the first time this year, and if you’ve got the constitution, it comes highly recommended.
Harvester
A deeply misunderstood remnant of edgy 90s hyperviolence, Harvester is a decadent blend of adventure game, splatterpunk fiction, and biting social commentary. The grimy FMV opus is, at once, a celebration and critique of excessive violence in video games.
The plot follows the machinations of a sinister but undefined corporation. It grooms average citizens into becoming murderers by exposing them to heightened examples of everyday woes. The Harvesters create a virtual town in which to do this – Harvest – and proceed to make life hell for their guinea pigs. Players take the role of Steve, an amnesiac eighteen-year-old who awakens in his Harvest home with no recollection of his past or present. As the equation presented to him by family and friends doesn’t add up, he uncovers the upsetting truth and tries to break free – foiled at every turn.
Apart from the upsetting violence and subject matter, perhaps the bleakest thing about Harvester is its glum assessment of our culture. That we’ve devolved into a series of corporate monoliths selling commodified violence to children to keep them complacent and malleable. To be a good citizen is to consume, procreate, and die as a patriot. The game’s deliberate pace and constant misdirection make it sink in further, as players are marched – slowly – to a tragic and inevitable conclusion.
Epilogue
This year, my relationship with gaming continued to evolve. I was fortunate enough to have a regular byline at Paste, where I’ve worked on some pieces that I can – finally – say I’m legitimately proud of. They wouldn’t have been possible without my editor taking a chance on and working with me on pitches that aren’t exactly “marketable.” It took his belief in my writing to find it in myself, and through that, I found things to love in the medium again.
In the race to be relevant, to always have a “take”, it’s easy to lose sight of why we even spend time on games. There’s so much baggage attached to our enjoyment of this art form, which stems from the fact that – ultimately – these things often are still conceived of, developed, and marketed as fun toys to play with. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. Film is, after all, an evolution of themed entertainment – right? It took the pioneers in that space to look at what the medium was capable of and to simply… push.
That’s why it’s useful to always keep our eye on the pushes of the past. To play old games on aged hardware, with hard limits forcing us to divest from the technological arms race. This ThinkPad took me back to the first online-enabled computer I had in my room circa 2010. It was a cheap Costco tower I learned how to mount ISOs, run MAME, and dual-boot Linux on. Stuffed to the brim with ripped city pop MP3s, PlayStation games, and weird doujinshi. How much Brood War, or Touhou, or Serious Sam or – for that matter – Postal 2 did I play on that thing? And how far did I push those specs when StarCraft II and Skyrim came out? It was never top-of-the-line. But I was grateful for every second I got to spend on it before it met its ignoble end as “mom’s work computer” when I went to college with a gaming laptop.
Old computers are windows into snapshots of our lives. We’ve grown up alongside them for a handful of decades now, and barring an apocalypse-level event, we’re in it together for the long haul. So it’s important, if we care about this art form, to keep those windows open. To not relegate our old tech to a landfill, but rehome, recycle, reuse it. Don’t be afraid to peer into the janky, strange, and slow past of an art form prized by investors for being “fast-paced” and “high-energy.” Because – at one time – these were the only lenses we had to view them through. If we stop to look, they can still show us things that slipped between the cracks of cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all “progress.”
