Lazy Game Reviews

In 1999, Creative Labs released the SurroundStation – a metal framework for mounting rear channel speakers onto foldable hollowed-out arms. It's neat! But it ain't much without speakers. So this is also an unboxing and test of the classic Cambridge SoundWorks FPS1000 4.1 speaker kit from 1998!

Cleaning up, testing out, and enjoying the Sharp PC-7000 lunchbox-style portable PC! A proper MS-DOS computer that proved quite successful for Sharp throughout the second half of the 80s. It may not be the fastest, most capable luggable of its day, but dang if it doesn't look spiffy.

A nostalgic review of Microsoft Motocross Madness from 1998! Rainbow Studios is well-known for their MX vs ATV series and related offroad video games, but years prior there was MCM for Windows 95 and 98 PCs. And it was excellent. That invisible out of bounds cannon never gets old!

A look back at the odd late 90s CrossPad from A.T. Cross and IBM! An electronic notepad letting you draw on normal paper, automatically digitizing drawings and text, and storing them in memory for transfer to a PC over serial! A fascinating and ill-fated oddity indeed.

Opening and testing a minty AST Advantage 600 series! A lower-mid-range Windows 95 desktop computer from the mid 90s that bundled lots of software and games with a 100MHz Intel Pentium CPU and a whopping 8 megabytes of RAM. Let's get this one up and running for (maybe) the first time!

A retrospective on Bryce 3D from 1997, a classic program letting you quickly create surreal ray traced imagery on your computer. It always makes me think of 90s Trapper Keeper artwork, when school binders and folders were covered in shiny CGI shapes and weird sci-fi cities and things. So let's create a tribute to that style of art using Bryce for PC!

A system so strange I don't know where to begin! This is the Web It Internet Computer from Web Computers in 1999. It's effectively a 66MHz 486 PC with 16MB RAM that not only runs IBM PC DOS 7.0 and Windows 3.1, but also C64 software! To a degree. And the closer you look the weirder it gets.

Unboxing and testing even more weird old mouse devices on a Windows 98 and XP PC! Checking out an 8D Smart Mouse from Yahoo, a smelly and off-putting baseball mouse with a rubbery skin, and an optical mouse for FPS games that looks like a lightgun but isn't.

The IBM PC Music Feature is one of the rarest, most collectible sound cards for DOS PCs. Sure, you can get a Yamaha FB-01 FM synthesizer that does practically the same thing, but the IMFC! It's a legend! Is it worth nearly $3,000 for one complete in box? Let's unbox and set this one up to find out.

Gameplay and overview of the THIRTEENTH expansion pack to The Sims 4. This time it's all about fleshing out how sims interact and evolve over each life state. Treehouses to build, infants to parent, bikes to ride, milestones and quirks to unlock... Is it worth the $40 price tag? Let's see!

All of the LGR 486 build and upgrade videos from 2016 to 2022! Plus the latest updates and new commentary along the way, adding context and fresh info between each video. There's also a whole new update section at the end going over the bits I haven't covered before in other videos.

Soon it's gonna be May, so let's check out this silliness! The *NSYNC Hotline Fantasy Phone & CD-ROM Game for Windows PCs, a 2001 plastic toy cell phone and interactive NSYNC parasocial fan experience... Thing... In hindsight, I have no idea why I covered this, haha.

Assembling a computer in a GMC R-2 Toast case! Named for its unique 5.25" drive bay solution, where optical disc drive is mounted vertically along the front so discs are inserted like toast in a toaster. A rebuild of my Altair 8800 Clone PC with unused RAM from the Pyramid PC.

The Musketeer 3 is a vacuum tube audio filter thing, intended to add “warmth” to the sound output on your PC. Or something like that, probably. It also has an analog VU meter and just looks neat, and arguably its aesthetic is more impactful than how it sounds! Making this valve device some prime LGR Oddware indeed.

For YEARS now I've wanted to get a huge Antec 1200 case and fill every one of its 5 1/4" drive bays with weird and strange 90s and 2000s devices, creating a sort of Oddware Museum Tower. And it finally happened! Mostly. It isn't quite done yet, but we can still install everything into this monster ATX PC case and power everything on at once!

Checking out an early 90s J. Bond Computer Systems A333CD. It's your standard white box clone PC of the time, packing a 33MHz AMD 386, 8 megabytes of RAM, DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 and stuff! It also came with a nifty 250MB Colorado tape backup drive, so that's fun.

Checking out the unique Bear A Byte computer system! I had to have this weird custom machine as soon as I saw it on Craigslist. An IKEA stuffed bear packing a Windows PC running an Intel Pentium 3 CPU? Oh yes. It's rather dirty though, so let's go about restoring and building this rig back even better!

From PCMIDI.EU comes the Orpheus 2 – a new 16-bit ISA sound card! Could this be the best one for vintage computers right now? An argument can be made for that I think. On-board Gravis Ultrasound PnP compatibility, plus all the Orpheus 1 features like Sound Blaster Pro compatibility, Yamaha OPL3, and an intelligent mode MPU-401. As far as modern replica sound cards go, this thing is a step above the rest at the moment!

An LGR review of the Book 8088 and Hand 386, newly-made retro computers on Aliexpress! No emulation here, these are DOS PCs running an 8088 and 386SX processor, using legacy chips on custom PCBs melded with open source projects, off-the-shelf components, and injection molded enclosures. They sure are neat! But lots of compromises, drawbacks, and odd design decisions.

The LGR Oddware Tower continues! Every one of the Antec 1200 case's 5.25" drive bays are filled with weird 2000s devices, all it needed was... everything else, ha. So I got an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and a Foxconn AM2 motherboard from 2006. Let's install everything into this monster ATX PC case and get it set up – with Windows Vista!

Exploring the Diamond Trackstar cards on LGR Oddware! Effectively Apple 2 computers on an 8-bit ISA card, bringing near perfect compatibility to DOS PCs by slapping a whole computer inside of another computer. The fact that these were out during the heyday of each platform is wild, so let's test the 1984 Trackstar and 1989 Trackstar Plus in an IBM PC XT and PS/2 Model 30!

Likely the only LGR donations unboxing of 2023! Opening up tons of vintage hardware, software, oddware, computer games, and retro tech. Massive thanks to everyone who contributed this awesome stuff — and made offers to do so!

Revisiting the 1997 Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Pro joystick for PC! This started off as simple FFB stick nostalgia, showing off a few Windows 95 games, annnd ended up going down rabbit holes on gameport adapters, DirectX, patent trolls, and the quiet demise/resurrection of force feedback flight sticks.

Gameplay and overview of the FOURTEENTH expansion pack to The Sims 4. This time it's all about HORSE ranching. And some goats and sheep, too. Riding, breeding, competitions, cave diving, nectar making, mustaches, denim... Is it worth the $40 price tag? Let's see!

A brief and simple look at the Casio CW-50 Disc Title Printer from 2002. Print directly onto CDs and DVDs! Or any number of random other things if you put your mind to it.

Ever wanted a PC with a dedicated pizza button? Well the Netpliance i-opener from 1999 has you covered, press it anytime to order pizza online! At least back when it was still an active Internet Appliance that connected to the web via dialup. But that won't stop us diving into this oddity on LGR!

Checking out the world's first (and only) digital camera using Iomega Clik disks for storage! Each disk held 40MB and cost just $10, a tenth the price of CompactFlash. Quite impressive in 1999! But this odd diversion in the late 90s digicam market was short lived, and its impact on digital photography is... well, no one remembers it. But it sure was neat!

Graphics performance on the LGR Bear-A-Byte computer was unbearable, it really needed a GPU upgrade. Or a GPU at all for that matter! So say goodbye to the integrated SIS chipset and hello to the Diamond Stealth III S540 video card from 1999. It's still a 500MHz Windows Me system but this has to be an improvement, right?

Original Title: Achieving Maximum Nostalgia with 1999 CompUSA Ads Relaxing with Comp USA newspaper insert catalogs from the late 90s! These flyers always made Sundays a bit better back in the day, and somehow they're even more enjoyable decades later. I have a bunch of them, but this time we're specifically looking at one from February of 1999. When the colorful iMac G3 was new and 300MHz Toshiba laptops cost $2,800!

Checking out VCFMW 18 near Chicago in Elmhurst, Illinois! Somehow it's even bigger and busier than ever. It's a full weekend of classic computers, retro tech, hardware and software sales, panels, gaming, and great conversation with awesome folks. Let's go conventioning!

Checking out the odd Panther XL by Mad Catz! While they largely made goofy third party game console controllers, they also made goofy PC hardware. Like this trackball and flight stick fused together supposedly creating the ultimate FPS input device, backed up by radical 1990s John Romero magazine ads. Prime LGR Oddware indeed!

166MHz Pentium MMX CPU!| 48MB RAM! Windows 95! Sound Blaster compatibility! All in a slim, lightweight 1997 system that cost... $5,000 or so, yikes. Let's dive into the quirky Hewlett Packard notebook computer that was once their top of the line subnotebook – the Omnibook 800CT model F1360A

Unboxing and testing a late 90s Sony Mavica Printer!| Which as the name implies is a photo printer with a floppy disk drive. Just cram a 3.5” diskette full of JPEGs inside, press print, and get photo quality dye sublimated prints! No computer required. Although it does require a TV... and an original PlayStation is nice to have, too.

Reviewing the long-awaited sequel! Is Cities Skylines II worth the upgrade? Lots of fresh features, quality of life improvements, and logical additions make CS2 feel like a proper evolution. But there's a weird amount of stuff currently worse than before, or missing outright. So let's dive into my first impressions and all the details!

Unboxing a new old stock Super VHS video camera! This JVC GR-SXM250u is pretty similar to the original camera that I used to record LGR back in the day, and it was a real treat to experience one that was unused. So let's get this electronic treat opened up and tested out, and record some video tapes decades later!

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of SimCity 2000 with an LGR retrospective review! The sequel to the classic Maxis city builder was a true game changer in 1993, improving nearly every part of the game and adding so many things that would become staples of the genre. So let's take a look at the MS-DOS version, the many ports and releases, and its legacy decades later!