What to play on an X31?

January 20, 2009 6:02 PM

What are some decent offline games I'll be able to run on my new (to me) Thinkpad X31?

I just got an IBM Thinkpad X31 off ebay to replace my even more ancient T22.

I'm going to have a lot of time over the next few months w/ no internet connection, and I was wondering what sort've fun offline games I'll be able to run on this thing without causing it to overheat and desolder itself.

I don't game too much, but I like puzzlers along the lines of Crayon Physics and Incredible Machine, and also enjoyed what I played of The Longest Journey.

I was thinking I could probably run some of the older Myst titles...where in the series would be a good place to start?

The PC specs are 1.6ghz Pentium M, and 512 mb ram...I'm guessing these things were just integrated video.

Thanks in advance...

posted by pilibeen to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Here's a bunch of free (some trial only) downloads.
posted by jeffamaphone at 6:18 PM on January 20, 2009

Also: if you're going to post specs, video card is also fairly important for determining what sorts of games you can play. 512mb ram ain't much, but if you're running XP and you disable a bunch of services and use the Windows Classic theme, that will help.
posted by jeffamaphone at 6:19 PM on January 20, 2009

You should be able to play most of the games available at GOG (Good Old Games). If you don't want to buy the games from their site, you can always use it as a catalogue of good games.
posted by Memo at 6:28 PM on January 20, 2009

I ran MAME on my x31 like gangbusters.
posted by furtive at 6:29 PM on January 20, 2009

XCom and Jagged Alliance would be my suggestions.
posted by ellF at 6:36 PM on January 20, 2009

I've been able to run Warcraft 3 on a system similar to yours (Dell 700m). Starcraft will run as well.

Those are RTS games (real time strategy). Halo will work. So will Sims. Of course, it'll take a while to load and you have to play on lowest graphics and you should get a mouse. Also the system will run hot so make sure the fan works and you have good ventilation.
posted by abdulf at 7:43 PM on January 20, 2009

Get ScummVM and any and all games you can find for it. Beneath a Steel Sky is free and good.

Super Nintendo (and other) emulators provide a world of games.
posted by alexei at 8:15 PM on January 20, 2009

If you like strategy games at all, Civilization 3 should run fairly well on that system, and in my book there's no better way to blow countless hours. Hell, if you can't find a copy on EBay or somewhere like that, I'd be happy to send you my old disk (since I have moved on to Timesink...er...Civ 4).
posted by JaredSeth at 8:18 PM on January 20, 2009

This thread has a bunch of suggestions.

I found out about Dwarf Fortress from it and really enjoyed the game.
posted by Midnight Rambler at 8:53 PM on January 20, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks for the suggestions.

About the emulators - would I only be able to run a NES/SNES emulator, or should this hardware be able to handle N64 as well? Also, what do you do about controllers? I have a 360 controller...could that be used as a gamepad?
posted by pilibeen at 9:12 PM on January 20, 2009

N64 emulators do fine with ATI and Nvidia cards, even low-end if I remember. They don't do so well with some Intel integrated cards though.

(And, yes, absolutely download the dozens of great SNES games out there.)
posted by shadytrees at 9:43 PM on January 20, 2009

Popcap.com has some excellent online games that you can play on very low-equipped PCs. If you haven't played Peggle, you haven't lived!
Tower Toppler is a cute (and addictive) remake of an old Amiga/Commodore game called Nebulus.
Lemmings is fun, puzzling and addictive. A rewrite that works on Windows is linked from this page, with some commentary and instructions for installation.
posted by Susurration at 7:09 PM on January 21, 2009