I’ve wanted to build a retro pc for windows 98 gaming, but giving space in my house and such it just isn’t a viable option. Then I came across this video Linus did about pcem and wanted to try it out with a pc I kinda just have laying around. Before I do that tho I wanna know a couple of things.

• does anyone have experience with PCem? How well does it work?

• I’m planning on using it for windows 98 in particular because that seems to be a sweet spot for retro 90s gaming between dos and then games that run natively on windows 98/95. My question is what games would be like a must have to play on it? I’ve searched around for a comprehensive list but it’s kinda just stuff broken up in different forums and such.

I’m already planning on putting some the games I already own:

• doom and other variants I have
• wolfenstein
• torment
• baldurs gate with expansions
• neverwinter
• unreal
• quake

I never did pc gaming as a kid so I’m not 100% sure what other games would be completely worth grabbing.

I was planning on getting the following:

• any command and conquer
• final fantasy’s just cause I think the pc ports are cool and so are the boxes.
• age of empires
• there was this really stupid game at school I used to play which was an edutainment game that involved math and climbing up a snow mountain but I can’t remember the name.

That’s all I’ve really thought about.

Is this a stupid idea? Should I just get actual hardware? Another reason I’m doing this is cause it’s easier to do a kvm switch on modern computers compared to older depending on hardware configurations. Only thing I would really be missing out on is using a crt from back in the day, but I’m sure I could figure something out with that seeing as I have a crt already.

Thoughts?