January 23, 2012

My Conquest of Strategic Conquest

Filed under: Main — Tags: — admin @ 12:01 am

Strategic Conquest on the OSX Intel iMac I’m playing Strategic Conquest on my 2010 iMac. It’s the good version of the game, version 3.01, the one I played for hours and hours in the 1990s. Same code, too.

Simple games are my favorite, and Strategic Conquest is one that I’m seriously addicted to. It’s a war game, like Risk, but with some extra twists. In fact, I probably bought the first version for the Mac back in the 1980s.

The details of the game aren’t important. The developer, Delta Tao, stopped making Strategic Conquest several years back; they never came out with an OS X version. Even if they did, their last version, 4.x, wasn’t my favorite. I liked version 3.01. In fact, I liked it so much, that I’ve hung on to the original floppy disk that came with the game back in 1990.

The game is coded for the PowerPC Mac. I retired my PowerPC Mac from 2003 about 18 months ago, and I still have it in the bone yard. My current iMac is an Intel Mac, and it won’t run PowerPC software. In fact, if you dare put a PowerPC program on the Intel Mac the icon grows a ghostly white “NO” symbol.

I don’t know what itch caused me to suddenly yearn to play Strategic Conquest again. Well, heck, I’ve been wanting to scratch that itch for about 11 years now.

It’s probably that original floppy diskette sitting on my shelf. I mean, why did I keep it?

So I pulled out my USB floppy drive — the only floppy drive I own, and one that still comes in handy. I connected the USB floppy drive to my iMac. In went the Strategic Conquest disk and . . . nothing.

You know, floppy disks and other media will, over time, erase themselves. After a while, the earth’s magnetic poles reorient the ferrous oxide particles on the disk’s surface. The same thing happens to old video tapes. (You remember video tape?) Perhaps the disk was bum?

Connecting the USB floppy drive to a PC didn’t work either; the PC failed to recognize the Strategic Conquest diskette.

Not wanting to give up, and needing further motivation, I obtained a PowerPC OS9 Emulator for my iMac. It’s called SheepShaver, for some reason. It works: You run the app on your Intel OS X Mac and you get an OS9 Mac in a window. Pretty keen.

Now I was hooked: I just had to find a way to get that Strategic Conquest game onto my iMac.

I pulled my old PowerPC Mac from the bone yard and set it up. It worked, and even though it could have played Strategic Conquest, the game was nowhere to be found on the thing’s hard drive.

But the PowerPC Mac isn’t the only Mac in the boneyard. I also have a vintage Mac Quadra from 1993. I’ve not turned in on since about 1998 or so.

For 14 years, I’ve kept the Quadra’s monitor (CRT), console, keyboard, and mouse. The keyboard and mouse used the old Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) connection, not USB. The keyboard was missing its ADB cable, but the mouse was okay. I figured as long as I didn’t need to type, I’d be fine. (Thank you, Steve Jobs.)

To my surprise, the Quadra started right up. The CRT looked like Hell, but I could use it.

I put the Strategic Conquest diskette into the Quadra’s floppy drive (its only removable media), and the disk came right up. Turns out the disk is an old Double Density (DD) floppy. That’s why the newer computers couldn’t read it; they can only read High Density (HD) floppies. Duh. I should have known that.

After 22 years, the Strategic Conquest 3.01 diskette still worked.

I copied the program to the Quadra’s ancient hard drive. Then I ejected the original diskette and put in a new, 3 1/2-inch HD floppy. (Yes, I still have them.) I copied the program from the Quadra’s hard drive to the HD floppy.

Once again, I attached the USB floppy drive to my iMac, but this time I inserted the HD floppy. Sure enough, Strategic Conquest appeared in the window. I quickly copied the program to the iMac’s hard drive.

Eventually I figured out how to copy the program to the SheepShaver emulator’s OS9 volume. Then I started the emulator and — for the first time in 11 years — loaded up and played a round of Strategic Conquest.

Strategic Conquest 3.01

I am poised for certain victory!

Yep: I’m a geek. But I’m thrilled.

2 Comments

  1. I love this game, but haven’t played it in forever. I’ve been getting my fix by playing DEFCON:
    http://store.steampowered.com/app/1520/

    Comment by gamerguy473 — January 23, 2012 @ 11:20 am

  2. Oo! That looks fun. I’ll check it out!

    Comment by admin — January 23, 2012 @ 2:37 pm

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