Introducing The Retro Millennial on the Small Web!

What is the Small Web?

The small web is known by a few different names: the small web, the indie web, the retro web, the yesterweb, and a few others. It is ultimately part of this growing movement of PEOPLE online pushing back against the ensh*tification1 of the web in a post-dead-internet2 world. The goal of this web revival is to create something more human and intentional.

Tools & Resources

While many small web sites channel the look and feel of the early internet, many are not truly web 1.0 compatible. They look like something from the mid-90s, but good luck connecting to it from your Windows 98 PC these days. That’s not to say anything bad about these sites — in fact, I quite enjoy perusing them — but I wanted my site to not just look and feel like the early web, I wanted it to work like the early web. HTML 3.2 compatibility, handwritten, designed, and tested on era-appropriate software.

Books

The first concern was that I have virtually no experience with HTML or web development. So, I needed to learn. Thankfully, my local library still has an odd number of really old tech books including a copy of The Non-Designer’s Web Book 2nd Edition from 2000.

Claude

For troubleshooting and getting clarification on things, I did make use of Anthropic’s Claude AI bot. I first prompted it to act as an expert in HTML 3.2 standards. Then, explicitly instructed it to act as a teacher and a knowledge base in order to explain how and why things work the way they do so I could learn as I went along. It was actually quite helpful in figuring out why I was having display issues with certain characters when testing my homepage outside of my development environment. For that particular issue, it turned out to be an issue with character encoding in the Classic (OS 9) environment using MacRoman instead of UTF-8. After adjusting a setting in my editor, the issue was resolved.

Development Environment

My goal for this MARCHintosh was to create this website using the tools that we would have had available in the late 1990s. For the system, I was running Mac OS 9.2 in the Classic Environment on top of OS X Tiger. My editor of choice was BBEdit Lite 4.6 from 1999, and I tested compatibility with the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 2/3/4

• Netscape Navigator 2/3/4

Early Development

While I forgot to grab a screenshot of the earliest iteration (a version I have since taken to calling version 0.1), it was an extremely simple page with black text on a white background with no special formatting. Before long, though, I had the basics of HTML tags down and was able to start formatting my site.

Version 0.2 introduced the most basic change I could think of with a simple background change to a silver — really more of a light gray — and the addition of more pages in a navigation bar, including:

• An About page

• A What’s New page

• A Web Journal

• and a link back to Substack

Version 0.3

Version 0.3.1 is where the current iteration of my small web site is today. It’s kept that simple light gray background with black text, but now includes tables to improve the overall layout and design. It’s still very much incomplete compared to what I am wanting to do with it, but I am happy to see it starting to really take shape.

The Retro Millennial on the Small Web

One big change in this version was finally introducing animated GIFs to the site. This was the point where I started having a number of issues with browser compatibility with some of the older versions of IE and Netscape. I documented all of these in the version 0.3.1 change log from March 16. Nevertheless, the GIFs are a fun addition. While some are simply decorative, most actually serve a purpose.

• What’s New takes you to the What’s New page of the site to see the latest changes and additions.

• Netscape Now 3.0 will take you to the WinWorld library page to download Netscape 3 for your vintage machine of choice.

• Free Internet Explorer will, likewise, take you to the WinWorld library page to download IE (4 by default as it has the best compatibility of the three versions I tested with).

• Any Browser will take you to the Viewable on Any Browser website where you can learn more about the initiative.

• GeoCities will take you to the GeoCities Gallery; a site dedicated to the preservation of old GeoCities pages from the 90s and 2000s.

There is more that I plan to add in the future, but this is a good start. Other changes in this version of the site include:

• March 16 change log added to What’s New

• Links to additional pages in the side navigation pane (these links don’t work yet… I will be adding them in the future but didn’t want to forget)

  • Recent News

  • MARCHintosh 2026

  • BSD Week 2026

  • Change Logs

Future Additions

What has stalled my progress was realizing that some of the things on my to do list are going to involve more technical work than I had time for this month. I plan to add things like a guestbook and a hit counter designed as close to how they would have been added in the 90s, so I am probably going to have to spin up my own server for that. That is a time investment I just haven’t been able to make yet.

I also wanted to add a webring. Now there are quite a few active webrings out there these days and I will definitely join one or more of those, but I would love to set up my own webring for the sites of people I actually know — especially those of other Substack writers.

Hosting Concerns

Right now, I am also trying to decide how to deal with an issue I discovered toward the end of March. I am currently hosting my website on Neocities. It’s a great platform for hosting static websites and has a vibrant small web/indie web community element to it. I like Neocities a lot, but the problem I’ve found is that it has joined the cadre of web platforms that only allow TLS connections. That’s right, it’s HTTPS only and that is a significant problem because I want my site to be accessible to you on your Packard Bell Legend with Netscape 2.0 running on Windows 95.

I’m trying to figure out if there is a method to resolve this quagmire, but I may just end up ditching Neocities and hosting it myself. I should be able to host my site on a Linux web server and set up a reverse proxy to accommodate both HTTP and HTTPS traffic to avoid headaches regardless of what kind of browser you might be using. Again, that’s just not something I have time for yet. For now, I am just going to stick with what I’ve got. Full support on vintage machines is the ultimate goal here, so accomplishing that will most likely constitute the jump to a full version 1.0.

Closing Out MARCHintosh 2026

Overall, I had a lot of fun with MARCHintosh this year. While I didn’t have my true Classic Mac with me, I still had a good time tinkering around in the Classic Environment. I learned a lot in the process of developing my small web site, and found quite a few really cool modern programs designed for vintage Mac systems. Even with my gaming time being a bust, I would say this year has been quite successful and very productive. As my technical proficiency with Classic Mac OS continues to grow, I find myself enjoying it more and more. I’m quite convinced that MARCHintosh 2027 is going to be even better than this year was.

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GameBox

Like LegacyAI, GameBox is brought to us by Jordan Trbuhović of Manticore Software. It’s a game library designed for PowerPC Macs running OS 8.6 and higher — yes, this means it runs on PPC OS X builds as well, but the native OS X version doesn’t appear to be released yet. According to the product page, GameBox is “built with features to make gaming on vintage computers as easy and seamless as possible” such as:

• The ability to organize and categorize your game library

• Play time tracking

• Auto mounting and ejecting for virtual discs

• Applescript Applet support

• Multiple user profiles

• And community features like Game Spotlights and the Community Scoreboard

You can download it to try for free, and after that it costs $10 for a license to keep all the features working.

Download GameBox

Weatherbot

Another great little app from Manticore is Weatherbot. As the name implies, it’s a weather app written for your vintage operating system. Unfortunately I forgot to take screenshots on my system, but as you can see from the screenshots I snagged from the product page, it provides live weather updates and a 7 day forecast for your area, and the sprite graphics it uses are quite lovely.

Like LegacyAI, it uses Manitore’s proxy servers to translate the modern web data into something Classic Mac OS can use , so the developer asks you to buy a $5 licenses to help maintain the service.

Unlike GameBox, however, you have many more options on which systems you run this on. It is compatible with both 68k and PPC Macs running System 7 up to El Capitan, but you can also get the Windows version that will work with Windows 98 and XP. I am assuming Windows 2000 and Millennium Edition are included there, but I haven’t tested those yet.

Download Weatherbot

Newsstand

Newsstand is an app that I heard about almost 5 years ago, and I’m still impressed by it. It is an actively maintained Google News RSS reader designed specifically for Mac OS 9, though it has been tested and found to work fine with OS 8.1 as well. In fact, it was developed on OS 9 using era-appropriate software which automatically makes it cooler. To make things even better, the release of version 1.1 introduced the ability to add your own RSS feeds, vastly improving the functionality of the app.

Download Newsstand

Wallops

Last, but not least, we have Wallops. A developer named Joshua Stein wrote it on his Macintosh Plus to allow access to modern IRC on Macintosh computers running System 6, up to OS 9. It’s Free software under the ISC license and written in C. I never got a chance to try this one out, but had to include it. Also, if you visit the project’s webpage at the link below and let the tab sit for a couple of minutes, the flying toasters screensaver kicks in… a very nice touch.

Download Wallops

While I wish I could have given each of these their own dedicated article, I simply ran out of time. Still, I wanted to share them with you because it’s wonderful l to see modern software getting made to improve functionality on the vintage systems we all enjoy using. If you decide to give any of them a go, be sure to let me know what you think!

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With the dates of WWDC announced, I’ll be doing my annual WWDC episode of the podcast over the summer but was thinking of having that show be a part of NOS moving forward (rather than being a special episode for the general audience as it has been).

Is that something you all would …

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A while back I stumbled upon a CD in a collection of old software that a coworker was getting rid of. It was a burned CD-R with “Random Mac Games” written in Sharpie across the top of the disc. I tried running them on my old MacBook at the time but they weren’t supported on Intel systems and Rosetta wasn’t working with them either. Since then, the CD has been sitting in my closet and I figured this was as good a time as any to see if they would run on the old PowerMac. Well they sure did and it turned out that they were a collection of games from a company known as Pangea Software.

Pangea Software

I had never heard of Pangea Software until I installed these games, so I decided to do a little digging. The company was founded in 1987 as a developer of games for the Apple II. In the early 90s they moved from Apple II development to creating software for the Macintosh line of machines, and shortly thereafter they started creating 3D games. Some of their games were even preinstalled by Apple on the early iMac’s of the time.

To my surprise, the company is actually still around. They haven’t seemed to be very active over the last decade, but they do still exist. It appears that in the mid-2000s they shifted their focus from Mac games to iOS games and even a few tvOS games, which you can still purchase today for a couple of dollars. That’s right, there doesn’t appear to be a focus from Pangea on subscriptions or in-app purchases and I like that a lot.

The games we are looking at here are from the late-90s Macintosh era of Pangea: Bugdom, Nanosaur, and Cro-Mag Rally. Admittedly, I didn’t spend a ton of time with any of these games. I mostly just wanted to see what was on that CD, but I did spend an evening trying to give each of them a fair shake.

Bugdom

Bugdom was released in 1999 and appears to have been a fairly successful game; it scored high praise from the gaming media of the time and garnered some impressive sales, selling over 30,000 copies by March 2002.

It’s a 3D platformer where you play as a blue and green roly poly named — I kid you not — Rollie McFly. You are on a mission to save the Bugdom by freeing the ladybugs that have been capture. You see, the Bugdom had been ruled by the ladybugs and roly polys, but then the fire ants rolled in and ruined everything. As a guy who grew up around fire ants, I can confirm this is a realistic thing I could see those little terrorists doing in real life...

The game has you running, rolling, and kicking your way through ant-infested levels to free your ladybug allies from their tiny prisons. Along the way you face off with a surprisingly large number of enemies ranging from ants and termites to bees, spiders, and more. Of course, you do have some help on your quest. Buddy bugs, dragonflies, and water spiders can help you out of some difficult situations as they show up at various points in the game.

Overall, I enjoyed this game. It was pretty simple, but it was fun and I can see why it was well received when it came out. If you wanted to play Bugdom today, you can obviously try emulating the game using something like Sheepshaver or Infinite Mac after getting the game files. However, you can also get an officially sanctioned modern port of the game for macOS, Windows, and Linux over on GitHub.

Nanosaur

The next game on the disc was the 1998 third person shooter, Nanosaur. There’s no other way to say it… this game is weird, but in a mostly-good way. The story is pretty far out there with you playing a genetically engineered velociraptor with a cannon strapped to it’s arm that travels from the year 4122 (a time when these smart dinosaurs have usurped humanity as the dominant species) to the Cretaceous period in order to avert the calamity of astronomical armageddon.

I told you… it’s weird. In fact, if you want the full story, go read the game’s entry on Wikipedia. I left a lot out.

Gameplay wise, it looks and feels a lot like a PS1 game from 1995 with low-polygon dinos, dated-at-the-time textures, and 3D menus that reminded me of the early Crash Bandicoot games. Still, it was fun enough once I figured out what I was supposed to do. While it seemed like a cool idea for a game, this was probably my least favorite of the three I played here.

On a more positive note, the asteroid cutscene and the high score animation at the end of the video below were also pretty impressive for the time if you ask me. A source port of the game is available for modern macOS, Windows, and Linux from the same developer that ported Bugdom.

Cro-Mag Rally

Finally there is Cro-Mag Rally. It’s kind of hard for me to decide if I like this game better than Bugdom or not. Cro-Mag Rally was published in 2000 and is pretty straight forward. It’s a kart racing game along the lines of Mario Kart and Super Tux Kart. You play a caveman (or cave lady) who races through courses in multiple stages such as deserts, jungles, glaciers, and more. It allowed up to two players locally, however you could play with up to six players via LAN if you were hosting a classic Mac LAN party which does sound like a good time.

Race and win to advance. Finishing in third place or higher while collecting eight arrowheads scattered throughout the tracks will unlock new tracks and karts. As you progress, you can also leave the bronze age and make your way all the way up to the iron age.

If I’m being 100% honest, I’ve never really been a fan of kart racers. If I’m going to play a racing game I would much rather go with something like a Need for Speed or Gran Turismo game, so this game doesn’t really do it for me. With that said, I didn’t really mind it that much. The karts definitely felt WAY too floaty and were difficult to control, but after a few races I got the hang of it. When it comes to non-Mario kart racing games, I’d still say this is leagues behind Super Tux Kart but it was a fun and unique take on the genre. I would probably play it again, and I think my kids would have some fun with it.

Like the other two, Cro-Mag Rally has also been ported to modern systems and is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Overall, this was a fun little adventure. Growing up, my family were Windows users, so I never had a chance to mess around too much with the Macs of the 1990s aside from limited use of my school’s classroom Macintosh. My classmates and I would play some of the old games on that thing, but it was never anything like these. While they aren’t necessarily the games I would have thought of when it came to late-90s computer games, it was cool to see what kinds of things the cult of Mac were enjoying back then.

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Also, be sure to check out episode 36 of the members show New-Old Stock for the full video tour of the PowerMac G3 B&W!

New-Old Stock episode 36

As I prepared to kick off MARCHintosh 2025, I pulled my PowerMac G3 out of my storage closet and started testing everything out. I hadn’t used it too much over the last couple of years and with this being my first time attempting to use it for anything substantial I wanted to prepare a bit ahead of time. I knew that I was going to want to try a little bit of classic Mac gaming and productivity work, so the first thing I did was prepare some CDs with the software I’d want to use. Yes, I could just mount the ISOs and Toast files using Roxio Toast Titanium, but I thought that might cause issues with multi-disc games later on. Beyond that, I really wanted to try to have as authentic of an experience as I could.

I assumed everything would just work the way it should. It wasn’t the first time I had installed software onto this Mac via compact disc, and I’d never had a problem before. At first, things installed fine. Then, it started taking a fair bit longer to complete while occasionally presenting errors. Running the installer again always fixed the problems and got the software installed so I just chalked it up to old systems being weird sometimes. With that said, the problem truly showed itself when it came to running disc-based games.

I tried to start playing through Starship Titanic, but it struggled to load. It took over a minute to load into the opening of the game and would usually freeze up when trying to look around. I would force quit multiple times and occasionally it would load a bit further into the game, but not much. I thought maybe it was a problem with the disc image I had gotten, so I swapped it out with The Sims. The game loaded fine. It did take a little while to load into the neighborhood, but it was a heck of a lot faster than the last game.

Gameplay-wise it ran okay most of the time. Managing my Sims, building mode, and shopping mode all worked fine with only a bit of lag here and there. Eventually, that lag started getting worse and worse. Starting to force quit and then canceling it did help to kick start it again, but it never truly fixed the problems. One of the times the game locked up, I pulled down the drive cover for the CD-ROM and saw the LED on the front staying illuminated rather than flashing as it does when reading discs. Thankfully, I have plenty of spare drives lying around so it was time to swap it out.

Opening the case

Getting into these PowerMacs couldn’t be simpler. Just pull the latch on the side of the machine up and the side panel will drop down on a hinge. If you are doing this, either unplug everything from the Mac, or make sure have enough slack with the cables as the logicboard is on the cover and the I/O drops down with it.

Removing the drive cover

To remove the drive, I had to remove the blue plastic drive cover. Inside the machine, near the front of the drive caddy, there are two blue plastic clips. Depressing them and gently pushing outward, I was able to dislodge them from the case. From the front of the machine, I gently pulled the drive cover outward and then gently rocked the cover up and down to slide it out of place and fully remove it. If you are doing this, I will continue to emphasize the “gently” part. This plastic is over a quarter of a century old at this point and is prone to cracking and breaking.

Removing the drive caddy

With the cover removed I could now see the front of the drive caddy. I removed the two Philips screws securing the drive caddy and then pulled the caddy forward a bit. This took some finagling on mine as it was stuck in place pretty good. After it was loose, I detached the data ribbon cables and the Molex connectors from the optical drive and the Zip drive to fully remove the drive caddy.

Removing the CD-ROM drive

Once the caddy was out, I flipped it over and removed the four Philips screws holding the CD-ROM drive in place. Once the screws were out, I slid it out of the caddy and noted the jumper position. On this Mac, both media drives and the internal hard drive are all set to cable select, so that keeps things simple.

Testing the new drive

For the new optical drive, I had considered using another Apple-branded 24x CD-ROM drive that I had from another old Mac, but I didn’t have access to it at the moment. So instead, I decided to just upgrade the drive altogether with a newer IDE DVD-RW drive. I may swap it out at some point, but for now it works just fine.

With the jumper in the correct position, plugged it into the Mac and powered the machine on for a quick test.

The drive powered on and was recognized by the operating system. I put the CD for The Sims in and it showed up on the desktop. The best part was that the CD icon appeared noticeably faster than it had with the old drive in it. To me, this confirmed that the old drive was starting to die, so I’m glad I caught this before getting too far into my MARCHintosh adventures.

Mount drive to caddy

With the new drive confirmed to work, I shut the machine down and unhooked the DVD drive. I reinstalled the drive into the caddy and got everything screwed back into place. It wasn’t until I was reattaching the drive cables that I realized an issue with using this particular drive. Being a newer drive, it was actually a fair bit shorter than the older one. Normally in a PC tower case that would be great because it gives you better airflow and more room to work when you need to. However, these drives sit in the caddy which was designed for that older drive to sit flush with the end. As a result, the new drive was a good two inches inset from the end of the caddy and I had to blindly attempt to get the ribbon and Molex cables hooked up. It took a little while, but I eventually got it squared away along with the Zip drive. What a pain…

Drive cover and rear shielding issue

With the new drive hooked up and the drive caddy screwed back into place I attempted to put the drive cover back on, but it would not sit right so I just left it off until I figured out the problem. In fact, I discovered the problem while recording episode 36 of New-Old Stock and was able to fix it, allowing the drive cover to sit correctly again.

Likewise, I realized that I had forgotten to install the rear drive caddy shield. With as difficult as it was for me to get the DVD drive plugged in, I wasn’t about to unhook it just to put this little piece of metal back on. Instead, I simply left it off and used some masking tape to attach it to the top of the drive caddy so as not to lose it.

All in all, I am really glad I made this upgrade. While I haven’t been able to get DVD playback working yet, I’m quite pleased with how much faster this new one is. It’s made for a much smoother gaming experience and overall it really wasn’t that much work.

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Apple News

• Details on every new Apple hardware product announced in March (https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/04/apple-march-2026-product-releases/)

Microsoft News

• Mozilla announces plans to sunset Firefox ESR on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-windows-7-8-and-81-moving-extended-support)

Other Tech News

• Software engineer Crait is crowd sourcing help to reverse engineer the 1998 Tiger Electronics Pokedex to extract the ROM to an Arduino-based Arduboy (https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/02/hacker-appeals-for-help-to-preserve-this-1998-pokemon-pokedex)

• Mad Lad, Carl Does Tech Things gets online co-op Super Mario 64 cross play working before a Nintendo 64 and a PlayStation 2

Retro Gaming News

• Sega legend, Hideki Sato, passes away at 77 (https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/sega-console-designer-hideki-sato-has-passed-away)

• Tomb Raider 2 is receiving a fan port to the Sega Saturn; demo is available now (https://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/02/lara-is-coming-back-home-tomb-raider-ii-is-coming-to-sega-saturn-30-years-after-sony-blocked-it)

• Game preservation site Myrient is shutting down March 26; cites rising hardware costs and more (https://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/02/this-is-what-ai-and-greed-does-video-game-preservation-service-myrient-is-shutting-down)

• Console port of Rave Racer (sequel to Ridge Racer) is out on Switch 1/2, PS4/5, Xbox Series S/X (https://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/02/arcade-only-ridge-racer-sequel-rave-racer-is-finally-making-its-home-console-debut-31-years-on)

• New 8-bit “GameTank” console has met its $30,000 funding goal; first units set to ship on July 12, 2026 (https://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/02/gametank-is-an-entirely-new-breed-of-hardware-for-the-next-generation-of-8-bit-games)

Command Line Tool of the Month: Ledger

• https://ledger-cli.org

  • Ledger is a powerful, double-entry accounting system that is accessed from the UNIX command-line. Ledger, begun in 2003, is written by John Wiegley and released under the BSD license.

  • Available on BSD, Linux, Mac, and Windows

Ways to Join the Community

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This March, I have decided to make all new MARCHintosh articles exclusive early access for the paid subscribers for the first 48 hours as a thank you for their support. If you are not a paid subscriber, please consider picking up a monthly sub for $2.50 to get early access to this and future MARCHintosh posts.

Have you ever been in the middle of using a vintage operating system and thought to yourself, “Man… I could really use an AI bot to help me with this problem I’m having right now”? Probably not, but bear with me. So you grab your phone or another computer and open up whichever AI is en vogue that day. You type your prompt, get your answer, and move on. But what a hassle! Who wants to have to grab another device and take your attention away from the joy of using your Macintosh SE, your Performa, or your vibrant Bondi blue iMac? Well in the year of our Lord, 2026, you no longer have to! Introducing LegacyAI.

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LegacyAI was developed by Jordan Trbuhović of Manticore Software. He has done quite a few really cool projects including two others that I am planning to look at this month, but this one is pretty cool if you’re not completely AI-averse.

Features

For starters, the app looks good. It was clearly designed to fit in with the UI design of older Mac OS. It will obviously serve as a simple chat interface that connects to ChatGPT when you are connected to the internet, but it does much more than that. According to its website, LegacyAI supports the following with the purchase of a $15 license:

• DALL-E Image generation

• API access

• Saving and loading conversations

• Proxy connections to other AI models

• Customizable preferences

• HTTPS support

Here it is running on Tiger.

Of course, the whole point of MARCHintosh is for us to be using our Classic Mac OS systems. Lucky for us, LegacyAI also has builds for System 7, OS 8, and OS 9 (and it even comes with an old school folder icon, which I appreciate) for both PPC and 68k Macs.

Here’s the Classic (PPC) build operating in the Classic environment on OS X.

System Requirements

If you want to play around with LegacyAI, you have a pretty wide variety of compatible Macs to choose from. It runs on any Mac operating system ranging from System 7 to El Capitan. That means if you have a Mac that came out anywhere from 1991 through 2015 with a working internet connection, you should be able to use LegacyAI. Other requirements include:

• A Motorola 68020 CPU or better

  • For context, this was the processor in the Macintosh II (1987) and the Macintosh LC (1990)

  • For more notes on limitations of the 68k build, see the project’s download page

• At least 2MB Ram

• 654KB Disk Space

Final Thoughts

Overall this is actually a pretty cool project. I think even the most ardent AI critic would have to agree it’s awesome to see people building new software for vintage computers that breathes new life into those abandoned systems. I don’t use AI all that often, and especially not with creative works, but also with MARCHintosh being the only time I really spend a lot of time in the Classic OS, I’m not sure the license is really worth it to me for those machines. However, I do have a few other old Macs that I would love to bring back into my workflow; my 2007 iMac, 2008 MacBook, and 2012 MacBook Pro specifically come to mind. $15 really isn’t a bad price at all assuming it’s not a recurring monthly cost. If nothing else, I like the idea of supporting people doing this kind of work.

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Be sure to check out episode 36 of the members show New-Old Stock for the full video tour of the PowerMac G3 B&W!

New-Old Stock episode 36

The Environment

For this journey I pulled my Blue & White out of the closet and set her up in a temporary workstation I have been using for a few weeks now. For those who have not seen the video I uploaded on March 10^th, allow me to give you the specs of this machine.

• It is a PowerMac 1,1 from early 1999.

• It sports a 300 MHz PowerPC 750 (G3) processor with 64k L1 cache and 512k backside L2 cache.

• It has a more-than-adequate 320MB of PC100 SDRAM.

• The logicboard features onboard audio and two USB 1.1 ports, but also gives us two Firewire 400 ports.

• There is a modem card installed, but the logicboard does include an integrated 10/100 ethernet port for high speed internet and easy networking.

• Finally, on the graphics front, we have only one port for VGA output thanks to the stock ATI Rage 128 GL card. Steve Jobs made a bit of a deal about this card back when he announced the PowerMac G3, and while it seems to have gotten a fair bit of criticism looking back, it’s mostly fine for my use cases.

As for the operating system, this Mac originally shipped with Mac OS 8.5 and was actually supported all the way up to OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger). However, I am running the last version of the classic OS; version 9.2.2.

Form and Function

As far as the computer itself goes, I love this thing. It’s like a time capsule to a time when Apple was more fun and didn’t take itself quite as serious as it does today. It’s very much in line with the translucent color revolution of the late 1990s with its teal-ish blueberry panels and logo giving way to the lighter pin-stripes underneath. It was built to stand out in a time when the largest departures from the standard beige PCs of the era were IBM’s matte black ThinkPads and Sony’s hint of blue and violet VAIO machines. It also gets bonus points for the hinged door design that makes working on the internals way easier than pretty much any other system from that (or our current) time.

On the software side of things, OS 9 is a unique experience. As I mentioned earlier on, I’ve used it a little bit here and there over the last few years. I would usually boot it up, mess around with theme settings, maybe write a little something, but that was about it. Eventually I figured out how to connect to my local FTP server over the LAN. Other than that, I’ve not had a chance to really explore the system. After digging into it for a the last couple of weeks I’ve definitely started to appreciate it for what it is, however I do understand why Apple was in such a rush to ditch it for something more modern back in the late 90s (but more on that at a later time).

Still, OS 9 is a charming OS that offers some cool features that honestly make a lot of sense. For example, applications are bundled together so there’s not really an installation process the way that Windows and Linux users experience. Think of it like an AppImage on Linux. Sure, some programs install the app to the Applications folder or directly to the root of the drive while adding other things like extensions and command strip modules elsewhere, but fundamentally the application itself is just right there. Heck, you can grab the app, move it anywhere, and it will still run. It’s a great design feature that Apple kept with OS X and beyond.

Speaking of the drive root, one thing that really causes classic Mac OS to stand out is that it is genuinely unique! It really is its own thing. Now, it’s possible that Apple stole the file system from another system at some point, but it is not Unix-based like OS X. It’s not Unix-like like Linux. It’s not DOS-based like Windows 98 or OS/2, and it’s not NT-based like Windows NT 4. It was a little weird at first, but once I spent some time just exploring the system, it all seemed like a pretty reasonable way to build a file system.

Appearance-wise, it looks like an old system… because it IS an old system. But unlike something like Windows 98 SE or Windows Me, OS 9 and it’s wonderfully nostalgic Platinum theme feels like it belongs in the early 90s. That doesn’t mean I don’t like it, it’s just worth noting.

Productivity

Getting into my actual time using this machine, I mainly used it for two purposes: productivity and gaming. In my use case, productivity is mostly writing but can also include keeping up with spreadsheets and a bit of creative work for graphics and such — note the new thumbnails for the latest New-Old Stock episodes.

On the writing front, I have previously expressed my affection for AppleWorks 6 and have used it a bit. However, I’ve found myself spending more time typing away in Microsoft Word 98 for Macintosh. I’ve tried to figure out why that is. Perhaps it’s that I grew up running Office 97 all the way to the present iterations and just feel more comfortable in it? Maybe it’s that I really don’t want to deal with the hassle of trying to get those CWK (Claris Works – the name before it was rebranded to AppleWorks) converted to something useable on modern computers? Or maybe it’s just that Word is genuinely a superior product? Whatever the reason, it’s just what I’ve been using.

When it comes to design, this Mac has a lot to offer. I’m no graphic designer but the person who owned this before me was, it came to me pre-loaded with a few graphics programs. There is Photoshop 6 and Illustrator 8 for photo editing and touch ups, and I even took a little time to start learning QuarkXPress 5 to design a few page layouts for RM Quarterly vol. 22.

Gaming

Of course, you can’t just do work all the time. While modern Macs are known to be pretty terrible for modern gaming, the PowerMac G3 handles games of its era quite well. Now, I’m not pulling out the most graphically intensive games or anything. Just a few games I’ve been wanting to play and a few titles from Pangea Games I just randomly found on a CD (but those are for a future article).

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I’ve mainly been playing the original Sims game from Maxis and that has been quite a good time. It lags a little bit when a lot is going on, but overall it’s a good time with a smooth experience.

Starship Titanic, on the other hand, runs pretty terribly most of the time. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a point-and-click puzzle game that is built around a story by Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams. Each transition between screens is 3D rendered video that plays directly from the CD and you see some serious slow down when that happens. The game has also tended to hang on me when I would be directed to swap discs and “wait a short time”. I wait a short time. Then I wait a long time. Then I force quit. At first I thought this was due to the dying CD-ROM drive, but it continued even after I replaced the drive with a better working one (a story for the next article).

How it compares to Other Systems

Let’s be clear here. OS 9 is great in its own way. I actually really like it for what it is, and if I had one of those old clamshell PowerBook G3’s to carry around and use more often I’d probably grow to love it. I have to be honest though, it just can’t hold up to modern systems — nor should anyone expect it to. The quarter century of quality-of-life features have the PowerMac G3 and OS 9 dead to rights. A better comparison, in my opinion, would be to it’s competitors from that era.

BeOS

While I’m more familiar with the open source Haiku project, I have dabbled a bit with its progenitor BeOS. Initially released in 1995, Be should have been a serious threat to Mac OS 7, 8, and 9. It offered an experience focused on multimedia and multitasking – much like what OS X would become known for. Unfortunately, BeOS just never fully took off and after the failed Copeland project to create a modern Mac OS, Apple would pass up the opportunity to acquire Be and make it the future of the company. Aside from the sheer software dominance of Windows at the time, I would say that BeOS was pound-for-pound one of the best operating system of the late 90s.

Windows 98

There were plenty of other systems out back in the day. IBM’s OS/2 and Sun’s Solaris were both contenders at the time and found success in their own regards. Linux was also there as a baby penguin at the time, but the only other late 90s operating system that I can genuinely compare OS 9 to is Microsoft’s flagship Windows 98.

Both systems featured a mouse-dominated graphical desktop, though I feel that Windows was (and still is) more keyboard-accessible; granted I may just not have learned all of the keybindings on this thing yet. Both have a ton of software available to them and do a good job of running legacy software from previous OS versions. Both developed faithful user bases and niche use cases. Yet even with all of these things in common, I must say I still prefer Windows 98 to OS 9. Again, I like OS 9. I just like Windows 98 better… an interesting observation considering that I much prefer modern day macOS to Windows 11.

Overall Opinion after Two Weeks

After two solid weeks of using my PowerMac with OS 9, I am still really enjoying it. It’s a pretty straightforward system with a lot that you can do. Perhaps the best thing going for it is the devoted fan base keeping classic Mac usage going. With sites like The Macintosh Garden (which is accessible even in old browsers), The Macintosh Repository, the Tinker Different Forums, Mac OS 9 Lives, System 7 Today, and the growing list of classic Mac creators on YouTube you have a ton of things you can do and opportunities to learn this cool little system.

I am going to continue using my PowerMac throughout the rest of #MARCHintosh. I plan to write some more articles, play some more games, and see what kinds of ways I can work this old system into my home setup. While I doubt I will keep it out into April (I have another system I am excited to do some work on), I intend to continue my search for a reasonably priced clamshell iBook. Then, with a more portable option, I will probably be more likely to regularly work OS 8 or 9 into my workflow.

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I picked this one up on Facebook Marketplace a few months back for $125 and I must say, it’s been money well spent. It is in beautiful condition with only very superficial scuffing on the polycarbonate body. While it looks similar to the 2008 polycarbonate MacBook that longtime readers have seen on several occasions, the iBook is a fair bit larger and thicker.

This iBook, identified as a PowerBook6,7 came out in mid-2005 and sports a 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 processor. It’s got 1 GB of 133 MHz DDR RAM, the original 60 GB HDD, and originally retailed for $1,299 (approx. $2,175 adjusted for inflation). The standout feature of this iBook is the 14.1 inch TFT XGA panel; it’s the big brother to the 12 inch iBook that Apple sold at the same time. This iBook also holds the unique title of the last iBook, being succeeded by the first generation Intel-powered MacBooks that released the following May in 2006. This particular machine is still running the original operating system, OS X, 10.4.11 Tiger.

“But Dan, isn’t MARCHintosh supposed to focus on Classic Mac OS rather than OS X?”

Great question, friend! Yes… but also, not necessarily. According to the official MARCHintosh website:

• DO - Focus on 68K/PPC/Early Intel Macs - Official Apple products and clone machines from the early days of Mac OS all the way up to OS 9 (and OS 9 under OS X on 68K/PPC Macs). Lisa stuff is also cool!

You see, I really wanted to get my hands on one of those really cool and colorful iBook G3 clamshell models, but every time I was about to close the deal, something happened with the sellers and they’d slip through my fingers. That was when I found this beauty being sold in a town about 45 minutes away so I jumped at the opportunity.

Being the final iBook, it lost the ability to install classic Mac OS natively — a feature that was common to the G3 notebooks before it. As annoying as that was for me, it also meant that this iBook — and this particular version of Tiger — is the last in it’s line to support the Classic environment. The Classic environment, for the younger folks joining us, was a compatibility layer similar in function to Apple’s later Rosetta and Rosetta 2, that allowed you to run your classic Mac apps from older systems like System 7, OS 8, and OS 9 on your OS X machines. It did this by running a contained version of the actual OS 9 where the application could perform it’s system calls to the actual OS. While not perfect, and not always stable, it was a genuinely impressive bit of hackery.

So with the legitimacy of my MARCHintosh environment established, I set out to load this thing up with all sorts of goodies from the Macintosh Garden and even a few apps that have been developed in the last few years for OS 9. While running on Tiger, my goal for this month is to basically live — as much as is possible — in the Classic environment.

Honestly, if I hid the dock, I doubt most people would be able to tell this isn’t just running OS 9 natively.

Plans for MARCHintosh

I really want to do a lot this month, but I am also trying to be realistic. Between family, farm, and work responsibilities, I run a pretty tight schedule and don’t have a lot of free time. So I am trying to maximize the limited time I do have to just enjoy tinkering on this system. I’ve been having fun just exploring all sorts of old Mac software. I also have a nice little collection of Mac games to spend some time with, and I have plenty of writing projects I want to work on which Office 98 will be more than adequate for. As is typical for these themed months, I also plan to re-release the articles from last year free to all subscribers.

Finally, my big project this year is one I’m really excited about. I’ve always wanted to build a website… yes I know this is a website, but this isn’t mine. It’s Substack’s and this is just my little corner of it. I mean I want to truly build my own website. I want to hand code the HTML and CSS, figure out the hosting and all the rest of it. However, I don’t know how to write HTML so I’ll be learning as I go.

Also, this is a Retro Millennial project. It’s not going to be a normal website… it’s going to be an old website! I am putting it together in BBEdit Lite from the late 90s and testing it in Netscape and Internet Explorer from the mid-to-late 90s. The goal for you to be able to visit it whenever, and however you want.

I’m currently targeting HTML 3.2 standards from around 1997-2000 so it’s perfect for your Windows 98 or OS 9 machines, and it should still work on older systems and browsers. I want to include things like animated GIFs, a hit counter, a guestbook, and not a lick of JavaScript anywhere. Paid subscribers already have access to this website (early and undeveloped as it is at the moment) and will be able to see the changes as they happen. At the end of MARCHintosh, I will publish the development article and make it available to the rest of you at that point.

All in all, I am really excited about MARCHintosh this year. I genuinely hope you are too! If you have any vintage Macs in your possession, you should definitely join the fun and share it with us here in the comments and/or the chat. We’d all love to see and hear about them and what you’re doing with them.

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• The Retro Millennial small web project:

  https://retromillennial.neocities.org/

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• My personal newsletter with 2026 Experiment updates

Apple News

• Apple releases the new Apple Creator Studio subscription bundle (https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/01/hands-on-with-apple-creator-studio-a-bittersweet-bundle/)

Linux/FOSS News

• Linux Kernel 7.0 announced as the upcoming version number, dropping support for some legacy hardware (https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-kernel-7-0-finally-abandons-intel-440bx-edac-driver-removal-marks-another-goodbye-to-the-legendary-motherboard-chipset)

• Mesa 26.0 released bringing improved graphics support (https://docs.mesa3d.org/relnotes/26.0.0.html)

• Open Gaming Collective formed to try and help unify the fragmented Linux gaming community (https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/01/open-gaming-collective-ogc-formed-to-push-linux-gaming-even-further/)

Microsoft News

• Microsoft aims to fix Windows 11 (https://www.theverge.com/tech/870045/microsoft-windows-11-issues-rebuilding-trust-notepad?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6Iko1OUJXTUtYYXAiLCJwIjoiL3RlY2gvODcwMDQ1L21pY3Jvc29mdC13aW5kb3dzLTExLWlzc3Vlcy1yZWJ1aWxkaW5nLXRydXN0LW5vdGVwYWQiLCJleHAiOjE3NzAxMzgwNTgsImlhdCI6MTc2OTcwNjA2MH0.B1Q1pSxcyezAfV7ItxPQeEO1P7fpvF6Xse-V2lrWSTc&utm_medium=gift-link)

• Microsoft pumping the brakes on AI in Windows? (https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-is-reevaluating-its-ai-efforts-on-windows-11-plans-to-reduce-copilot-integrations-and-evolve-recall)

• Microsoft developing an Xbox cloud gaming tier that will be free with ads (https://www.theverge.com/report/791213/xbox-cloud-gaming-free-ad-supported-version)

• Notepad.exe’s new markdown support allows for RCE vulnerability to be exploited (https://www.esecurityplanet.com/threats/windows-notepad-rce-flaw-exploits-markdown-files/)

Other Tech News

• Anthropic donates $1.5 million to the Python Software Foundation (https://discuss.python.org/t/anthropic-has-made-a-large-contribution-to-the-python-software-foundation-and-open-source-security/105694)

• JMail.world set up to let you read Jeffrey Epstein’s emails

• EpsteIn set up as LinkedIn clone to see who in your connections are in the files

• Discord global age verification roll out (https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-default-settings-globally)

• PS5 jailbroken at the hardware level (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/264562-playstation-5/81092205)

• Netflix dropping support for PS3 on March 2, 2026 (https://kotaku.com/netflix-remembers-it-never-shut-down-its-old-ps3-app-announces-it-is-doing-that-very-soon-2000665364#:~:text=Netflix%20Ending%20Support%20For%20PS3%20After%2015%20Years)

Retro Gaming News

• GOG announces plans for native Linux support for it’s store (https://www.xda-developers.com/gog-calls-linux-the-next-major-frontier-for-gaming-as-it-works-on-a-native-client/)

• Metal Gear Solid Master Collection vol 2 announced, Guns of the Patriots finally freed from the PS3 (https://gameinformer.com/state-of-play/2026/02/12/metal-gear-solid-master-collection-vol-2-finally-frees-guns-of-the)

Command Line Tool of the Month: WinUtil & MicroWin

• https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

  • WinUtil is a compilation of Windows tasks meant to streamline installs, debloat with tweaks, troubleshoot with config, and fix Windows updates.

  • MicroWin is a component of WinUtil that will create a custom, debloated bootable Windows 11 USB that creates a local account and bypasses the OOBE, online sign in, and system checks.

Ways to Join the Community

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In the past I have run short sales at certain times I thought were appropriate (like holidays) and while those have been great, it’s led to pretty much all of the paid subscription funds coming in at the end of the year. While that has been great for picking up things for projects and articles, it does lead to a bit of a drought in the two-thirds of the year.

This time, I decided to try a different approach. For a limited time I am reducing both monthly and annual subscription rates to The Retro Millennial by half for the foreseeable future. I am not sure when this sale is going to end, but I would love to welcome some new members so I can afford to get my hands on some of the cool vintage tech I’ve been window shopping for over the last few years and present it to all of you.

THIS REDUCED RATE IS PERPETUAL FOR THE LIFE OF YOUR SUBSCRIPTION

This lower rate is not a first-year-only deal where it jumps up to the normal rate at the end of 12 months. This means if you pick up a subscription, you’ll lock in that lower rate forever or until you cancel.

• MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION: $5.00 $2.50

• ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION: $50.00 $25.00

Other Ways to Help

I’m also well aware that subscription fatigue is a thing for a lot of people, and some of you don’t want to have to create another account. If you would still like to contribute, you can always leave a tip over at Buy Me a Coffee or on Ko-Fi; and of course, feel free to share this with someone you think might be interested. Every little bit helps!

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Background

The Curse of Monkey Island is a point-and-click adventure game for the PC. It was developed by LucasArts for Windows 95 and was the last game developed using the famed SCUMM engine. Released on November 11, 1997 (14 November in Europe), it was the third game in the Monkey Island series following 1990’s The Secret of Monkey Island and 1991’s Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge.

The Curse of Monkey Island was a critical and commercial success with lead artist Bill Tiller claiming in a 2009 interview that the game had sold between 700,000 and 800,000 copies worldwide. The game went on to be named 1997’s best adventure game by four different gaming magazines and won GameSpot’s Best Cinematics award that year. After it’s release, The Curse of Monkey Island was also nominated for several game awards including Game of the Year, PC Adventure Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Art/Graphics, and Computer Entertainment Title of the Year.

How to play it today

If you were wanting to pick up a copy of the game today you have many great options. For the purists and collectors among us, you can get a loose copy of the CD-ROM on eBay for around $15-30 USD. However, if you want it complete-in-box you’re looking at upwards of $135.

If modern hardware is your jam, or you just don’t want to fork over that kind of dough, you can play the non-boxed CD-ROM using ScummVM. You can also pick the game up on Steam or GOG for around $7.00. I got my copy on Steam for $1.50 when it went on sale a few years back.

Story

In The Curse of Monkey Island, you play as our hero, the “fearsome” pirate Guybrush Threepwood. The story begins just after the events of Monkey Island 2 with Guybrush approaching Plunder Island in a bumper car — a clear indication of what kind of game we’re entering into. Once on shore, Guybrush reunites with his girlfriend Elaine Marley. He proposes to her with an enormous diamond ring that he had stolen from his old nemesis LeChuck and she accepts! Huzzah! But alas, the excitement is short lived. As it turns out, the ring that was stolen from the undead pirates was cursed and Guybrush looks on in horror as the love of his life is turned into a statue of solid gold.

From here Guybrush must traverse Plunder Island in search of answers and a crew who can help him navigate the high seas, plunder fearsome pirates, solve some clever riddles, break the curse, and save his bride-to-be. That’s it, and that’s all. It’s a pretty straightforward game with a very straightforward objective. I like it.

Gameplay

The gameplay in The Curse of Monkey Island is generally very simple, though a little unintuitive at first. As this was my first time ever playing the game, I went in blind. It’s possible there was a tutorial I skipped, or a sign I missed somewhere at the beginning, but I don’t think there was. It may be more likely that the developers would have assumed players would read the manual before playing — something I feel like I remember being a thing back in the day — but I really had no frame of reference for what I was supposed to do starting out.

Controls

Moving around was simple enough. I figured out right away that you move by left clicking somewhere on the screen to make Guybrush walk there, but it was by trial and error that I figured out how to interact with things in the environment. The cursor will change when you pass over something you can interact with. You left click and hold on said item to bring up medallion… or I guess it was probably a doubloon. In any event, it has three buttons on it: a hand, a skull, and a parrot.

These three buttons will do different things depending on how you can interact with an object or a person. The hand may do things like take, use, push, or pull. The skull is typically used to examine something or to look through a windows or porthole. The parrot will either speak to the target, or eat it depending on what it is. It wasn’t until after I finished the game that I learned that you can also right click on the item to bypass the three choices and take the most obvious action. However, right clicking anywhere that isn’t interactive will open your inventory.

You change screens by moving your cursor to the exit where the cursor will turn into a red arrow. Doing this will lead to an overworld map of sorts where you can select where to go next. It’s as simple as click where you want to go and Guybrush will head there immediately. There are no interruptions, he just goes there. You can also double click the location to skip the walking animation which can sometimes take a while. You also don’t need to clear a particular area before exploring other parts of the map. You can just visit every “?” on the map to reveal what it is and then go to where you need to be. I found this particularly helpful as I (shamefully) played most of this game with a guide that was not written particularly clear.

Progression

I struggled through this game. Ask my wife or kids and they’ll tell you that puzzle games are not my strong suit. I’m actually pretty terrible at them, and that’s literally all this game is. Each screen you enter has a series of puzzles that you need to figure out, but they aren’t contained to that screen. They aren’t all even closely tied to one another in terms of when the elements get introduced.

For instance, on Plunder Island you have to find a map to Blood Island that is tattooed on this one guy’s back. Getting it involves getting a membership card to the resort club he’s in. That card is inside the skeletal remains of a chicken at a restaurant in town that you can’t get to until you get a reservation slip to the restaurant. You then have to figure out how to cross hot sand to reach the guy with the map. You then have to backtrack to near where you started to get a bottomless mug and some red dye. Then you have to whip someone with a wet towel to steal his bottle of cooking oil so you can pour it on the tattoo guy’s back and then proceed to peel the tattoo off his flesh! It was weird, and frankly kind of gross, but I don’t think I would have had the patience to figure all of that out without a guide. It took solving multiple puzzles that spanned at least 4 screens that had to be visited multiple times while also coming up with some of the most over the top ways of doing things — like making an anaconda that ate you throw you up using a bottle of ipecac… and that was playing it on easy mode. Still, while I didn’t particularly enjoy the gameplay in this regard, I loved the story (silly as it was).

As the game went on, I started getting used to how the game wanted me to think about things and I did start figuring out some of the puzzles without the guide. I would say the one section I excelled in was part three.

Part III: The Sheets to the Wind

Part three was a lot of fun. It’s the part of the game with the most action as you helm your own ship, The Sea Cucumber. You navigate by clicking and select a ship you want to plunder on the map. You win the battle by left clicking around the water until you bring your broadside cannons to bear on the enemy. Right clicking will fire your cannons which you can pay a literal child to upgrade using the booty that you gain from besting the enemy captain.

Once the ship-to-ship combat is finished, Guybrush boards the defeated vessel and enters a duel with the enemy captain. Now it took me a little while to figure this part out, because you don’t actually do the fighting. In fact, the fighting isn’t actually fighting at all. It’s another puzzle, and one that you learned the rules for a little earlier on Plunder Island from one of the pirates you recruited to your crew. You see, in the zany world of Monkey Island, pirates cannot have a proper duel without insulting one another. When the duel begins, your opponent will insult you. To parry and counter you must have a witty and rhyming retort of your own. Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you’ll lose, but with each encounter you have the opportunity to learn new quips and comebacks which will equip you to defeat the more difficult pirates until you have enough “skill” to defeat the feared and venerated Captain Rottingham. He stole your map, and you needs it back!

I must say that of all of the game mechanics, this was probably my favorite. It was a unique twist on combat that I’d never seen in a game before and it had a lot of charm.

Tying It All Together

As the game drew to a close, it did a good job of making you recall lessons you’d learned earlier in the game with a few final puzzles that you’d already solved, but with a new twist. I will say, the last two parts of the game (parts five and six) were a little anticlimactic. They were quite short, and apart from the callbacks to earlier puzzles, it left me slightly underwhelmed based on how good the rest of the game had been.

Graphics

The art style in The Curse of Monkey Island is absolutely glorious! The entire game is hand drawn with exaggerated proportions on everything. It looks like a cartoon we all would have watched from the 80s or 90s, and while it’s dated, it adds a level of charm that really holds up well.

Prior to playing this game, I didn’t realize that there were other games in the series, so I went and checked them out and being the only one to use this art style, I would argue that it’s still the best looking game in the entire series (even beating the games that came out over ten years later). It’s also the first one to include full voice acting for every spoken line in the game.

Soundtrack

Another place I felt like this game excelled was in its soundtrack. While it’s much more whimsical than what I would normally look for in game music that I would just listen to, it is perfectly suited to the game. One of the best parts is the ballad of the Barbery Pirates (your pirates-turned-hair-stylist-then-back-to-pirates-then-back-to-hair-stylists), A Pirate I was Meant to Be (1:12:56).

Rating: 7.4/10

• Story: 6/10

• Gameplay: 5/10

• Graphics: 10/10

• Soundtrack: 8.5/10

• Nostalgia Wild Card: 7.5/10

Overall Rating and Final Thoughts

While I never played this game when I was kid, I always wanted to. I loved the art style, even back then. I think I originally saw it along with Grim Fandango in a LucasArts catalog that came with my copy of X-Wing Alliance in the late 90s and thought it looked like a lot of fun. It turns out I was right! Despite not being very fond of the core gameplay mechanic, the story, soundtrack, art style, and overall wit and charm really carried this game. It’s not something I think I will play a lot, but it’s definitely worth playing and I’m happy to have picked it up.

With a respectable score of 7.4, The Curse of Monkey Island takes it’s place on the Retro Review Leaderboard at number four.

Retro Review Leaderboard

1. 8.0 — Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies (2001)

2. 7.8 — Command & Conquer (1995)

3. 7.8 — Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions (1999)

4. 7.4 — The Curse of Monkey Island (1997)

5. 5.2 — Zombies Ate My Neighbors (1993)

6. 2.2 — Independence Day (1997)

Do you have an old game that you’d like me to review? Leave a comment or hop into the Substack chat and let me know. Just stick to older games (2010 and earlier) and I might just give it a shot.

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Enter StarryDex. It’s a PokeDex… that’s it. No social media features, no AI integration, nothing fancy. It’s just a window with a bunch of Pokemon sprites and search bar. You click on a sprite and you get a little pop out pane with some basic information about that Pokemon. It’s a simple app, designed for the COSMIC desktop, and it’s fully offline. I swear it feels like something out of 2009, and I love it.

From what I can see, it appears to have entries for every Pokemon, including alternative versions (like Alolan Raichu, Hisuian Arcanine, etc), and Mega Evolution forms. However, it looks like quite a few entries from the newer games still need to be completed which is actually even a bit more on point for how a Pokedex would work, though I’m not saying that was the developer’s intent.

There’s not much else to say about this app. I like the concept and the sprites are beautiful. It serves no real purpose for me apart from being a fun little thing to look at for a few minutes. It would be nice if the Pokemon entries had a bit more useful data (like move learnsets for each game in the series, HM/TM techniques, locations of where to find them in the games, and the like). Instead, it just has the basic info shown above along with a link to Bulbapedia. That said, it’s not even a 1.0 release yet, so there’s always a chance that will be coming in the future. I really just wanted to share it with you all because this thing was a unique Linux thing that made me smile and it kind of warmed my heart. I feel like it’s been a long time since that happened.

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• My personal newsletter with 2026 Experiment updates

Apple News

• Rumors are circulating about a possible new 12.9 inch MacBook (https://9to5mac.com/2025/12/05/these-four-apple-products-could-launch-as-soon-as-next-month/)

Linux/FOSS News

• System76 COSMIC desktop 1.0 finally released with PopOS 24.04 LTS (https://en.ubunlog.com/Cosmic-Desktop-1.0-release-Rust-Pop-OS-Wayland/#:~:text=Key%20points:,OS%20Linux%20distribution…)

• Only known copy of Unix v4 recovered from tape (https://hackaday.com/2025/12/29/only-known-copy-of-unix-v4-recovered-from-tape/)

• FreeBSD 15.0 released (https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/relnotes/)

Microsoft News

• December Patch Tuesday feature updates (https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/top-16-features-on-windows-11s-december-9-2025-update-file-explorer-start-menu-virtual-workspaces-and-more)

Creepy AI News

• Humanoid Robots are Coming to Workplaces (https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/from-cloud-to-factory-humanoid-robots-coming-to-workplaces/)

Other Tech News

• Micron discontinuing consumer Crucial RAM, diverting production to supporting AI (https://investors.micron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/micron-announces-exit-crucial-consumer-business)

• Federal judge blocks Texas app store age verification law from taking effect in the new year (https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/technology/2025/12/24/539606/federal-judge-blocks-texas-app-store-age-verification-law-from-taking-effect-in-the-new-year/#:~:text=Technology-,Federal%20judge%20blocks%20Texas%20app%20store%20age%20verification%20law%20from,and%20minors’%20First%20Amendment%20rights.)

• Discord Data Breach – 1.5 TB of Data and 2 Million Government ID Photos Extorted (https://cybersecuritynews.com/discord-data-breach-sensitive-data/)

Retro Gaming News

• Aspyr Deus Ex remaster indefinitely delayed following backlash that the remaster was “ugly” (https://kotaku.com/that-ugly-deus-ex-remaster-just-got-indefinitely-delayed-2000652654)

• Legendary classic Macintosh game ‘Dark Castle’ is coming back to the Mac (https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/01/09/legendary-classic-macintosh-game-dark-castle-is-coming-back-to-the-mac)

Command Line Tool of the Month: LazyGit

• https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit

  • A TUI interface for Git

  • MIT License

  • Written in Go

  • ReadMe contains installation guides for Linux, MacOS (via Homebrew or MacPorts), and Windows (via Chocolaty and WinGet), FreeBSD, and more

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As I’ve stepped back to examine myself lately, what I’ve found is a lot of aimless wandering across the tech landscape. I use, used, or have at least created demo accounts, for more apps and services than I can remember. Much of my work has been duplicated in multiple places over the years as I’ve explored different pieces of software and services. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but amongst those duplicated works are an awful lot of incomplete projects, books, essays, articles, and blog posts that I had every good intention to complete. Unfortunately, good intentions don’t put words on the page and as a result I have become quite frustrated with myself. Recognizing this has led me to examine the way I plan things and accomplish them, both in my personal time, and at the office. What I have found is that I tend to be quite scatterbrained when I need to focus and get things done. I’m great at coming up with ideas and putting those ideas together into outlines and concepts. Where I fail is at the implementation phase which usually leads these projects to only be about 40-60% complete before I get excited to start something new. This is the reason I keep failing to get the RM Quarterly ebooks published in a reasonable amount of time, and it really bothers me. At work, I get the jobs done, but I often feel frustrated at being pulled in a million different directions. Part of that just comes with the job, but I recognize that I’m not as focused or structured as I should be.

This past week my family and I went on vacation to the north Georgia mountains. We spent a lot of good quality family time together, visited some of the local tourist locations, did a bit of hiking, and had some time to just sit down and relax. One of my goals for this trip was to unplug a bit. I brought my laptop with me, but I opted not to use it until we got back home. I minimized my phone usage to calls, texts, maps for navigation, the weather and camera apps. I did bring my iPad but kept it off the wifi so I could use it exclusively as an ebook reader. I’ve never been the best reader, though I do enjoy reading, but one of my goals for 2026 is to read more books. I have a nice little list set up, but the one I wanted to start with was Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about it as a solid book that helped them in their digital detoxes and journeys to a more intentional way of life and interaction with modern tech. I was interested in what he had to say, and to see how it fits with our idea of the Digital Exit Strategy. So far, I would say that there is a fair bit of overlap.

The Digital Declutter

One element that Newport discusses in Digital Minimalism is the idea of a digital declutter. This is in contrast to the idea of a simple “digital detox” that many people advocate for. A detox involves taking a particular span of time, several weeks or months, where you remove what you perceive to be problem technologies in order to reset your tech habits. Newport’s declutter method takes a similar approach, but one that is more methodical and intentional. Instead of removing your digital “clutter” for a season and then hopping back in after the fast, you get intentional about replacing those optional technologies with meaningful activities and behaviors for 30 days. While on this break from what he calls “optional technologies”, you consider your technology needs, wants, and goals in relation to the rest of your life. Once the 30 days are up, you reintroduce the things you believe will add value to your life and nothing else.

As luck would have it, I find myself in the perfect position to explore this declutter first hand. I see the problems that I am having, and I am motivated to make some serious changes. Furthermore, I recently moved nearly all of my computer collection to a temporary storage unit, leaving myself only my daily driver devices and one or two that I’m actively working on for upcoming projects for the next several months. In some ways I feel like I already started preparing for a digital declutter before reading about it. I don’t think I’m quite ready to start that process yet. There are things I need to get in order and evaluate before I begin, but I do think it will be a good opportunity to factory reset my tech consumption habits and intentionally build new ones moving forward, which is the whole point of Cal’s book.

A Roadmap for the Future

My current plan is to implement the digital declutter in the coming days or weeks. I will, of course, document my experience for you all and share my thoughts on the process. However, I still want to examine this process in relation to the Digital Exit Strategy, namely, how can the digital declutter and the philosophy of digital minimalism help to focus the development of a functional exit strategy. In subsequent articles I plan to outline the steps I am using for my general technology use, as well as changes I am implementing to my particular devices and workflows.

This is all kind of culminating in a bit of an experimental season for me. The 2026 Experiment, if you will. If any of you are interested in the what I have been discussing, you can pick up Digital Minimalism using the affiliate link here. And if any of you want to follow my personal newsletter, I am publishing short, near-daily, blog style posts discussing my progress each day.

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