In 1998, I found a video game from 1997 that would mark my entry into video game manhood. Pathetic, I know. Forsaken was a mind-bending 360-degree by 360-degree hover motorcycle, race-bike death match against drones, other bikers and ‘the clock.’ After ten years, I felt like playing it again for old time’s sake on the PC.

Initially pushing the limits of 166Mhz computers (or 133Mhz with Direct 3D acceleration) and cooking 16MB of RAM (uh, that would be a joke now, folks), Forsaken was a killer game that was too far ahead of its time, perhaps too cheesily voiced with characters like Mephisto and Cuvel Clark, “Hello,” and just wonderful as far as I was concerned. I could clear thirteen levels upside-down, sideways or backwards on a single life.

Sadly, only I cared. Running Forsaken on Windows 2000 (my prefererd desktop over the XP and Vista laptops) meant getting some support when, “Cannot read Audio an Video stream,” appeared after picking Software, Generic 3D Accelerator and 3Dfx in the Forsaken Launcher Dialog when Selecting a Renderer. Go figure, today’s Intel Indeo Player is screwing it up. It trips over the Intro Movie that explains what a waste Earth has become.

Rather than backward-update Intel’s Indeo Player (if that’s possible), I learned that we can STOP the intro movie from playing by following the steps below:

Install the game, and from the Start Menu – (All) Programs, drag the icon to Play Forsaken to either the desktop or Quick Launch so you have a short cut. Right-click the short cut, go to Properties and add, * -NoAVI* with a SPACE between the quotation mark in Target:… and the switch to stop the intro movie. It’s a basic fix, and it works. Now, look what I learned!

To get the best 640×480 picture (which expands to fill the desktop of course) I picked 3Dfx as the Renderer. I never knew this before. I thought that certainly the Generic 3D Accelerator would be the best choice. That only delivers 320×200 pixels of smoothness. And letting the Software handle the situation is absolutely ridiculously unreadable and a jagged and awful 320×200. Hey, live and learn even 10 years later.

Now I can play Forsaken, re-affirm my video game manhood and see it better than ever before!