The Laptop Collection

Alpha Centauri contains the familiar Civilization story in a great SF setting, and I rate this game above the more recent Civilization 3 in some respects (the wonder movies, the diplomacy, the resources). It's certainly the best game in the package and I can't recommend it enough. You get the add-on Alien Crossfire at the same time.

I don't recall how often I've played the real-time strategy game Red Alert 2 online, but it was quite often! In terms of gameplay, RA2 is outweighed by the classic Starcraft, but the game is easier to play and also funnier in some ways. But you haven't seen this game in its entirety until you know the terrific and crazy add-on Yuri's Revenge, which is not included here. So try to find that add-on too.

Sim City is just as addicting as the above two. Here the focus is on building a successful city. This isn't easy for beginners, and you'll have to go bankrupt a lot of times before a really successful city arises. A good idea is to make debts and sign a lot of contracts that give you money, regardless if there are side effects. Once you have a stabilized city, you can tear the contracts anyway. Those who don't have patience can use cheats or start with pre-made cities, although that takes away some of the fun.

The three games above (and forget the golf stuff) are all classics and deserve to be played by anyone interested in the genres. Highly recommended.


The best PC game ever!!! and a few others   April 10, 2004
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

This is an excellent bargain. Alpha Centauri and Alien Corssfire is the best gaming experience that you can have on the PC. I've never enjoyed a more addictive and compelling game. Red Alert 2 is a great game as well. The real-time strategy genre isn't my favorite, but I enjoyed Red Alert 2. Its over the top units and story kept my interest. The other 2 games are just icing on the already delicious cake. You can't do better for 20 bucks....
And the Alpha centauri games do work fine under Windows XP. Not only can you run the games in compatibility mode, but a patch has been released that allow the games to run native to XP. Get the patch at Firaxis.com.


Tried XP compatibility mode for Alien Crossfire?   February 26, 2004
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

Those of you unsuccessful at getting Alien Crossfire to work in XP - have you heard of and/or tried compatibility mode? You can tell XP to act like Windows 98 whenever you run this particular program, and it works fine.


Alpha Centauri runs ok on Windows XP   February 20, 2004
Dan (Toronto)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

I installed Alpha Centauri on my Windows XP laptop. And it runs without a hitch. The catch is to click "no" when you are asked to install DirectX 6. I had previously installed Direct X 9 on my laptop and i did not have any problems running the game.

I expect that Alien Crossfire behaves the same.

I do not know about the other games, but if they are using Direct X, just refusing to install the obsolete version which comes with the distribution and having the latest ones installed on your computer should do the trick. This is why Direct X was created, to make the game porting to a different OS painless.

About the games themselves - I love the small space occupied on the harddrive and how fast they are on a decent laptop. A much better gaming experience than the Civilization III, for example, where I wait for ever for the next turn.


It works with Windows XP perfectly like advertise   February 8, 2004
Francis M. (Quebec,C anada)
I bought this for the same reason everybody else did AC & ACXF & it's the greatest game ever & unlike those of pretend it doesnt work in Win XP, It does for real.