Luna Plays Dungeon Keeper (...Or Tries To)

by Yukito

Luna Plays Dungeon Keeper (...Or Tries To)

A long day (or night, rather) now behind her, Luna stretched her legs and let out a loud yawn upon entering her bed chambers. She wanted to go to sleep initially, but in order to get through all of the boring paperwork earlier, she drank a bit more coffee than perhaps she should have, and now she was far too wired to get any sleep at all.

“I know!” she shouted enthusiastically. “I’ll play Dungeon Keeper for a bit! It’s been, like, forever since I last played that game!”

Luna happily skipped over to her closet, which had been left exactly as it was 1,000 years ago. She recited some of her favourite sayings from the game to herself, in her best impersonation of the advisor’s voice. “Your creatures need a bigger lair… Your Dungeon Heart is being attacked! Beware! The lord of the land approaches…”

She giggled as the nostalgia hit her, and let out a joyous squeal as she finally found the box hidden in her closet. “Yes! It’s still here!” She brought the box to her face, and rubbed it lovingly against her cheek. “Oh Dungeon Keeper… Your sequel just wasn’t as good, but you are still by far one of the greatest games of all time.”

Excited, Luna teleported over to her new computer, given to her by her sister, and switched it on. She was still amazed at how much faster it was at loading… And smoother… And the graphics were sharper, the sound was clearer, the screen was flatter… Everything had changed so drastically when she was away. She almost had the computer sent back for being broken, and was shock to learn that computers these days don’t come equipped with floppy disc drives!

“This Windows 7 is truly remarkable! We must thank our sister again for this most wonderful gift.” A part of Luna was telling her how much of a fool she was for trying to bring eternal night to Equestria, and the rest of her had to agree… To think, if she hadn’t been sealed in the moon for 1000 years, she wouldn’t have missed out on this amazing technology being released!

“Let’s see… Our password is ‘Luna rules, Celestia drools’,” she said to herself quietly as she giggled at the clever password. No way her sister was going to guess that.

“YES! Now, let’s install this game with all haste!”

Luna remembered this game taking a long time to install 1000 years ago, but since then, computers had come a long way, and she was excited to see just how much quicker this game could be installed onto one of these newer models.

“just in case, we should probably grab a snack and a drink,” Luna said, getting up and moving out of her room, leaving the game to install.

When she returned with a plate of shortbread and a glass of warm milk, she was amazed to see that the game had already finished installing. “Impossible! We were only gone for a few minutes! How could it be done already?”

Luna certainly wasn’t complaining, though. She carefully placed her drink and plate on her desk, and eagerly sat back down in her beanbag chair, and finished off the installation by selecting a few options as they were presented to her.

Finally, the game was installed and ready to play. “Let the gaaaaaaames… Begiiiiin!” she shouted excitedly as she double-clicked on the game icon…

“What?” she asked as she saw a strange notification pop up. “Not compatible? What does that mean?”

She shrugged, and clicked ‘ok’… And nothing happened. She waited for several minutes, and the game just simply didn’t load. “W-What’s going on?” she asked, slightly worried now. She tried to open it again, and got the same notification again. And, once again, the game didn’t open.

“No… This can’t be happening…”

---

Celestia moaned as she rubbed her eyes, staring lazily at the clock at her bedside table. It was time for her to get up and raise the sun… “Maybe just a few more minutes sleep…”

“TIAAAAAA!”

Celestia’s eyes shot open, and she saw her little sister teleport into her room. “TIA! IT’S TERRIBLE! A DISASTER!”

Celestia sat up straight and looked at her with a serious look on her face. “What is it, sister? What has you in such a panic?”

“TIA! THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT NEW COMPUTER YOU GAVE ME!”

Celestia blinked a few times, and then sighed and brought a hoof to her face. When she saw Luna so panicked, she thought that maybe the kingdom was under attack or something… She should have known better.

“What’s the problem, sister? A virus? I told you to be wary of what sites you visit.”

Luna shook her head quickly. “Neigh, not this time! We were simply trying to load one of our favourite games, and it wouldn’t work!”

Celestia felt a headache coming on, and was tempted to simply kick her sister out of her room. “What game?” she asked, willing herself to remain calm and composed.

“Dungeon Keeper.”

“One or two?”

“One, of course!” Luna shouted. “It’s been one thousand years since we had last played it, and we were so looking forward to finally being able to play it once more! But now-”

“It won’t work because it’s not compatible,” Celestia explained. “That game is very old, so it won’t work on a newer computer, like the one that you have.”

Luna’s heart sank at the news. “I-Isn’t there anything that we can do? Like, maybe…” Luna had no ideas, and she let out a defeated sigh. “I see… So we can never play that game again…”

Celestia’s own heart began to sank when she saw how depressed her sister was, and she watched as her sister got up and began to walk away. “Where are you going, sister?”

“… I’m going to go sleep. I don’t feel like playing anymore…” Celestia was about to speak up, but was cut off when Luna mumbled: “This world has changed too much… I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

---

Luna woke up to the sound of her alarm clock ringing. The accursed ringing meant that it was now her turn to handle the country’s affairs.

She didn’t feel like it today, but she knew that it was her duty, and so, she forced herself out of bed. She turned towards her computer, the current source of her sorrow… And her eyes widened when she saw something new next to it.

Next to her newer model, was the older type of computer that she recognised from 1000 years ago. “What?” she asked, moving closer to the computer. She had been told that her old computer was destroyed by an attack from the Griffon Kingdom on Canterlot Castle, and that no companies made these models anymore.

On the monitor, there was a note addressed to her, from Celestia.

Dear sister, I searched all day, and finally found an old computer from ancient times. It still works perfectly, and is all set up, ready for you to use. It wasn’t cheap, so I hope that you enjoy it.

Love, Celestia.

Luna read the letter again, and then her face beamed to life as it was overtaken by a huge smile. She tossed the note behind her, and quickly pulled over her chair and copy of Dungeon Keeper.

“YES! THANK YOU SO MUCH, SISTER!”

Luna turned the power on, and booted up the computer… The old graphics, the old scratchy sound quality, the terribly long time it took just to start the thing up… Luna felt like she was back 1000 years in the past, and she loved every minute of it.

And needless to say, not much work got done that night.

Comments

[afterceasetoexist]

[Biker_Dash]

I can relate about games not working. I bought Fate recently at walmart, which works fine with Vista, but apparently, 7 will not play it.

Hell, I was told that I might not be able to do Battlefield 2 on a Win7 machine. Fortunately, Win7 supports the game just fine lol

[sgtrifter]

oh god dungeon keeper was hard at times i fully under stand.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Good on Celly, there. Nope, not much work done that night.

[Shock and Awe]

oh luna why would u go to such sites.

[Prosopeio]

I bought the PC version of breath of Fire 4, so many good memories of that game..

AND IT'S NOT COMPATIBLE!

*cries*

[SuperChaosKG]

She could have just gotten an emulator...

[Oddboy]

Ah, Dungeon Keeper. Never played the first game actually, but I liked the sequel just fine. Then I tried installing it again after ages of not playing it on my new computer... NOT COMPATIBLE. Cue amazing eruption of gamer rage.

This fic brings back memories and not all of them good, lol.

[Ghrathryn]

Methinks Luna needs a GOG account, since Good Old Games has the Dungeon Keeper games set up with emulation, along with Theme Hospital, Magic Carpet and a bunch of other old favourites.

[Themaskedferret]

*Grins* Heaven help us when someone teaches Luna about emulators and abandonware sites

[Elric of Melnipony]

I also have a certain fondness for vintage games.

[boothnat]

There are not enough grins in this world to express my reaction on reading this.

[Snowstreak]

It's called "virtualization," comes in handy sometimes.

I love my good old Windows 3.1 VM. I boot it up whenever I need a reminder of how far we've come.

[GGKKDAJF]

*cough*DOSBox*cough*

Have DK running on Windows 8. Heh.

[Lunar Walker]

3822688 you and me both.

[Lunar Snowfall]

I too know the pain of seeing the ‘Not compatible’ notification Luna.

[Bootsy Slickmane]

Oh, man, I miss that game. I wasn't that great at it, but it was a ton of fun.

[Legioner8]

Well, we can hope that War For The Overworld will be a good game.
Seriously, I hope it will be better then Impier

[Ariel Schnee]

I use Win XP Pro, always will.

Vista sucks.

7 sucks.

8 really, really, really, really sucks.

I'm waiting for them to perfect this-https://www.reactos.org/.

[Lancerlot]

Ah yes. Some day, Microsoft will put a "Compatibility Mode" into Windows ...that actually works.
I'd gripe about Windows 8 here, but... This would be a poor choice of a website to beat a dead horse.

[Shinskii]

Ah, how I know your pain Luna.

Also soooo many wonderful gems from the late 90's.

[dragenfire68]

little did Luna know that she could have run it in compatibility mode

[FairyFun]

Lulu needs to try minecraft