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The start of what might become a regular feature.
Hard drives. I have A LOT of hard drives. I have really old ones, new ones, dead ones, HDD, SSD, USB, etc. "How did this come to be?" you might ask. Well, every time I get a new computer, I either take the drive out of the old computer and put it away in storage (hoarding!) or copy what I want to keep (just about everything) to another drive and erase the original one. Sometimes I just want more storage space and buy a larger drive. Rinse and repeat for 30ish years and... I have A LOT of hard drives.
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So the other day, I was looking for an ancient file on one of those hard drive backups (it was on an external drive that I use for backups (hoarding!)) when I found myself deep down in the following subdirectory:
E:\SeagateBackup\WDPassportCopyover2\Silver1Tb\GreyHDBackup\CompTransfer
From the names of all of those subdirectories you can see how bad my digital hoarding problem is. But that is not the point. As I [virtually] stood there in that "CompTransfer" subdirectory, I noticed yet another subdirectory named "My Games". If you use Microsoft Windows, you will recognize that name. It's the one you have under "My Computer". It's the one that a lot of games use to store information and saved game files. Hmm. I decided to take a look inside that subdirectory (another one of my problems, I'm easily distracted). In there, I saw folders for Civilization 4, Civilization 4 Colonization, and Galactic Civilizations 2. I decided to continue on, down into the Civilization 4 Beyond the Sword saved game subdirectory and take a look. There, before my eyes, was a very long list of saved games. Some were all from the same game, played from 4000BC on into the space age. But there were some that started in 4000BC and ended much, much earlier. I've quit a lot of Civilization games when things start to go south. I know my little empire is doomed and just start over. Rage quit? No, no rage. Just the knowledge that my little empire is beyond saving.
Or is it?
The actual dates I played and saved those games range from late 2008 through the middle of 2009. That's around twelve years ago! I've played Civilization from the first version in 1991 all the way up to the present day. Certainly I've must have learned something in the last twelve years that I could use to aid that abandoned empire! And that's when it hit me.
I've decided to travel back in time to see if I can indeed aid that doomed civilization and help it achieve the glory it so deserved.
The name of the game save file I chose is: Mike BC-0230.CivBeyondSwordSave dated 6/28/2009.
That's all I know. For whatever reason, I left that civilization behind and moved on. The date is 230 BC so either things were going really bad or I just lost interest in the game. Either way, I'm going back to see if I can help that long, lost civilization achieve glory. So get ready as I fire up the Half-height Time Machine. Join me as I return to the past to see if I can, as the Quantum Leap narrator so eloquently articulated, put things right that once went wrong. The next stop, 230 BC.
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