The German Twitch streamer HandOfBlood delivered a full dose of nostalgia on his channel HandOfUncut a few days ago. He streamed a classic from Spellbound from 2002, specifically on a device with Windows 98.
What game did Hänno stream? The popular streamer, Champions League winner and producer played Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood, a real-time tactics game released by the German developer Spellbound (Arcania – Gothic 4) on November 15, 2002, for Windows.
The game mechanics are reminiscent of classics like Commandos or Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive (also by Spellbound), except that the missions throw you into a medieval setting where you control characters like Robin Hood, Lady Marian, Little John, or Friar Tuck.
All important information about HandOfBlood in under a minute:
What kind of old clunker is running Robin Hood? HandOfBlood streamed from his old computer, which still ran Windows 98 and had an AMD K6 processor, 6 GB of hard drive space, and 192 MB of RAM.
The old Windows menus, the CD installation, the documents flying into the yellow folder during installation… even the first minutes of the stream exude pure nostalgia and evoke memories of long-forgotten PC joys. You can catch up on the stream, for instance, on YouTube.
Journey into one’s own childhood
How did the stream resonate with viewers? Not only the author of these lines enjoyed the stream from the Windows 98 computer. The community celebrates in the comments both the action and the game, with apparently a surprisingly large number of people having grown up with it.
buschtesspielstube2045 celebrates on YouTube something like: “Oh my God, thank you Hänno for playing this game!!! Absolute childhood! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Just a few comments later, dominikb8027 expresses: “The whole atmosphere you’ve created with your old PC is gigantic.”
By the way, Windows 98 was released on June 25, 1998, and was officially supported by Microsoft until July 11, 2006 – by then, Windows XP was already nearly five years old. Microsoft shipped Internet Explorer 4.0 with Windows 98.
Moreover, the operating system featured native support for AGP graphics cards and USB devices, could play DVDs, and offered FAT32 for hard drives. Using multiple monitors simultaneously was also possible for the first time. Also worth noting: Microsoft had a vehicle with over 60 USB devices, which tortured Windows 98 and their own developers.
