My parents have this old Pentium III, and they're giving it to my 10-year-old cousin. I've been tasked with wiping the drive, reinstalling windows, etc. I put MS Office, Firefox, MSN Messenger, and a few other programs on it. Also I made sure everything is updated, and installed the standard set of video and audio codecs.

What else do you think I should add? I have no idea what someone that age would even do with a computer beyond playing games, and it's a bit old for games - though I suppose I could load up Jedi Knight for him

I have a Lego game kicking around that you can have. If I can find it.

Treasure Mountain!

Yoda Stories

Loads of stuff on gog.com for a few bucks too.

Soldier of Fortune II

Serious Sam

2nded.

Thirded!
That whole series is good; Treasure Cove, Treasure Mathstorm (Snow Mountain), Gizmos & Gadgets... those are the other three along with Treasure Mountain I played a lot.

I also know the theme song for Mountain on the piano, although neither I nor the game play it at full speed

Haha, make sure you wipe all your porno, or that kid is in......

Oh who am I kidding, he could be hitting the jackpot.

Myst or Riven, if you want to watch him ragequit only minutes into the game.

The kid is 10? He probably knows the two most important things. Instant Messaging / Social networking, and if not now, then soon, online pr0n.

DOSBox plus some classic games. The ones you remember playing as a kid.

Anything by Apogee that's not a First-Person Shooter (some repeated below).

Jazz Jackrabbit 1 + 2

Blockland

Cave Story

Chex Quest (kid-friendly FPS)

Duke Nukem 1+II (Not the 3D ones, the ones before then are more kid-friendly. Also Duke Nukem 1 came in three episodes so by Duke Nukem II I mean the game after those three episodes.)

Guardian of Paradise - Freeware Zelda clone I enjoyed

Gunbound (maybe)

Hover - From Windows 95/98 CD... still runs on XP <3

Jill of the Jungle series

Commander Keen series

Ken's Labyrinth (kid-friendly FPS)

Rogue Squadron (maybe, that game is tough even for me)

These

Uplink (Steam; turn him into a l33t h4x0r)

World of Goo (Steam)

X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing Vs TIE Fighter, X-Wing Alliance

Zelda Classic (Zelda clone with editor)

ZZT (Old school ASCII DOS game with built-in editor and scripting language!)

SuperZZT (Actual sequel to ZZT)

MegaZeux (Spiritual sequel to ZZT)

Any of Telltale Games' recent offerings or the demos of them.

Darwinia (Steam)

Defcon (Steam... maybe?)

Eets (Steam)

Geometry Wars (Steam or otherwise)

Multiwinia (Steam)

Psychonauts (Steam)

Monkey Island Special Edition (Wait... it wouldn't run... oh well)

TrackMania Nations Forever (Steam, might not run well but it's free so try it anyway. Right click game entry and you can launch the config editor and crank the video settings way down.)

The "(Maybe)"s would require some scrutiny on your part to determine if they are appropriate.

Oregon Trail!!

Start him off on the right foot. Install DOOM.

Chainsawing demons should be a necessary part of any childhood.

Does it have a decent Pentium3 era 3D videocard?

Unreal Tournament still has a thriving community and runs on almost anything.

Jedi Knight is a good idea.


Maybe consider introducing him to programming or web design?

I was around 10 when I first played Myst, and I loved it.

Wow, thanks for all the great suggestions.

I tossed a GeForce 2 in it, so it should be able to play pretty much anything made before 2001-02 or so. I've even managed to get HL2 running on it, poorly.

I would think it would be best, at 10 years old, to go outside and play with kids. You know, social life.

Or a creative language like Processing thats not too hard to learn. Could be fun to mess around with

How about that NERF FPS that ran the Q3 engine? I had a P2 that ran Q3 well enough so the specs should be fine.

I agree with this guy - the world doesn't need another kyle90 running around (or sitting around, as the case may be).

Oh I did too. I was obsessed with it. But I still ragequit a lot.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YE
S YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YE
S YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

Of course there are some other good titles but they can be mentioned later on some other context.

It's probably too late; he's already hooked on Fallout 3 and Star Wars. Also he really likes lasers.

Ah wait you want real app suggestions too...

Thunderbird
Steam
Google Chrome
Winamp or Songbird or some other media player that's not WMP
mIRC (maybe)
Pidgin (don't make him use a standard one-protocol messaging app, eww)
ScummVM (ooh put some old LucasArts adventures on there too)
Microsoft Small Basic (might get him interested in programming, substitute your favorite kiddie programming language of choice if you wish)
Irfanview (better image viewer than the windows default)
Some sort of anti-virus software. You can try MS' new AV offering, seemed ok when I tried it. (http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/) Otherwise put AVG or Avast on there. You might want to remove Internet Explorer while you're at it, although this will break Windows Update on XP so you might just want to remove shortcuts to it.
7-Zip for when you need to help him install something
Process Explorer and Process Monitor for when Windows messes up and you need to help fix it
Flash, QTLite, and Foxit Reader (for web browsing... don't install Adobe Reader, Foxit is more lightweight)

Maybe some of these too: http://pack.google.com/intl/en/pack_installer.html Google Earth might interest him. It doesn't have lasers but it has SPACE. As might Google Desktop, Picasa and Talk. Google Apps, which installs links to GMail and Google Docs in the Start Menu (does he REALLY need Office?)

Google SketchUp might be interesting to him too (not sure why it's not in the pack).

Yoda's Stories. Wow I had completely forgotten about that game.



I second Chex Quest.

I'd say try not to turn the kid into a nerd. Based on this, you'll know which posts to ignore

DWARF FORTRESS

IE8 is more secure than Firefox and Chrome.

depends on the OS... being an older machine if it's running windows 98 DOSBox isn't exactly needed... same with scummvm


my game suggestion... a complete collection of LEC adventure games

Visual Studio 2010 CTP

Grand Theft Auto
In seriousnes- emulators, roms, and ScummVM.

.

I agree, so blocking access to Massassi.net should be a top priority.

lulz Vin is funny.

It's true.


Still using Chrome though.

Me too.

Rollercoaster Tycoon, Jedi Knight, and Age of Empires 2 are what I used to spend most of my early PC gaming days on.

TREASURE MOUNTAIN