>There aren't many games from that era that are as infinitely replayable.
I think A lot of games from that era were infinitely replayable. Diablo, Sim City. It really is the case we dont made them like that any more. The amount of small details that goes into it. Not just the games itself, but also the packaging, manual and things surrounding.
It is somewhat strange that group of people grow up and start producing in the 90s still have the attention to detail mind set. This is mostly gone in modern Gen Z generation.
Another vote for the Horn of the Abyss! It is a community pack that keeps the HOMM3 gameplay spirit but adds a lot of minor UI enhancements fixing various pain points.
And if you like insanely complex scenarios, check out HotA user maps on maps4heroes.
Yuri's Revenge never gets old - it's just the right balance of RTS with a bit more of an arcadey feel. Sadly I missed the original Starcraft train (finished Starcraft II), but one of these days I'm going to sit down and work my way through it.
Back then I was crazy about the story of Starcraft and I thought that was the best of the RTS games. I used to dip into the level editor too but it was kinda limited, missing some of the scripts Blizzard used in the expansion.
By pure coincidence, both Starcraft 2's writers and /me believed that Kerrigan should be brought back to her human form in Starcraft 2 :)
> Good Old Games has produced a fixed version, so I could pay for it a fourth time
It probably wouldn't cost more than $1, given that you're clearly willing to wait for a sale.
Advertised price right now is $5 with "lowest price in the last 30 days" of $2.50. The bundle of all 8 expansion campaigns shows the same current and recent pricing.
I would be quite surprised if a modern Linux could run the original binary without gymnastics. Windows is the only OS which prioritizes backwards compatibility.
There aren't many games from that era that are as infinitely replayable. Command and Conquer: Yuri's Revenge and Starcraft come to mind.