Here's my list of useful gaming information and advice
Cheating
The first stop for cheating has got to be Universal Hint System.
The UHS file is the best cheater's tool around. Walkthroughs tell you too much, you wind up finding out things you don't want to
know. UHS files dole hints out a little at a time, so if you just need a nudge, you've
got it, and if you need to know exactly what to do, you've got that to. On this site, you can either download a UHS hint file
or browse the hints online. The latter is good if you don't want to be tempted by having the cheats sitting on your computer,
tempting you.
If you're still stuck and you want a walkthrough, or if there just isn't a UHS file for a game, the most complete collection of
cheats I've found is at The Adrenaline Vault. They will often have multiple walkthroughs
and cheat codes.
Technical fixes
Qres is a nifty little Windows utility to change the screen resolution when a game starts. There are some games that
either will refuse to run in the wrong resolution ("Amber is designed to run in 256 Color Mode -
please change your screen resolution and try again") or they will not stretch to the edge of the screen, so that if you
play a game designed for 640x480 resolution at 1280x1024, you'll see the game as a little box in the middle of the screen.
With Qres this is no longer a problem. Fantastic and free.
In Windows 95+ it's a good idea to turn off CD-ROM autoplay when playing multiple-disk games. Some games, like Zork Nemesis, will
crash when Windows runs autoplay. You can change your settings for the CD-ROM. I can't recall how to do it in Win95, but it's similar to
Win98. In Win98, right click on "My Computer", click on Device Manager, click on the plus next to CDROM, highlight you CD driver and edit
its properties. Unclick "auto insert notification" in the settings.
Game Sites
About the most complete demo collection I've come across is at
Adrenaline Vault.
Need a review, a cheat, a patch? Your favorite game site might have it, but Game Guru will
search a ton of game sites and tell you what ones have what.
Adventure Game Sites
Just Adventure
This is my main resource to find out what games are coming out. They have interesting articles, but I almost never
agree with their reviews.
Adventure Gamer
This site is good for the latest news. I subscribe to their newsletter, and once a week I get an email telling me what
new reviews, interviews, gossip and games have come out.
The Adventure Collective
I don't know much about this site, but they actually linked to me without
my asking them to, so they must keep their ear to the ground
Note:I have taken Gamespot off my list of useful sites as its redesign has made the site
unnavigable, and my favorite feature, reader reviews, has
disappeared, although I'm told that they are still there and that there is some convoluted way to read them.