Anyway, due to Vista (I'm not paying 250 to play all new games and subject my stable system to THAT level of bugginess) I've retreated to "old games". You know, DOSbox and the like. Installed nearly every DOS game I ever bought from 1990 on (and quite a few older then I got in compilations) and decided to retreat to the old games that not only work...but give me more joy then the new crap being pushed on me.

So after going through M&M3/M&M4+5/M&M:SoX again...I realized how much I loved those games. Not just because they were retro or held a lot of memories for me...but because they were the kind of RPGs I loved. Tough, long, heavy on stats, great puzzles, large dungeons full of traps, and gobs of enemies waiting to slaughter you around every corner. Heaven.

So then I decided to go through the "modern" M&M games. M&M 6 was "good", but I had never played 7 or 8, even though I bought them. This was primarily because I was angry at them for not returning to the more hardcore formula that the earlier games used. (3/4/5) Yet, I was smitten with the series again and decided to go through these too.

Well, thanks to the fan patches, I was able to play 6, 7 and 8 on windows with not a single problem. Well, except for some rare audio loops in MM6 causing me to alt-ctrl-del to task manager to close and restart it. Other then that, solid.

Of course, that left one more M&M challenge left unfinished: M&M9.

I bought it when it came out, and spent about 2 hours with it before I tossed it in the closet. I had the guide too. Everything was ready..*I* was ready, but I tossed the game and figured I'd never play it again.

Well, your patch has changed that. It's not the kind of M&M game I want, BUT, your patch has not only stabilized it, but fixed a lot of the minor annoyances that had grated on my nerves when I bought it. Now I'm playing through it.