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Windows Central
Windows Central
Technology
Samuel Tolbert

Playing Age of Empires 2 on a Windows PC in the 1990s instilled my lifelong love of real-time strategy games

Microsoft Blizzard Entertainment Creative Assembly
The boxes for Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings and The Conquerors Expansion with a Windows Central 50 Microsoft badge.

With Microsoft turning 50, I find myself reflecting on how Ensemble Studios' Age of Empires 2 was one of the first video games I ever played.

While I was also given a handful of educationally geared computer programs — think JumpStart Kindergarten and Treasure Mountain! — that I was using from the moment I could remember anything, it was the stories of William Wallace, Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, and Saladin that formed the basis of the first true game that I was allowed to play.

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