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After six iterations of Civilization - and Civilization 7 due to launch early next year - developer Firaxis hasn't forgotten its roots. In fact, the original PC that Sid Meier himself used to make the first game remains enshrined and in working condition at the studio over 30 years later.
There's a Compaq Deskpro 386 sitting in Firaxis's lobby, as the folks at PC Gamer noted during a recent tour of the studio. Firaxis learning and development manager Pete Murray said that the machine would've cost about $10,000 when it was first purchased, and it is indeed the very machine that Sid Meier used to make the original game. Even the original Civ wasn't a solo creation, of course - but given Meier's roles as producer, co-designer, and only credited programmer on the project, it's safe to guess the bulk of the classic 4X game was made on this machine.
The PC is apparently in working condition, too - though Murray said it took some eBay shopping and "creative salvage" to get it there. "The hard drive is nearing the end of its life, but if you fire it up, there's a build of Civilization 1 on there that is just before the release version of Civ, and it is playable on that machine." And the leather chair that Meier sat in all those years ago is sitting right next to it.
This actually isn't the first time we've seen this very machine in recent years, as it appears to be the same PC that popped up in a 2019 Ars Technica video interview with Meier. "When the 25th anniversary of Civilization rolled around," Meier explained, "I realized we had in our basement some of the original computers that were used to create the game."
Two of these machines were salvaged, but according to Meier "one of them actually exploded when we plugged it in. There was a bunch of dust around the power supply that caught fire, and the fan blew flames out the back of it so we shut that one down." The other machine worked, but "the only problem was the battery had died, and we couldn't boot it because there was no power. We finally managed to do that by finding a floppy disk, but now we can't turn the machine off because we won't be able to turn it back on again."
It's presumably that latter machine that's now in Firaxis's lobby, and it seems the studio was brave enough to turn it off in the intervening years. It apparently still works though, as the studio said it booted as recently as last year. Here's hoping this piece of history can survive a few more decades - and that Firaxis has a backup of that prototype stored on more reliable media.
The ranks of the best 4X games have always been dominated by the Civ series, and while Civilization 7's big changes might be worrying, we're equally excited to see what Firaxis is cooking.
