Back in 2004, I was on a paper round with the goal of saving up enough for a gaming PC to play Half-Life 2. I had read so much about the game back then, and it was the first game I actually pre-ordered through Valve’s newly released online store: Steam.
Building my own PC to play this masterpiece is a memory I will always cherish. This was also the age of Windows XP and there was a theme that came exclusively with the Media Center version of Windows XP called “Royale” and that was what I had installed on my gaming PC. I loved the darker look of it, and since then I’ve wanted to use it again without having to find complicated, hacky ways to implement it.
However, thanks to an app called RetroBar (opens in new tab)I was able to instantly convert my Windows 11 gaming PC’s taskbar to XP’s ‘Royale’ theme.
But I didn’t stop there – I went one step further to make sure my current gaming PC looks even more like my very first PC from 2004.
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While there are apps that can completely change the look of your Windows 11 PC, sometimes you just want a quick tool that can change certain aspects of your themes without doing too much work to ensure it doesn’t cause problems for yours later there.
This is where RetroBar came in; Once you’ve installed it and an additional Visual Basic tool to run it, all you have to do is right-click on the taskbar and decide which theme you want to display on your PC.
I can switch between Windows 98 or any of the many colors that Windows XP offered, from olive green to blue and royale noir. Everything is straightforward, and it took me less than five minutes to sort through.
However, I felt like my desktop was missing something, so I went in search of the iconic Windows XP wallpaper that would look great on my 4K monitor.
Thanks to a Redditor (opens in new tab)who managed to convert the Windows XP “Bliss” wallpaper to 4K, I once again have a crystal clear view of the blue sky and iconic hills on my gaming PC.
I could have completed this redesign of my desktop by looking at changing some icons to also reflect Windows XP. However, I have found that we rarely use these icons on our desktop in this day and age. Gone are the days when “My Computer” sat on your desktop – these days it’s just the weird icon for our favorite games and tools.
In these modern times, everything is accessible from the taskbar and start menu, so I left that part alone. Otherwise, while my current gaming PC can play Half-Life 2 like my first PC back in 2004, it can also play Half-Life: Alyx and Portal 2, other games from Valve that I think are worth playing. to build a gaming PC.
Thanks to the Windows XP-inspired Royale theme, I can indulge in nostalgia for a simpler era, when I read magazines and watched demos to get even more excited about visiting City 17 for the very first time.