Hi Folks Here's a query for you to pick over, I know that some old games simply can't be played on modern pc's and OS because they were designed on and made for much slower pc's or they were made on different versions of Windows. One example that I've had a problem with is the original Thief (Gold version), I'm running XP with SP3 and when I try to load the game I get a warning box saying the game cannot run on Windows NT and aborts the load. I know there are ways around some problems with programmes such as Scumm and dosbox or you might even get specific versions of certain classic games that have been tweaked to run on XP and Vista (X-Com!!) but I'm wondering is there any hope for some old classics that aren't so well looked after. There are two games that I'm particularly missing playing, they are Terra Nova (an absolute gem of an old school game by Looking Glass, you know how good they were!) and Blade Runner - perhaps the best movie based game ever. I have seen mentions of utility programmes that will let you run old games on today's pc's but anytime I go to search for them I can never find them. So my question is does anyone out there in Bit-Tech land know of any such programmes or do I simply leave my old favourite and truly brilliant games as a fond distant memory?
I fully recommend virtual PC from microsoft, I use it for all my old games that cause me fuss and bother. VPC is free , or used to be, but you'll need a copy of an old OS though 98 should do the trick.
i've alternated between running another box with windows 98 and using dosbox on my main machine. both seem to do the trick, although the win 98 method is much more satisfying imo!
Even with some of these virtual domain programs, you might run into audio issues from the lack of a legacy Sound Blaster 16/32AWE or whatever.
well, you can always pick up a piece of junk for your older games, a win 95/98 machine shouldn't be hard to fine. I figured that you might've done this, but have you even installed the game and then adjusted the properties on the executable to run the program in compatibility mode for different OSs? that's how i could all my old DOS and win 95 games to run in XP... never ran into any problems
What was that new site BT reported on a while ago? The digital distribution site... It's going up in September, I believe, and it'll have older games which have been tweaked/updated to work with Vista and XP.
good old games! www.gog.com they are updating old classic games to run on newer computers. going to cost 5 dollars each. or was it 10 dollars!?!
You can play many old games on a modern machine via dosbox. They have a compatibility list to help you out. Though I haven't turned it on in years, I keep an old pentium 166 with a creative labs card and win98 around for this reason =]
