Retro Gaming help on XP

[Falstaff]

Alright, I tried this about a year ago with no success, but I'm ready for another go at it. I have a bunch of old, yet extremely fun and cool games that I want to play again (Shadow Warrior, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, DN 2, DN 3D, the Ultimas, and a bunch of others). Maybe it's the 80s/90s music I'm listening to or all the Vice City I've played lately, but I want to go back and play these games that I used to have so much fun with on a 486 or early Pentium. Problem is, some of these were written for DOS or older OSes and I can't get them to run. Does anyone know of a way to do that besides finding an old 486 with win 3.0 or 95 on it? Thanks.

[Kati Compton]

Alright, I tried this about a year ago with no success, but I'm ready for another go at it. I have a bunch of old, yet extremely fun and cool games that I want to play again (Shadow Warrior, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, DN 2, DN 3D, the Ultimas, and a bunch of others). Maybe it's the 80s/90s music I'm listening to or all the Vice City I've played lately, but I want to go back and play these games that I used to have so much fun with on a 486 or early Pentium. Problem is, some of these were written for DOS or older OSes and I can't get them to run. Does anyone know of a way to do that besides finding an old 486 with win 3.0 or 95 on it? Thanks.

Try VDMSound (http://ntvdm.cjb.net/)

[yslee]

That's just for sound. I think Falstaff can't run the games at all!

Falstaff, if you get them running, let us know, I'm interested too! Have a ton of old games I want to replay here!

[Kati Compton]

That's just for sound. I think Falstaff can't run the games at all!

Falstaff, if you get them running, let us know, I'm interested too! Have a ton of old games I want to replay here!
No - it helps with all the funky EMS, etc, CD support, etc.

The name doesn't quite reflect all it does.

[Falstaff]

Here is a list of the games I'm trying to install:
Floppies:
Sim Farm
Front Page Sports: Football
Sim City 2000
Aces Over Europe
CDs:
Robert E. Lee Civil War General
Jagged Alliance
Populous II
Ultima VII
Ultima Underworld
Ultima VIII
Doom
Red Alert
King's Quest
Dragon Lore
Warcraft
Comanche
Seawolf
Lost Game Disks (have to download):
A few other Ultimas
Duke Nukem
Duke Nukem 3D
Oregon Trail
Wolfenstein
Shadow Warrior

I need to hook up my floppy to install those (or just download them). A lot of the DOS games I had problems with. Civil War Generals told me it was Win95 only, a friend reccommended using the WinXP version of WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) to simulate 95. However, I couldn't find the Windows version of it. I was able to install Seven Cities of Gold and it ran well (considering it's about 10 years old). I was installing Warcraft with no problems until it asked me: "What is the second word on the second line on the fifth page of the users manual?" I don't know where the manual is, so that kind of stumped me. If anyone here still has their manual, can you please PM me? I also installed and ran Doom, but it was excruciatingly slow and laggy, which is kinda funny. I have a pretty nice gaming system, yet I can't play a game designed for a 1st gen. Pentium.

Out of curiosity, how many people here have played the games I listed above? Or anyone have any other old school games they played that I don't have listed (might remind me of a few...)?

Kati, thanks, I'll try that app out tommorrow, I'm gonna go to sleep now (er... after I finish Braveheart :lol:). I'll report back on what happens. Also, while I was playing Seven Cities, I tried to take a screen shot, but it wouldn't work (the game was running in DOS I believe). Is there any way to take a screen shot on a DOS game? I'd love to get some images from these old games. Thanks again.

[Mitchybums]

You can use vmware, bochs(freeware) or virtual pc to create a seperate pc on your computer., it will run in a window, and thus you can make screenshots.
Due to being a seperate pc, you can install anything on it, like dos, 3.xx,95 etc etc.

You can also look around here http://www.dosgames.com/essential.php for some additional info.

Goodluck.

I still play the older lucasarts adventure games like monkey island every now and then. These play great in scummvm (www.scummvm.org)

Duke3d has some windows ports and 3d accelerated versions availiable now, since the source is released. do a google-search on it.

[yslee]

OMG, dosbox works like a charm! Now to find ways ot making it go faster..

[Kati Compton]

I still play the older lucasarts adventure games like monkey island every now and then. These play great in scummvm (www.scummvm.org)
Yeah - this is what I was playing using VDMSound. Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle. I was also playing Tie Fighter or XWing I think (it was a while ago).

[Kacey Green]

I'm running SimCity 2000 (floppy) just fine without even activating compatibility mode. (it didn't install from the floppy though, you have to make the Dirs on your hard drive a certain way and it'll be fine [I can PM them to you if you need it {instructions not warez}])

[Falstaff]

OMG, dosbox works like a charm! Now to find ways ot making it go faster..

Hmmm.... I downloaded it but the Ultima VIII install was giving me errors. Blast, that was the game I most wanted to play. The Ultimas were great, and predated Diablo I think. And Kacey, I haven't even gotten to the Sims yet. I'm going to have to download some (SimTower, SimCity original) because I lost my floppies/CDs. I've got all day tommorrow to work on this, but then I start work on Monday :cry:. I'll let you know if I have any success, though if I get Ultima VIII (I think that is the best one, it is the highest numbered one I have) I'll be playing that for hours, and hours, and hours....

[Kacey Green]

I loved simTower, that also work in xp, but may need a compatibility mode :cry:

[milkman dan]

You can use vmware


if you like 1fps, you can use vmware :( running an X86 OS emulator on an X86 just doesn't make any sense :( If you are really as gung ho as you sound, then do what the rest of us do. Partition off a small 2-4 gig chunk of your hard drive, and let 98SE do its thing :D Hell, if you are running XP, you don't even need any third party software, but if you do want, powerquests boot magic works extreamly well for someone that is new to this. If you are new to this kind of thing and want a better explination of how to get it going, just give a shout

[Falstaff]

You can use vmware


if you like 1fps, you can use vmware :( running an X86 OS emulator on an X86 just doesn't make any sense :( If you are really as gung ho as you sound, then do what the rest of us do. Partition off a small 2-4 gig chunk of your hard drive, and let 98SE do its thing :D Hell, if you are running XP, you don't even need any third party software, but if you do want, powerquests boot magic works extreamly well for someone that is new to this. If you are new to this kind of thing and want a better explination of how to get it going, just give a shout

Problem is, I just partitioned off 4 GB (all that partion magic could do on my 80GB drive) on my HDD for Linux, which I installed last night. And I'm kinda iffy about a triple boot.... I did find an app that was made to run Ultima VII in XP, so that works well. I might be able to have WINE on Linux act as 98 and maybe install some stuff in there.

[milkman dan]

ick, ME isn't what you want for running dos appz, trust me on this. If you already have a linux instalation as well, then one more OS isn't goign to affect anything, I usually have linux/winxp/win98se on my box and never had any problems

[maximus]

Ultima ... hmm .. brings back old memories when I was skipping college classes just to play that game. Still remember the graphics when suddenly the face of the guardian appears on the screen, mocking the avatar's existence ... ah, the happier old days.

[Falstaff]

ick, ME isn't what you want for running dos appz, trust me on this. If you already have a linux instalation as well, then one more OS isn't goign to affect anything, I usually have linux/winxp/win98se on my box and never had any problems

I don't want ME, I said WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator), it's an app for Linux that emulates Windows OSes. I'm pretty sure you can set it to act as 95, but I'm not sure about DOS and 3.0. I can't install another OS though because my HDD doesn't have enough free space. I have 11.3 GB free, but even after defragmenting it, I can't get a large enough space for another partition really. I think WINE should work though.


Ultima ... hmm .. brings back old memories when I was skipping college classes just to play that game. Still remember the graphics when suddenly the face of the guardian appears on the screen, mocking the avatar's existence ... ah, the happier old days.
This game had some great gameplay and an incredibly captivating storyline. I think there were about a dozen subplots in the game. Even as the graphics get so much better now, these older games still (for the most part) have much better storyline and characters, they also last a lot longer. I played Call of Duty single player, and it lasted about 6 hours of playing time, Half Life on the other hand, took me a heck of a lot longer than that. If you ever want to have a gaming flashback, check out Gamespy's Top 50 Games of All Time. (http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/july01/top50index/) They have input from developers and game designers. It's a really good list, and the number one game is the best choice.

Thanks again everyone for all the responses.

[milkman dan]

ahh, bah, sorry, didn't see that. Wine really isn't nearly as usefull as people would have you belive, unless you are a linux ninja. toast the linux and go with a 98 partition, thats what I say