Hey guys!

I've been going though hell & a hand basket just trying to get some of those old nostilga PC games, like DOS ones to run on my super duper awsome up to date Win Vista system (The Win Vista part itself not being super duber awsome). I've gotten some games to work, like Deus Ex but most others not, like X-Wing Alliance and Freespace 2.

Now I'm not asking advice on how to get those two particular games to work, but I am wondering what sort of tricks anyone else has done to get their old games (like DOS or Win 95) titles to work your current system. Like if there where any DOS emulators used for example.

I use to run X-Com on one of my computers, but the game itself moved incredabily fast. I had a handy tool on my PC that would throttle down the processor speed (or something to that effect) to help me run the game naturally. Its a nifty tool that I still use to this day and Ill see later on if I can find a link for it.

 

Painkiller.


STILL one of the best FPS I've ever played.

 

Man, and I call myself a huge fan of FPS but I missed out on Painkiller. Twin Twist's avatar should lash me for that (now watch him change it).

Was OS did Painkiller go for, Win 2000 or Win XP? Does it still work on Win Vista if ya know by any chance?

 

Well, I'm running Vista and I can play Painkiller... so I'm going out on a limb and saying it'll work.


Get it; there's a Triple Dose pack that contains 3 versions of the game and goes for about twenty bucks nowadays. Awesome deal.

 

Total Annihilation for Win95. Great for killing time and little machines.

 

On my XP machine:

Mechwarrior 2
SkyRoads
Spectre VR
Tunneler

I've gotten these to work using a combination of compatability mode and game-specific 3rd party patches.

 

^^^ Nuh uh!!! You didnt play Specter VR! I'm the only person I've ever known to player Specter VR!

Kidding of course  

 

I actually found my old copy of Freelancer (the one given to us by MS). Interestingly enough, it was in my old Celica, and the guy who bought it from us had a severe drunk-driving accident, and the car was totalled. My mom was worried that some important things might have been left in the car, so she went to the junk shop and found the Freelancer box with the game inside.

I have never played the game, since we were so busy with the cinematics. Now that I play it, it's not really bad at all.

I've been trying to install the old Gold Box D&D games, but the hassle of running them slow is too much. But Holy Shit those games sucked my time. I miss them.

 

well i used to play elderscrolls arena and daggerfall on my pc using dosbox and indiana jones and the fate of atlantis using scummvm but those were on windows xp and i'm on 7 now so i don't know if they'd still work

 

Fucking amazing game. And quite the single reason why games like Mass Effect are so appealing to me, thanks to that little beauty.

 

'Aliens vs Predator 2', 'SWAT3', 'Unreal 2003', 'The SIMS'. There was also a really old game to do with zombies, but 'Doom-esque', that I tried, it didn't even have mouse support. Can't remember what it was.

 

Lords of the realm 2 up until the cd got too scratched to run XD I found it at a goodwill store and have not been able to locate another copy  

 

Colonization is always the first game I put on my system.

 

Pre Windows 95 games I'm regularly booting up on XP,

Ultimate DOOM (no sound support)
Final Doom (This was a post Win 95 version, so it has higher res graphics, but no mouse support! WTF ID?)
Duke Nukem 3D (fucking awesome game!)

If I remember correctly these work fine but have copy protection, which makes it a pain to find the manual and correct 'page 6 para 3 line 4 word 6?'

Cannon Fodder (awesomely sweet and still rock solid)
Flashback (still never finished this)

I've also played a bunch of older games but these have had real issues part way into the game.

Starlancer (game freezes a few missions in)
Strike Commander (Freezes a few missions in annoyingly)
Wing Commander 2 (Freezes once in a mission I think)

Frontier Elite 2 doesn't want to work at all....  

There are others as well but I can't remember off the top of my head.

 

Mostly done via DOSBox:

Arctic Adventure
Cannon Fodder
Commander Keen
Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure
Dark Ages
Duke Nukem
Monster Bash!
One Must Fall 2097
Police Quest
SkyRoads
Star Goose
Wacky Wheels

 

I have had trouble with every copy of DOSBox i have ever gotten.
it does a weird thing like ignore my keyboard and stuff.
yet, I bought Redneck Rampage and a couple other games from GOG and they use DosBox to run the games. odd.

I have played CivII on my Vista Machine.
it took some effort, but i did get that old Sid Meir Shogun game to run (extremely fast) on this machine as well.
But i quit using it tp play Shogun Total War.

I wish i could "borrow" my friend's old Dune RTS, Gabriel Knight and that D&D castle building game Stronghold to see if they would work.

I forgot, I have Rise of the Triad running on this Vista machine with no probs.

 

I played TA regularly from release up until SupCom came out, so far ahead of its time that its own sucessor is the only game in the RTS genre that caught up with it.

Nobody noticed, but Meier recently remade Colonization with the Civ4 graphics engine.

Your still using the original executables? Get rid of those and feed the Wad files to something like zDoom, Chocolate Doom or Doomsday.

...and EDuke32 for that.

 

Freespace 2 works on my XP machine and I had my original XCom running on DosBox at one point. Recently I got Megaman Legends running, though the cutscenes don't sync with the audio. The one game I just can't get to run is System Shock 2. I know it should work but I think something is up with my copy.