When is it time to let go? (old games)

I have a new Lenovo T410, which I absolutely love. Running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and of my 70+ games, so far only 3 don't run. They're really old games, but just got left by the wayside with new technology. I've tried running them in a native XP install, and both 98 and XP in vmware, and it's a no-go.
I know they run perfectly on a netbook (with the intel gma950 graphics chip) as I tested them before on my old Eee PC. So I guess my question is, when is it time to just let go and accept I can't play some of my old games, or do you think it's worth it to buy a $300 netbook just to be able to play 3 games? It just so happens that those 3 are in my top 10 most favorite games, so it's kind of hard to let them go.

talin

 

If you really like those games...I would say invest (its just my two cents and that would be the last resort). However, before you do...do some homework. I'm sure there are ways you can get those games to play. There are OS emulators you can look into (maybe that will help). I have DOSBOX installed on my Win 7 PC so I can play the very first Prince of Persia 1 and 2 along with Death Rally.

 

Oh I've looked into everything, believe me. They are win 95 games, so dosbox is out of the question. As I said, I've tried both a native XP install, and 98 and XP in vmware. They just wont run.

 

Unless you get more use out of the Netbook than just 3 games, I wouldn't bother.

But if you also want the Netbook to travel with it, or use it in the car, etc etc, then I would say go for it.

I try not to buy electronics that have multiple uses, just to use them for one or two things.

 

Well, I have an old Shuttle PC with a Sempron 2400+, 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD (ATA), just to play some Win98 stuff. Thing is I haven't powered it up in over two years. YMMV.

 

which games won't run?

 

Get an iPad lol.

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I think I might just get a netbook.

Klingon Academy, Aliens vs. Predator (the original), and Motoracer 1. Trust me, they don't work. I've only had a chance to test about 20 of my 75 games, there may be more that wont work.
So far 3 others that wont run in XP/7, work just fine in a 98 virtual machine.

 

All of those games should run just fine in a virtual machine.

 

Ok but they don't. I tried....

 

i just tried this demo and it works in XP http://download.cnet.com/Klingon-Academy-multiplayer-demo/3000-7563_4-10043505.html

 

They have the original AvP on steam that worked for me on 7, not sure about the other 2. I'm glad that games that I was reminiscent about were just old school enough to work for me like doom, quake, might & magic VI+, ha, those are great. You should try looking them up on GoG too

 

I bet right after you buy a Netbook to run those games on, you will find out how to get them to work on your newer system.

 

You can get AvP on Steam for cheap.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, I know AvP is available on steam, but therein lies two problems. My limited bandwidth, and not wanting to have to get online just to play singleplayer, and I was also reading that they re-did the ingame cutscenes with the developers doing the acting, the original footage is gone.
Thanks anyway.

 

Did you figure out why they won't run on a virtual machine? I wanted to go back and play Math Blaster. >.<

 

Keep checking GOG.com http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/

They sell older classics DRM FREE for the cheap. And they usually have sales like 25-50% off of $10 games.

But i'm with ya OP. I love older games, still play Grim Fandango, System Shock 2, Grand Prix 3, Network Q Rally and a few DOS flight sims like Apache 95 and Tank Sims like Tank Platoon 2.

If you can't get them to run then go for a Netbook. By the way GOG.com is selling Masters of Orion 1&II for $5.99 DRM Free.

edit: I forgot to mention all their games are sold to be compatible with Windows XP/Vista/7.

 

Why not just install Windows 95 on a small partition?

 

How would you get drivers that worked?

 

There are no drivers for win95, not in a native install.... lol. Secondly, in a virtual machine (in this case vmware and virtual pc), they don't support hardware 3d acceleration, which these games require, so they will not run. I and others have done extensive testing of klingon academy at another site, and it just will not run on newer OS's/hardware at all. Motoracer, though you can select software rendering, will not allow you to get into the game without hardware direct3d, after which you can select software.
I don't need to get any games from GoG, since I already own these games (and I already have Masters of Orion 2 ). >_< Steam is the only one where Rebellion is supporting AvP with an updated rendering engine that runs on dx9 and newer hardware.
It looks like I'll get a netbook.

 

Why not just buy a computer with 95 installed?

Here on eBay, like this one, for $99 you get a "gaming" PC:

http://cgi.ebay.com/1-3GHz-Gaming-C...d=ViewItem&pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item45f265a2e5

There are couple of others, you might wanna ask the sellers first and see if they are in working condition or not.

 

That's why I have my Shuttle PC. A little overkill for Win98 but it works great: AMD Sempron 2400+, 80GB ATA100, GeForce 6600 GT. It's also very compact. I even have a Voodoo 3D 12MB card I can throw in there if need be. lol.

I just wish there was DirectX support for virtual machines. It would make more sense, even if it had to emulate some basic 3D card, that's all you'd need for games 2001 and earlier.

 

Wish granted

 

you could try a nifty program called 3danalyze - it emulates hw t&l and basically does software rendering.

 

Why use software rendering when you can do hardware rendering via the link I posted? Heck, VirtualBox will even run a VMWare disk.

 

This is pure and unadulterated awesome.

 

I've been using virtual box for sometime, and I love it for playing old games.

 

Why would they run on the netbook but not a regular computer?

 

Thanks, I'll have to check that out.

 

Gah! It's ABOUT FRIGGIN TIME! Thanks for link +1!

I've used VirtualBox quite a bit but haven't touched it for months. Didn't realize they were going to have this added. MechWarrior 2 HERE WE COME! Now I'll be ignoring my kids today to install Windows 98SE and trying some games. LOL.

 

Doesnt it more apply to XP, rather than old 98?

 

I miss those old Wing Commander games that I played with a joystick. Do people even use joysticks anymore (outside realistic flightsims of course)?

I still play some old SNES and PS1 games once in a while, mostly old RPGs. They don't make those like they used to.

 

Yes: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Guest_OSes

Unfortunately the DX pass-through only works with NT based kernels (requires the guest additions)

 

Just realized that after I went through a Win98 install. Damn!

Why is there NO WAY to emulate Win95/98 but you have DosBox for DOS, and tons of virtual options for XP/NT/2000, but nothing for Win9x. It's been completely abandoned. Looks like the only way then is to hold on to my antiquated piece of hardware and hope nothing fails, or gog.com saves me.

 

The problem with Win9x is that it is a 32 bit extension to a 16 bit user interface for an 8 bit operating system based on a 4 bit architecture from a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.

Seriously, that actually is the case. Windows pre-NT is a direct-hardware twiddling DOS shell, and games and apps that ran on it expect to be able to "take over" and directly access hardware and such outside of the operating system's purvey. NT and other properly designed OSs do not allow programs direct access to hardware, which means that they are much more easily virtualizable because all you have to do is put your drivers in and pass the graphics calls through. With Win9x, the programs actually require full access to all the hardware directly, and it's not worthwhile to try to trap and try to translate to native calls all that stuff in a virtual machine for the very few people who might use it.

Win9x was abandoned because it's a bad idea

 

The problem is, this "bad idea" had some "good ideas" for games that won't run properly or at all with any variation of NT.

If you could configure win98 through Dosbox somehow, and save that config and launch it. But DosBox isn't that configurable that I know of.

 

The problem is the games, unfortunately, and they aren't "good ideas". They were hacks, not properly designed. Same issue with moving applications from XP to Windows 7... lots of apps just assume they have administrator access, especially games.

 

I think a lot of times the games were "hacks" to circumvent limitations of the OS. And then you have antiquated technology like Voodoo 3D for the late 90's, early 2000's era. There are wrappers but they don't really work that great.

The games I miss most are the Jane's Combat Simuations. Some run in XP and 7 other's don't. Also MechWarrior 2 series was awesome.

 

you just answered your question

 

I asked why do software rendering when you can do hardware rendering. If you can't do hardware rendering, then software is all that's left. My point still stands that if you can run an app on WinXP, you're better off using the hardware rendering than a T&L translator.

That said, your application looks like it would be a good solution to htwingnut's Win98 issue given how fast CPUs are compared to the machines the apps were designed to run on, especially since we have multi-core machines and can essentially use one as a T&L "video card"

 

Windows 98 is great for games that don't require direct3d acceleration. Most of the old windows 95 games were software rendering only. It wasn't until 97/98 that direct3d started to take off.

@htwingnut; VMware player is awesome for 98. They have drivers available for it (through their vmware tools), and you need to just download the soundblaster pci 128 drivers from creative, and you can play any game that doesn't require directx/3d. I have 3 games running with it and they play great.

 

That's the problem, I need 3D acceleration for Win98.

 

Then that's a problem. vmware doesn't support 3d acceleration in 98, and neither does virtualbox. Are you sure these games wont run in xp? Are they glide games?

 

There has to be a way to get 3D acceleration for 98.

 

There were many, but since it's been so long can only think of a few. One is Jane's F/A-18 Super Hornet, another is MechWarrior 2 and all the expansions. Both are either OpenGL or DirectX (or both), but not Glide. Several of the other Jane's games either work but with caveats or not at all. Unfortuantely those were some of the best damn combat flight simulations ever made.

Not in a virtual mode. On an actual machine yes, but virtual no.

 

That's a pity. If anyone needs Glide support, I highly recommend Zeckensack's glide wrapper (google it if you're interested). I have one glide game (3 more to come) and it plays perfectly, and looks exactly as it did when I had my old voodoo2 sli setup many years ago. It's the best glide wrapper I've ever used and I can't recommend it enough.
I've never played Jane's F/A 18, but I have Jane's Fighters Anthology (freaking awesome game, but the graphics are very dated). I've never seen a game like it since.
Oh, and I tried virtualbox. No matter which way I tried it, I couldn't get direct3d to work in XP. A google search revealed it's a common problem right now, no word on a fix. Basically, if you select direct3d acceleration, after installing the guest additions, you go into your guest (in this case XP), and run dxdiag it crashes out. If you try to play any game that requires d3d, it just wont work. So no direct3d right now.

 

Have you tried Lock On? It's close to that and can be had for under $10. At least that's what I paid for it at GoGamer.com

 

Oh, I own every single combat flight simulator ever released for PC. I used to drive a website dedicated entirely to combat flight sims back in the mid to late 90's and into early 2000's. I like Lock On for sure, and enjoy it mainly for the A-10. But nothing beats the Jane's stuff. My favorite was F/A-18 though. Best dang cockpit simulation with all the MFD's. I'd say even better than Falcon.

 

I still have Longbow and Longbow 2.

Been meaning to see if I can get it to work under Windows 7.

 

I loved Longbow 2. But I also found the Enemy Engaged series quite good, Apache - Havoc / Comanche - Hokum. Awesome dynamic campaign. I remember several years ago I fired it up, downloaded some texture update (still looked dated), but ended up flying for dozens of hours again.

Too bad you won't get the likes of that any more. The sequel Enemy Engaged 2 isn't all that bad. It was riddled with bugs at first but seems decent now. And is basically the original game just spruced up a bit and works with XP, haven't tried with 7 yet though.

I just wish I had more time to commit to flight sims. One session will last you hours. I can't do that any more.