Anyone play old games on a Vista (32 bit) operating system?

I am getting a replacement laptop and have the option to get it with either Business Windows Vista (32 bit) or XP. I am leaning toward the newer Vista operating system but am hesitant mainly because of the uncertainty of being able to play some older games that are 3-5 years old (such as flight Simulator 2004, IL2 Stormikov, West Front Combat games, Silent Hunter 3 and 4, etc.). My son also plays a lot of older children's Lego's software games, etc. as well.

My main question is whether Vista will be able to play older software games? Could an amateur in computers be able to do this?

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

i play things like patrician 3, hoi 2 aoe1.....civ1 and they seem to work fine........i know FS2004 works, and am bettign that the others do as well.

 

The oldest game I have installed on Vista x64 is Age of Empires, circa 1997, and it at least installed and ran fine. I have heard it may have problems in-game but just seeing the game in action and not being able to queue anything made me freak and uninstall it before I played very long.

 

just finished playing through red alert 2, both soviet and allied campaigns, since red alert 3 is coming out soon. Red alert 2 came out in 2000 I believe, and I did not have a single problem with it.

Also, if you right click any program, go to properties, then compatibility, you can set it to run in XP SP2 compatibility mode. I have to do this to play warcraft 3 (which runs perfectly), but surprisingly I did not have to do that for red alert 2 which is much older.

 

i play spellforce platinum (2004) on vista home premium. works fine except a minor graphics update to see health bars. ive even played sacrifice (2001) and that worked like a charm.

 

been playing Monster Truck Madness 2 this weekend, the compatibility mode in vista works quite well. I play fs2004, age of empires, The games that you have got should all work fine.

 

In compatibility mode, most if not all old XP games perform well. In my case CoD2 and AoEII

sure, nothing to it; just enjoy.

cheers ...

 

Thanks everyone for your input! I now feel comfortable to go ahead with getting Vista.

Best regards.