I got a new computer and tried to load all the old games that I like to play. Sadly, a great many of them do not run properly on the new computer. Rise of Nations, Railroad Tycoon, Myst, Age of Empires, Battle for Middle Earth. . … Sure, I’m an old person who likes old things but. . . this has really gotten me down.
I feel like the old guy who turns on the radio and can’t comprehend what happened to all the Big Bands. WHY WON’T YOU PLAY WHAT I LIKE!
Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone have a fix for this problem?
I know that services like Steam and GOG try to patch up old games to work properly on newer systems. (This hasn’t always worked on my computer, but typically I’ve been able to solve the problem by Googling the game name, description of the problem, and name of the service I brought it through.)
Edit: This means, of course, that you’re rebuying the games - but typically they’re cheap or go on sale frequently, and that way they’re attached to your game account rather than a potentially fragile or rotting game disc.
Thank you! I’ll try that. Also, this is probably why EA and Blizzard will take over the world. My Sims and WoW games have no problems running on my new computer.
Origin just had Wing Commander III as an “On the House” game last month. The game requires a joystick. Who has a PC joystick these days? I found one at a yard sale yesterday, paid $2 for it. My computer doesn’t have the port for it anymore
Why wouldn’t they work? You might have to fiddle with the emulation settings, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t work.
In my experience, the biggest problem is just how much faster modern computers are- I’ve had to run things like “mo slow” to slow it all down enough to be playable, since my old ca. 2008 computer was many multiples faster than my ca. 1998 computer that I used to play the games in question on.
What bump said: right-click on the icon and select Properties, then click on the Compatibility tab and see if you have the option to run it under a lower version of Windows. Another thing that might fix it is, when you right-click on the icon, select Run as Administrator. Not likely, but you never know; the game may be have been written back when there weren’t admin-only settings, so it’s expecting to have all rights.
Also, check the websites for the publisher and see if they have patches or upgrades for the games.
You think you’ve got it tough? I remember when trying to play Ultima VII on a Windows 98 system meant making an MS-DOS boot disk and finding the exact combination of CD-ROM, mouse, keyboard, and sound card drivers that could load into 640k of memory, and knowing the exact order to load those drivers in and all the command line prompts to get it going, and even then the game would only actually run if it felt like it.
Railroad Tycoon III will not run in compatibility mode on Windows 7,nor in DosBox. I was able to get it to run by installing it, then downloading and overwriting a previous version of engine.cfg.
The easiest solutions (from a technical point of view) are to virtualize or emulate the appropriate operating system. So, for instance, you run DOSBox for the DOS games, both a Win98 and a WinXP installation using something like VirtualBox for the games on the appropriate system, and so on. Now that requires installation disks for the Windows OSes (but you might have them lying around anyway) and a computer with a decent amount of processor power and RAM. Of course, that requires both knowing how to do that and being willing to do so.
That said, depending on the cost, the platform, and how much of a hassle it is to do, I will rebuy games through a service like Steam or GOG. For instance, I had a copy of Civ IV for Windows. To play it on my MacBook I have to either launch Boot Camp or my virtualization of WinXP-64. Instead, I picked up a copy for cheap on Steam that I can run in OSX. I have a CD of Master of Orion and two CDs with two different versions of Master of Orion II and I still might wind up buying a copy off GOG the next time I feel like playing them because they have a Mac version ready to go.
Reminds me of the steps to get Grim Fandango running. You install the game, install the update, install a 3rd party fix, install another 3rd party fix/interface, read forums to make sure all your various settings are correct, make sure the game’s running on just one core, and after all that, the game may or may not work. It worked on one Win7 computer, didn’t on another, and ran with weird audio glitches on an XP laptop. Still worth it when it works.
I had no idea I was a hardcore gamer. But facts don’t lie.
I’m upset I still can’t get Cosmi’s Blade Warrior to run in DosBox. It used to run on an older version of Windows way back when. But when I try to run it under DosBox the system locks up.
As my back up, Win XP laptop recently suffered severe hard drive failure, I need a new way to run my old Windows games.
I found it incredibly difficult to run GF about six or so years ago on Win XP, but I managed. This time when I got the itch to revisit the land of the dead, I watched the movie on youtube instead
I remember trying to get Wing Commander: Privateer running. You had to write a specific boot disk and play all sorts of tricks to get it to actually have enough memory to run.
These days I just boot it in DOSBox and it runs beautifully. I haven’t played it in a few years but I still have the CD compilation.
