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Comment by adam12 | Hacker News Reader

I've got a bunch of old games that I can no longer run on Windows 8/10. If they can get some of those running smoothly, ReactOS will see a surge in new users.

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With its NTVDM, ReactOS can actually play DOS games out-of-the-box, which is something modern (64-bit) Windows releases can't do.

Even though ReactOS' current main architecture is 32-bit x86, I would hope that the NTVDM gets ported over to the 64-bit version, which would be quite awesome.

Something I rather enjoy about Wine is that it supports 16-, 32-, and 64-bit applications all from the same prefix. Quite a nice advantage over Windows :)

You can copy ntvdm.exe from reactos ro windows and start using it right now. Even in 64 bit system.

This doesn't work for me (Windows 7 x64). Am I supposed to do something else besides copying the file?

The OP says that it works on x64 too.

As a hardcore gamer, gamedev and old games lover, I am finding sadder and sadder that certain games are getting increasingly forgotten by everyone, and noone even remember they are in dire need of tools to make them work.

It is the games from Windows 98 and XP era, many used some combination of GDI and DDraw that doesn't work at all on new Windows versions, DDraw emulation is mostly broken, and pity you if the game used DDrawEx (it was to mix DDraw with D3D).

For example I am currently trying to figure a way to play SimCity 4 properly, the game is too demanding to run in an emulator, so some kind of native implementation is needed, but it also uses DDrawEx, that is very poorly supported in all OSes except Windows 98, ME and XP (it doesn't work in XP contemporary NTs either).

I think this is the kind of games the OP is happy ReactOS maybe will implement... because for DOS games, DosBox is more than enough already in most cases (there are some exceptions, like Noctis that is incredibly CPU-intensive and runs at 3 FPS in DosBox).

Get WineD3D's DDraw.dll with the needed dependencies and it will run.

Get Linux, run Sim City 4 in WINE :) Apparently works very nicely in latest WINE versions:

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...

Even newer games can be tricky - try Assassin's Creed I and II on Windows 10 and you'll struggle.

You could try running Windows 98 under VirtualBox.

Those old operating systems are quite a pain in VirtualBox. Qemu does a much better job, in this case. VirtualBox's emulated hardware is too new for some systems, and Win98/Win95 flood the CPU during idle time (because that's how things worked back then), causing the input processing from the VM to lag significantly.

Regardless though, this would legally require you to acquire a licensed copy of Windows 98, which will only become harder and harder down the road. Unless Microsoft decides to "free" all legacy software at some point.

ReactOS and WINE solve this problem in a different way, by providing open source solutions that everyone can use, copy and archive without cost or consequence.

I think you missed the part where I wrote that some games, like SimCity 4, need excessive processor performance to be emulated?

Or VirtualBox can sum several cores and simulate a single faster CPU?

Have you tried to use DosBox ? I was able to run DOS era games and applications just fine on Windows 7/8.1/10 with DosBox.

Not just on Windows. DOSBox works literally everywhere.

On Android, even. Pretty cool to be able to use a smartphone to replay the classics :) Of the various ports, I found this one to be most performant, stable and configurable: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fishstix.d...

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