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Comment by willcipriano | Hacker News Reader

> Microsoft will see fit to release an official XP activation tool for posterity.

Free Idea for Microsoft: Windows XP PCs but like those mini consoles[0] that have been released recently. Could be preloaded with games from the era and intended to be used offline so patches don't matter.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Classic

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>Could be preloaded with games from the era

So, only Microsoft published ones then. You realise that right?

You can buy and play Windows XP era games on Steam and run them just great on Windows 10/11.

FEAR is a great one, released in 2005, still looks and plays amazing. https://store.steampowered.com/app/21090/FEAR/

So I have no idea what you mean :)

>You can buy and play Windows XP era games on Steam and run them just great on Windows 10/11.

Or older (pre-Steam) games in a virtual machine.

Hyper-V comes with Pro versions of Windows. VMWare has a Player that is also free (plus there's full Workstation). There's also VirtualBox, which sometimes is the packaged solution for very old titles sold on platforms like GOG. Never mind the solutions for Mac OS, Linux and BSD.

Recently my jam is going back to 1994 and playing a game from the Windows 3.1/Windows 95 transition era, rife with 16-bit libraries -- Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol. A game in which it was likely a lot of older folks here played the crap out of the demo, but never bought the game because it involved sending a check in the mail -- and because even the demo could provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment. Though you can legitimately buy it online from its current IP owner for about $10 (more if you want a boxed copy!), and it's just as fun as I remember it 30 years ago.

And setting it up in a virtual machine? Very straightforward, save for digging up some third-party audio library the game wanted. I actually just have a 40GB Windows XP VM I just maintain with all my old games from DOS and Windows 3.1 through 2002 or so. I can move it between hypervisors, between host OSes, etc. Just works. All my old games always ready to go.

I am not aware of any titles on GOG that are packaged with vortualbox, do you have any examples?

I am pretty sure they meant DosBox. GOG is pretty well known for using that to support older games.

Steam uses it too.

games on steam might, but are valve themselves actually doing any of that packaging?

gog in perticular got a custom licensed version of dosbox in exchange for funding.

Older Windows games also run well on Wine[1] and (of course) Proton.

[1] https://jasomill.at/Fallout2.mp4

N.B.: AFAIK, running 16-/32-bit Windows software under open-source Wine on Mac OS, as seen here, is no longer possible on 10.15+ due to Apple dropping support for 32-bit software; commercial CrossOver[2] supports 32-bit software on newer Mac OS versions (and I assume 16-bit, though I haven't tested it).

[2] https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

For 16-bit Windows software you can also install Windows 3.1/3.11 on DosBox.

Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol looks a bit like a graphically souped up NetHack from 1994?

Much more Wizardry-esque. Some stuff is procedurally generated, but the dungeon layout — which is mahoosive - is not.

I played the shit outta that demo oh the nostalgia

Everyone I knew in high school did. As in, DOZENS of people. The reality of your parents being unwilling to send a check to some guy in Colorado.

Game wasn’t a real commercial success because its demo was too good, and it wasn’t on store shelves. IP rights were sold to Decklin’s Domain, who at least seems to be a great steward, even if the website looks straight out of the mid-90s.

Original author is still around doing some startup consulting in the Denver area. Think he made the game damn near straight out of college.

Again, still loads of fun. Completely worth the $10. I’ve been having a blast with it lately, and the help file is exhaustive like an early 90s computer game manual.

I've been meaning to replay FEAR sometime. Thanks for the reminder!

Unfortunately, while it does run on Windows 11, there's a bit of light modding you'll have to do in order to get it to be stable.

What's really sad I have absolutely 100% success rate with playing XP-era games on Linux through PlayOnLinux. At least with my library of games. I am boggled how Microsoft's back compatibility is so bad

Bad? Microsoft had a long history of maintaining backwards compatibility. I wrote a program for Windows XP that still runs unmodified in Windows 11.

Old Microsoft yes, the new generation that got on board during the Windows 8 days not so much.

There is hardly anything backwards compatible during the multiple WinRT reboots that have happened since then.

Drivers will literally stop working between different "feature updates" of windows 10.

Kernel side backwards compatibility is a different story, and not just on Windows. Here we are talking about programs (userspace side).

Would these games refuse to run on Windows 10 and 11? Have you tried them before making that statement?

Note: I am a linux user, I am just surprised that those games would work on linux but not on windows.

People literally have to use Wine DX libraries in order to make some of these games work on Windows 10 -- so yes, there are some 9x era Windows games which work better under Linux than under Windows.

Some would refuse to run even if in "compatibility mode". You need to download patches, community made fixes and even then you'd be lucky if game if runs past splash screen. Linux beats it by large in same comparison

Isn't that because game developers reverted to shitty non standard and undocumented solutions to prevent people from using pirated copies?

I remember back in the days refusing to buy games because it was reported they were installing silently some weird software drivers that looked more like malware than real software.

I tried the Blizzard launcher several times with Wine, but almost no success. Qemu with GPU pass-through works much better for me. I use a decommissioned GPU from my son for Diablo 2R. IO is a bit slower, because the IOMMU groups of my Asus board prevent SSD pass-through of the second SSD. The first SSD is in its own IOMMU group, but the second is in the same group as the network, which I need for Debian.

I mean...

I did see THIS the other day: https://twitter.com/dosnostalgic/status/1657921973786144770

EDIT: Mere MINUTES after I posted this, I came across an HN thread devoted to one of those!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35995959

GOG is full of older games updated to run on newer platfroms

Sure, but it's not every game. Most people have an obscure white whale they felt was a classic that's now in limbo because the publisher is gone.

Also I remember back from my gaming days that some then-old (now older) games required specific hacks or workarounds to run on "real" then-modern Windows, some possibly incompatible.

Whereas Wine could be made to have tailored instances per game (which I think PlayOnLinux, Crossover, Proton... are doing), giving the best experience for each game.

IIRC there are even some games that can now only be run on Windows by running them via Wine on Windows.

Many of my favorite games are older Windows or DOS games, such as Star Trek: Armada, Age of Empires, Descent, and Commander Keen.

If only I could get these to work on my M1 MacBook Pro. Now that would be something.

Have you tried GOG.com? They use Dosbox as emulator inside their software, so any DOS game should run on Apple silicon (or Windows 11).

I might buy that just for pinball and freecell!

Pinball was decompiled a while back; you can even run it on macOS/Linux[1].

I take no responsibility for the ensuing impact to your productivity.

[1]: https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball

Ah, yes, link the example that was considered a failure and had bestbuy and other big block retailers sell them for $15-20 less than 6 months after release. (Maybe 3 months?)

I bought quite a few of them when they were slashed back in 2019. $15, free shipping, quite a value. The scene is largely ran by 2 redditors now.

Great idea! I’ll put a bet on Microsoft doing this. Especially if Bill reads this, I’m sure he would love it.

I guess Bill don’t like it.

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