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Comment by fernie | Hacker News Reader

I can assure you that offline installer you got today from GOG will not work on Windows 20 or whatever OS will be the dominant for PC in 30 or 60 years time.

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Most C64, MSX, Apple,Amiga, Atari ST and Dos games can still be played on all majors operating systems.

In fact I used "most" but I can't name one that couldn't be played.

If anything it will be easier than ever to run those games, the platforms you mention can be run in a web browser these days with nothing at all to install or configure or download.

If it works on WINE today, I would expect it to work on WINE tomorrow. Worst case, you can probably just install an older WINE on a newer OS to ensure it.

It will continue to work on the same platforms it does now. Steam on the other hand already dropped support for Windows versions when they were still used by many players.

> I can assure you that offline installer you got today from GOG will not work on Windows 20

Given the lengths the Windows development team has gone to, to preserve backward compatibility, to the point that there was individual-game-specific workarounds codified in Windows, makes this claim the same as the GP’s, that Steam will change 30-60 years from now.

The cynic in me thinks you’re both right, mind.

You can literally run 30 year old software on your Windows computer today.

30 year old Windows software is kind of rough. Tried to get some old games working on my Dad's computer this holiday season. DOS based game is easy. Windows 95 based games are hard... First you almost certainly need winevdm for the installer because the installers were almost always 16-bit; then I was getting errors that I can't run on Windows NT, only Windows 95 is supported, and insufficient ram errors because the memory available is too much.

Found some other options (fan remake) for now, but probably I need to shell out the $3 for a modern port or run a whole emulated windows95. Probably wine with options would also work? SSI games, Allied General and Pacific General.

It would presumably work in a virtualized environment.

Are you willing to put monies on that?

I bet it'll run on Wine.

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