So the internet archive just released a bunch of Windows 3.1 games for your browser.
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_win3_games
Anybody have any favorites? Combat Tanks, Jewel Thief, Jezzball, Pipe Dream, Castle of the Winds, all bring back memories. The collection isn't very well sorted (half of them are under "Windows 3.1 Shareware"), but still, oldass windows games in your browser.
It may be just as well because there's really not a good way to play old Windows games on modern hardware. Sort of a gaping hole in emulation capabilities.
>>2989116
VMs?
There's too much lag, even though my PC can play the latest games.
>>2989123
All of them are shit at handling early versions of Windows.
>>2989116
DOSBox handles Windows 3.1 just fine.
It's Windows 95 that gives it trouble.
>>2989146
is there any reason it wouldn't work in a VM running windows 98?
>>2989154
Vmware and Virtualbox have poor Win98 support. The support for legacy hardware has gradually been removed or can only be found in the config files. You need multiple fixes to properly support either VM host. Unless you're happy with a limited VGA driver, no sound, and f-ed up mouse support. DOSBox in comparison is a far better alternative for Win 3.1.
>>2989058
>Jezzball
excellent game
What have they done to that site? It used to look decent and navigatable. Now it's a fucking smartphone-esque mess.
Clearly they don't know their audience. People ineterested in stuff that's archived for the ages don't want to deal with this unusuable shit.
Micro Man
Windog
>>2989116
Actually Windows 3.1x games often run on 32 bit Windows including 10.
>implying this isn't the greatest Star Trek game ever made
>>2989332
Most of them run too fast on newer hardware or have other incompatibilities.
>>2989332
>run on 32 bit Windows
That's the problem.
>>2989337
Oh shit. I forgot about this.
>>2989356
Really?
I thought Windows programs should not run fast because they are constructed from Windows calls but not assembler.
Tried out TetraVex earlier since I remember it, but never played it as a kid. Felt good to finish a 4x4, so I'm going to try a 5x5 next.
Lol this fuckin game
https://archive.org/details/win3_ALIEN102
>>2989528
iknowabsolutelyjackaboutprogrammingandhowcomputerswork.jpg
>>2989058
I used to love Castle of the Winds back in the day. What was really fun was that dungeon designs were always different and unique no matter how many times you played. Pretty good replay value.
That gravestone used to scare me as a kid though.
>>2989571
I'm not allowed to learn more anymore, am I?
>>2989058
Awesome, OP. Thanks for the link.
Mordor: Depths of Dejenol is my all-time favorite Wizardry-like game. The Exile trilogy of strategy RPGs were also nice.
>>2989058
Not for me apparently, all I get is a black screen.
>>2989332
Who the fuck still uses 32-bit Windows
>>2990035
People who don't need more than 3GB of RAM.
>>2989309
because underage
What was the name of the game where you bounced around beams of light? P sure I played that on either 3.1 or 95.
>>2989309
There's literally no point in buying a retro PC. A modern PC can play any retro game; if you fail to get Redneck Rampage or Tong-Nou running at a good framerate in DosBox then that's a problem with the user, not the hardware.
>>2990513
It's not currently possible to virtualize / emulate Win98 + DirectX HW; leaving a big gap of games 1998 ~ 2001 almost impossible to play any other way than real hardware.
i was really hoping fuji golf was there.
>>2989058
I would give a kidney to get ahold of the full version of Bad Toys in black and white.
>>2990825
>a big gap of games 1998 ~ 2001 almost impossible to play
Such as?
>>2990905
Like Cycling Manager.
>>2991203
I mean, anything that isn't some Madden-tier shovelware sports game?
>>2990825
Most Windows 9x games do not run on hardware newer than XP-era P4 boxes and a few particularly stubborn ones require real Windows 9x.
>>2990379
Laser Light, it's a DOS game though.
Also many Windows 3.x games run too fast on anything above an early (75-90Mhz) Pentium.
Garfield: Caught In The Act is one I can think of. It runs on XP, but you can't put it in full screen mode for some reason. So you need real Windows 3.x or 9x to run it properly.
I'm not sure if Incredible Toon Machine runs on XP either; I never tried it, but I guess it would be too fast since it was already fast when I tested it on a Windows 95 Pentium 166Mhz box.
There were a bazillion of these bad share/freeware Windows 3.x games. Personal favorite of mine was Lunar Lander which runs hilariously too fast on anything above 40Mhz.
>run game on Pentium 133Mhz
>press key to start game
>lander smashes into the Moon instantly and I never even see the sprite move at all
>>2989146
VMWare seems to handle Windows 3.11 fine.
>Odell Down Under
>Missile Command clone
>Breakout clone
This really brings me back
>>2989561
Your shots can collide with each other.
I repeat _your fucking shots can collide with each other_.
I can't even.
>>2991539
Oddly enough Arachne (DOS-based) works better than any Win3 browser.
>>2990905
Heavy Gear
>>2991462
Really? Because I tend to find largely that most win9x games run on Win7. You might need a compatability tweak, or palettestealersuspender or using windows zoom because lack of window scaling without fullscreen. But most of the games I've tried work.
The biggest issue I have with most games at all is simply getting by the 16 bit installer. Most games were 32 bit though and generally at least run.
>>2990825
I tend to find you don't need too especially with mostly anything using DX or D3D/OpenGL. You can read of a top games list from every one of those years and pretty much everything works.
HL, Starcaft, Fallout 1/2, Thief, Grim Fandango, Baldurs, Tribes, Unreal / UT, Blood 2, Shogo, Tomb Raiders, Commandos, Turok, Sin, Might Magic, Settlers, AoE 1/2, R6, Freespace, Alpha Centauri, System Shock 2, Asherons Call, Everquest, Planescape, Quake 1/2/3, Deus Ex, NOLF, Diablo 1/2, Mech4, Elite Force, Sims, Alice, Dark Reign 2, Daikatana, Sacrifice, Oni, Drakan, Etherlords, Sim City 3K / 2K, TA, Battlezone, Caesar III, Commanche, Heretic/Hexen 2, MDK, Worms 2, Delta Force, Smallwood, Pacman, Croc 2, Dune 2K, Bladerunner, Megaman Legends, Martian Gothic.... and more all work with W7 and modern hardware.
Honestly I'm not sure where you're getting that but I'd say it's harder to find games that DON'T work from that time. Hell, a good lot of those games I still have, installed and play and it's nice because with early 3D games I get shit like 2xSSAA+4xMSAA and 8xTRSGSSAA on top.
Honestly I find that one of the better eras to choose games from for exactly that reason, almost all games seem to work fine and many get benefits from modern hardware that simply weren't there back in the day.
>>2991613
>almost all games seem to work fine and many get benefits from modern hardware that simply weren't there back in the day
How can they benefit from modern hardware if the game isn't capable of utilizing it? A Windows 95 game designed for 640x480 resolution won't magically support your 3599x9922 pixel 3D OLED setup.
>>2991624
>3599x9922 pixel 3D OLED setup
One, I don't have one of those, I can run native 640x480. Those displays can either upscale fullscreen modes to native resolutions with the natively or with GPU drivers or since win7+ support zooming in on any single window can also fill windows. But Windows 95 is windows 95 not 98+ and in 98+ many if not most were made for windows 98. Anything that uses D3D or OGL pretty much gets automatic AA and texture AA if you bothered to even fucking read my post, but also there's faster loading times, more memory, maximum performance as well. 2D games get less benefit obviously. But if a 3D game is limited to 640x480 and many aren't, that still gets a benefit from the AA even more so. Pic fucking related.
In short, go back to fucking /v/.
>>2991624
Not to mention games running too fast, having incompatibilities with modern graphics cards, relying on oddball OS environment quirks, or depending on online services that no longer exist.
It's no different than if you'd read old 90s Usenet posts about how IBM XT games from the 80s could not run properly on Windows 95 boxes.
>>2991516
>>2991669
You seem to be confusing old DOS games or windows 3.11 games. Because many or even most games for Win9x don't have that problem. For fuck sake, almost everything runs and if something is running to fast you have a single fucking option called VSYNC that literally fixes the problem in basically every game of that era you could come across. Most don't have oddball OS quirks also virtually no games 'require' online services to play. If you wanted to play multiplayer on LAN, you can use an IPX wrapper to play over IP anyway though many games supported IP anyway and you can VPN for a class C as well.
Almost none of your complaint is relevant to the post in question.
Even DOS games are not really an issue with multiplayer or too fast machines since DOSBox handles that shit. Only with actual hardware - of which slowmo and tunneling exists still. But of course none of that - anything to do with games from 1998-2001 as fucking commented.
>>2989058
> "Windows 3.1 Shareware"
2 years ago the Internet archive's shitty server set up started a fire that burned down an entire apartment building leaving 30+ people homeless and they refused to pay a penny to compensate them.
Nice to see it was worth it.
>>2991689
>server destroyed used for books and movies
>bitch about games
>bitch about digitizing archives.
>insurance
>blaming a non profit for the economy of the internet even as it lets you browse human history from your internet and literally offers digitized library at your fingertips.
>>2991684
>Even DOS games are not really an issue with multiplayer or too fast machines since DOSBox handles that shit
Well duh, you have DOSBox. As the other guy said, there isn't any adequate emulation for Windows 9x games so you can't really play them without the real hardware.
not related, but how do I make DOSBox automatically mount my dos games folder?
its pretty annoying having to do it every time
>>2991469
that sucks
thank god most of those games are garbage anyway
>>2991926
Doesn't matter whether they suck or not, that's still a whole era of retro games for which there's no proper emulation available.
>>2991923
just add "mount c <your folder>" under the [autoexec] section in the config file (default is dosbox.conf).
I don't remember that Windows 3.x had many good games other than Myst and that wasn't that good anyway (glorified tech demo). Most of them were kiddie eduware ports from the Mac.
>>2991932
You ever seen Connections? Wonderfully cheesy Myst clone.
>>2991938
>Hell, i might install win98 just for full DOS compatibility but the thing is the RAM limit on old windows makes it impossible to work for many computers this days.
Windows 9x is very incompatible with modern chipsets; you'll need real late 90s-early 2000s iron for that.
>>2991940
I recently bought an AMD Athlon 1800+ XP with an ATi Rage and 1GB of RAM. Would that work? I think its pretty old but its surprisingly good for a single-core in WinXP.
Is there any spreadsheet with the RAM limit for deprecated Windows versions?
>>2991939
I installed that on a Windows 98 SE box once. The game itself ran fine, but the movie clips didn't work.
Then I found out that they require some ancient 1994-vintage version of Quicktime.
>>2991941
Probably no because Windows 9x's RAM limit is 128MB. That would be fine with 2000/XP, not so much 9x.
>>2991941
A bug in Windows 95, 98, SE, and ME
crops up if you have more than 512MB of memory installed. The part of
Windows that moves files in and out of the main computer sets aside
enough memory so it can work with big files, and if the amount of
available memory is large, the memory chunk that's set aside is large,
too. Unfortunately, if the amount of available memory is huge (more
than 512MB)-the file-handling routines can grab so much memory that
nothing is left for more mundane functions. Paradoxically, if Windows
hits this bug, it may report the problem to you by saying "There is
not enough memory available to run this program. Quit one or more
programs, and then try again." Or it may hang completely.
To warn Windows that you have more than 512MB of memory installed, add
the following line to the [VCache] section of your win.ini file:
MaxFileCache = 524288.
>>2991946
the idea that Windows 9x will not "use" over 128MB, 256MB or 512MB is ridiculous, another of the various 9x myths.
Windows 9x uses 32-bit protected mode; theoretically it should be able to address 4GB. Even Windows 3.1 should be able to use 4GB.
>>2989116
>Sort of a gaping hole in emulation capabilities.
Not really, PCem covers a lot of shit.
>>2991721
Please learn to read.
>>2990037
The majority of CPUs from the past few years are 64-bit. Regardless of RAM, unless you're using a really outdated PC, you're not making the most of your CPU if you're on 32-bit.
>>2991942
>Then I found out that they require some ancient 1994-vintage version of Quicktime.
So download quicktime 2.x
>>2992119
Windows 98 starts acting erratically if you give it more than 128MB RAM (similarly if you give it a HDD partition far larger than what was common when it was still new), I can only imagine how bad 3.1 would implode on itself long before you hit 4GB let alone 3
where's the one where you're a mouse running away from cats and trying to block them in?
>>2992694
Rodent's Revenge
>>2990879
And I'd share it, if I could find an easy way to retrieve it from my old 98. Great game.
>>2990035
Most 3rd world countries still use 32 bit XP as main OS in work envirments since is easy and cheap as shit to find computers that can run it.
I'm using a 32 bit XP computer at the moment.
>>2989116
PCem is getting there.
>>2992687
Oddly enough Win 3.1 gives zero fucks about excessive amounts of RAM.
Not because they accounted for massive amounts of memory, mind you. It's just because it's simpler software and doesn't try to do anything complicated with large amounts of memory.
I've got a 4GB Core2Duo testing rig that has no issues whatsoever with DOS/Win3 yet Win9x shits the bed unless I restrict the memory by dumping most of it into an XMS ramdisk before Windows starts.
>>2992926
The registered version 1 of Bad Toys is lost to time; you owe to the world to recover it! You can use a USB floppy drive to unload a floppy on a newer machine. Some older USB pens have 98 drivers -- see here for example: http://www.supertalent.com/support/driver_download.php
>>2990905
This gem
>>2993350
This game was so fucking eerie and creepy to me back then, the only thing to offset the unintentional tension was the dance button.
>>2993181
Brown people don't count as human anyway.
>>2992401
Thank you, I'll have to take a time machine back to 1999 and remind myself to do that.
>>2993465
This took all of like 1 minute to find
http://www.oldversion.com/windows/quicktime-2-0
>>2989058
Awesome thanks for sharing, I can now relive the 16 bit days!
>>2993473
Like I said, great website. If only I knew about it back when I could have actually used it.
Idiot.
>>2993521
Ah, I did not grasp the context; my fault! :)
>>2991721
Some very old things don't quite work in dosbox. The timings on Popcorn (CGA Breakout clone) are off, no matter what cycles is set to. Other various games I can't get to run at all. Lollypop for example aways crashes with error: "Illegal GRP4 Call 6".
Trying to play Mahjong on laptop. It never loads. Fuck my life.
>>2991669
I'm not sure that's a fair comparison since 80s stuff bitbanged the hardware or relied on the timing of an 8086 CPU none of which was true anymore by the Windows 9x era.
>Bang! Bang!
OH DAAAAMN
>>2993460
Take your /pol/ shit away from here.
>>2994497
Shitskin detected.
>>2994515
Quit projecting, nigga.
>>2993929
I loved this game.
And now you tell me that I can't play it on my XP.
Why live?
>>2991465
Marry me.
>>2989153
Tried some prepacked Win3.1 versions of Dos games made for running in Dosbox, and they horrible. Can't resize the windows, and fullscreen causes some weird glitches. Unplayable.
>>2995846
What for? I simply installed Win3.11 on the HDD through DOSBox, works just fine.
Win95 is a problem, though.
>>2993521
not that guy but that was quite rude to be honest.
>>2989058
Does anyone know what was the name of some CD that came with these games:
Heretic
Terminal Velocity
Rise Of The Triad
The Lost Vikings
I think it was a demo disc, so the games were probably demos, can't remember the rest of games but it came with a few others. And when you quit the program you could hear terminator's voice saying "hasta la vista, baby"
>>2993350
anybody ever figure out how to make it run on modern PC without virtualbox?
I need to hear wimateeka again.
>>2996103
>>2996103
>I think it was a demo disc, so the games were probably demos
The term was shareware. Shareware CDs were all over the place and had a bundle of games on them often. Unfortunately you need to know the name, hence the catch 22. If you knew what the label looked like you could attempt checking out the archive.org shareware collection and simply go through them. Otherwise, just find shareware versions of the games unless there were other games on the disc you're looking for as well, in which case, good luck with that. You might post in an old games you can't remember thread and be as descriptive as possible.
>>2992379
There are no real performance differences
Any way to upload your own games? I'd like to contribute some but haven't found a real way to do so
>>2996168
FUCKEN COCONUT MONKEY
I REMEMBER YOU AND YOUR QUASI INDIAN ACCENT
>>2996103
There was probably a hundred different demo discs with those exact titles on them. You'll need to try harder to narrow it down.
>>2996168
Damn. That takes me back. Back to the days when PC Gamer was great.
Windows 3.x doesn't have so many good games. There's either the multitude of silly free/shareware stuff or multimedia demos or kiddie eduware. Not until 95 could proper gaming be done on Windows.
>>2996113
DroidWorks's system requirements:
Pentium
16MB RAM
4x CD ROM drive
DirectX 5
Windows 95
It might run on Windows 8, but it probably has a 16-bit installer like most software back then.
https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1130885
>hurr durr why won't this run on W7
>herp de derp I don't know about 16 bit installers
My god, some people...
>>2989058
Played like six hours of SimEarth yesterday. That game would have been my jam if I had it back in the day.
>>3001706
"Think about how stupid most people you know are. Then contemplate that the average person is ten times stupider than that."
-- George Carlin
>>3001713
That is a DOS game though, not Windows.
>>3001732
They did have a Windows port of SimEarth; it's actually for Windows 3.0 and came out about the same time as the DOS version. I don't think it supports sound though.
SimEarth is as early 90s as it gets.
>mmmmuh planet
>mmmmuh environment
>mmmmuh rain forest
I don't think DroidWorks is compatible with newer OSes; at least the info I could find suggests it isn't.
>>3001629
You most certainly could do proper gaming on Windows 3.1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinG
>>2991939
Have you ever played Pyst?
>>2991938
Win98? Sheeeeiit! Better just go back to motherfucking DOS and Windows 3. Everything they made after that was suckass anyway!
>>2990905
>>3001947
Fun fact: Windows 3.1 supported full 24-bit color, and resolutions up to 1600 x 1200.
>>3001752
desu I think the big environmentalism boom in the early 90's was just to keep kids distracted so they wouldn't ask tough questions about the Iraq war. Benjamin "Big Ben" Netanyahu is a mass murderer and a liar, and at this point the only apology I would accept is the complete abolition of the Israeli state, and Netanyahu surrendering himself to the Iraqi authorities.
>>3004826
>and Windows 3.
>sparing memory for useless shell
>>3001947
>>3005656
I'm speaking from experience that most of the "real" games at that time were DOS-based and the vast majority of Windows 3.x stuff was very much eduware and MM demos. Although utilities like WinG did provide proto-DirectX capabilities, the W3.x environment still had numerous annoying limitations that were removed in 9x.
>>3005656
>Fun fact: Windows 3.1 supported full 24-bit color, and resolutions up to 1600 x 1200
I don't think any software other than maybe some professional graphics tools could use that.
>>3005810
Didn't you only have 16-bit memory access in 3.x? I seem to remember you did.
>>3005817
Yes and no. Windows 3.x does run in 16-bit (ie. 286) protected mode which normally limits you to 64k segments, however the vast majority of software does a hack to get around this limit in that on 32-bit CPUs, you can adjust segment size to anything you like, even in 16-bit pmode.
What Windows 3.x devs did was basically to set up one big segment for most of the stack/code/data to reside in, with the exception of code that performed OS calls. This stuff had to remain in 64k segments due to memory pointers being 16-bit.
Also because 16-bit pmode has a maximum 24-bit address space, no single process in Windows 3.x can exceed 16MB, however the OS does also allow you to use the 32-bit trick of swapping memory pages which means that theoretically all 4GB of address space can be accessed, each process being capped at 16MB (Windows 3.0 did not support page swapping so its maximum address space is 16MB).
>>3005810
I agree, DOS was the superior platform for gaming compared to Windows at the time, but there's a handful of truly great Windows games that make it worth having a Win3.11 installation in DosBox.
>>3005813
No, definitely not. Games of that era were mostly all optimized for 640x480@256 (or 16) colors, and the only reason you'd ever want to go higher is if you want to use Photoshop or something.
>>3005293
Just seems like Generic 90s Kiddie Eduware (TM).
>>3005864
>I agree, DOS was the superior platform for gaming compared to Windows at the time, but there's a handful of truly great Windows games that make it worth having a Win3.11 installation in DosBox.
I can think of The Incredible Machine, Civil War Generals 2 (actually a Windows 3.x/95 hybrid), maybe Garfield Caught In The Act...not Myst because that's an overrated tech demo.
However most of these can be run on Windows 9x and possibly XP so I don't know if you necessarily need an actual Windows 3.x installation unless you somehow find the Windows 3.x menu bar/UI nostalgic.
>>3005878
>Garfield Caught In The Act
I did try this on XP and while the game ran, it would not go full screen mode for some reason.
>>3005878
>However most of these can be run on Windows 9x and possibly XP
I'm using Windows 8. It's easier for me to just run 3.11 in DosBox than it would be for me to run 98 in a virtual machine.
>>3005884
A lot of Windows 3.x stuff probably runs too fast on XP boxes.
>>3005889
GCIT did run alright and it was not too fast, but I couldn't put it in full screen mode. It does run in 320x200 resolution in full screen so there was some kind of incompatibility with XP or the video driver or both.
The game does run on 9x properly; I did test it there.
>>3005886
I do have a real P4 box with XP Pro that I have for when I get the urge to run Windows 9x stuff though lately I've mostly just used it to play the X-COM Collector's Edition (I couldn't find an abandonware site with a working copy of the DOS version that I could play on DOSBox).
>>3005810
Plus Windows 3 had a lot of coffee break games that are meant to be played in brief little bursts. Stuff like Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Lander. The real "meat" of Windows gaming could be found in RPG's like Exile and Castle of the Winds, but those games are hardly superior to the likes of Ultima, Eye of the Beholder, and Ancient Domains of Mystery. Even the fact that you can't run Doom without exiting to DOS shows us that Windows really wasn't optimized with serious gaming in mind.
>>2991572
IIRC it's last update was 2014, with another branch still updating.
