Has anyone here tried it; making a virtual machine using WMWare/Virtual Box/Virtual PC, installing Windows 98/2000/XP in it to play old 1998-2000 games that used 3D graphics/DirectX ?
There are many people asking the same thing on internet, but it ends up being a theoretical discussion about 3D acceleration, DirectX support... without a straight answer.
There is really a need for something like DOSBox for Windows 95/98 games, there are ton of games that will never be released on GOG and no way to play again, but to get an old PC.
I've used a Windows 2000 virtual machine to play Rollercoaster Tycoon when I couldn't get it to work normally.
The game worked great surprisingly.
My issue is that for games that require a much slower processor (like my copy of Railroad Tycoon II that has a really terrible scrolling issue with faster chips), when I limit the processor speed in stuff like VirtualBox, the audio is choppy and terrible.
If the old game has an option for software rendering (as many did) it'll probably work well, but games requiring 3D acceleration with have varying mileages.
I've seen people install Windows 95 in DOSBOX though, but I have no idea how well that works for games :v:
I usually play them through GNU/Linux with wine. Wine translates directx/windows calls and works pretty well for old games. If you've got space you could create like a 30 gb partition just for this, or run it off a USB and install the games to it though that'll slow things down. There's also wine for windows I think? I can't really find it though and I'm not sure how well it works.
Not sure whether it'll work for 16 bit games btw. probably not, so games that are windows 95 and earlier you probably need dosbox or a VM.
If you plan to go this route, I recommend using VMWare, as they actually have drivers for the 9x era OS's, wheras its a pain in VirtualBox. I know the NT based OS drivers have proper working DirectX support, but I'm not sure about 9x though.
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