What are some essential games for Windows 9x? I'm thinking about building a vintage gaming pc specifically for these mostly forgotten games that rarely work on modern PCs.
A gaming Pc running Win95 in 95 would run entirely different games (Dos-based or very simple Windows ones) than one running Win98 in 2000 (Win32 directX and likely would run in WinXP too)
Probably pick whichever you like
>>2
I'm probably gonna get a Win98 machine, as it would probably play everything Win95 can offer, + more advanced games. With that being said, what are some standout games for Win95 or 98 for me to tinker with?
Lego Island 1 (maybe 2), Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Day of the Tentacle.
There's more, but I'll have to wait until I get home to check.
Archanoid. That game was like, the first video game I ever witnessed.
A good hardware emulator for DOS - Win 9x era software including operating systems is PCem. Can go up to a AMD k6 III+ although it's more realistic for a Pentium MMX 233 to run on your hardware due to the limitations of emulation. A high clock processor is recommended for the host machine.
Jazz Jackrabbit 2
Fire Fight
(Captain) Claw
>>6
PCem is shit.
Have any other recommendations for emulators then? Trying to figure out QEMU
Ikusa Megami.
>>8 You must know about DOSBox already. Was there something about it you didn't like? Personally, I'm still trying to get it set up in a way where I can just give it a path to a game and make it run. I'm glad it uses "exclusive" fullscreen rather than that borderless crap that's getting pushed so hard these days, but I still don't have a monitor that can take proper advantage of it.
Diablo & DiabloII. Still waiting for Diablo3.
>>1
The mech games
Stuff like MechWarrior, Heavy Gear, Earth/Starsiege, G-Nome, etc.
>>10
I mostly hate DOSBox. Why is the cycle detection so shit? Development is stagnant too but we have dosbox-staging, fortunately.
>>13
Define cycle detection being shit. Are you referring to the results of leaving it at "auto" (which I'll admit is shit and you shouldn't use the auto setting unless you're really unsure what to set it at), or are you referring to other weird speed issues that might crop up with particular games?
DOSBox is a bit irrelevant when it comes to Windows 9x games though. Yeah, there are instructions where you can jump through a bunch of hoops to run Windows 95 in DOSBox but it's janky and unstable. The unfortunate truth is that if you want to run 9x stuff that's not compatible with XP or beyond, your best bet is still to get an actual Windows 9x era PC. Understandably this is kind of a barrier to entry if space/cost is a problem, especially if you want to play stuff that calls for a Voodoo card and shit.
>>14
I'm referring to both problems. It gets to the point where I'm playing Wing Commander and I never know if the game is running at the speed it's supposed to.
>>15
"auto" cycles only swaps between "max" and a single fixed value, and doesn't even do that reliably in all cases, which is why I recommend not to use it if you can help it. The default value of 3000 when it doesn't auto-swap to max is approximately a 286... maybe. From what I gather there's no reliable 1:1 conversion of cycles value to CPU speed, which sucks.
The general good procedure for speed-sensitive games is to determine what type of CPU (and, if need be, accessory hardware) the game was ideally run on and making a config that sets cycles, and perhaps some other settings (e.g. core, cputype, possibly graphics and sound card settings) accordingly. Outside of very finicky games you should be able to get away with making a few configs that represent different emulated computers rather than having to make a unique config for every game (though that can have its advantages like a specific startup .BAT script) Useful reading:
https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Configuration:CPU
DOSBox-staging is supposed to have steadier/more accurate cycles but I haven't yet experimented with it enough to vouch for that. I'm pretty wary of forked builds in general since in my experience they've tended to be no better/actually worse, but I'm basing that opinion primarily on Daum and X.
Ultimately, it's a problem in the first place due to a combination of programmers targeting their programs to an exact system build (which made sense on early microcomputers that were built to a single standard and didn't have clones or upgraded versions) and the fact that DOS computers, unlike the aforementioned early microcomputers, generally weren't built to a single standard but had clones and alternate hardware setups all over the place. There's room for improvement, but expecting DOSBox to "just work" on the same level as, say, a NES emulator where it just has to emulate a small set of standardized hardware is rather wishful.
>>14
Pcem can emulate a voodoo1,2,3. for early XP era games you could probably get it to work on a modern PC with some patches/workarounds.
>>17
PCem is a royal pain in the ass to set up (finding and setting up system ROMs, HD images which are a lot less convenient than mounting directories in DOSBox) and in my experience far too slow to be any good for 9x stuff, though I suppose your mileage may vary if you have a beefier computer. It's not worth the hassle for me but if it works for you, more power to you I guess.
>>18
In my opinion it should definitely be considered before buying a whole new computer.
All ROMs can be found in one easily extracted file as the first search result of "PCem ROMS" (except for the newest update which i hope will be added soon). For HD images you simply have to specify the volume size in MB. I agree with you in terms of performance, although it's heavily dependent on what you're doing on the emulated system. Currently nothing can 100% emulate an k6-II+ 550mhz or Pentium II at 450mhz being stress tested. Seeing that different processors can be swapped out in the same socket however, it's easy to find something optimal for your host.
By far the most difficult part of the emulator is actually installing software on your system. Which you need all the CDs or ISO images for. You'd need to find hardware drivers, software installers, and system tools just like you'd need to on a real system. Alternatively you could inject the files into the Image file using a tool like WinImage.
I find both PCem's focus on accuracy just as much as DOSBox's focus on convenience.
i am a heron. i ahev a long neck and i pick fish out of the water w/ my beak. if you dont repost this comment on 10 other pages i will fly into your kitchen tonight and make a mess of your pots and pans
If you're running some later form of Windows (from XP up), DXWnd is worth taking a look at. It comes with a bunch of premade configurations that've proven useful for running the ornery 9x games I've thrown at it so far.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/
No idea if it's any help for running things through WINE though. Probably not.