Older games on a newer system??

[Chris [BEANS]]

This is probably more of a software forum question really, but as it's speciffically aimed at games, and the gamers here are pretty knowledgeable, I thought I'd try here first....

I've got my shiny new Athlon 64bit rig sat here waiting for a copy of Vista Ultimate.
Are most of my older games likely to work straight out of the box (games as old as homeworld, which I'm really looking forward to re playing as I've been without a PC for ever!!).
If they won't work out of the box, is there a programme that will run them (I suppose similar to an emulator?!?!)

Failing that, I have my copy of XP and three HD's, so is it relatively simple to have a dual boot system??

Also got a wide screen monitor and I don't suppose many of the older games will have wide screen resolutions, Will the monitor simply display them as normal with black space at the sides (like a wide screen TV displaying a transmission that's not widescreen does)??

All quite noobish questions I know, but I've paid zero attention to PC's for a few years now and googling using a ps3 pad and browser is more hassle than it's worth!!

 

[linktoinsanity]

Simple as hell to have a dual boot. The easiest way is to install xp first onto one hdd (or partition) then install vista onto another. The vista bootloader should then find both oses and give you the option on startup. For easy management, download EasyBCD (google it). For dos games use Dosbox as an emulator, for windows games, xp in compatability mode will run most, but you can always use a Virtual machine with Win98 installed and use that.

 

[m4cc45]

Only thing with Windows 98 in a Virtual Machine is that it won't have any OpenGL support which most of the games used. The only operating systems that have OpenGL support are 2000 and XP (pointless for XP) on Virtual Box.



M.

 

[jamiehavok]

it seems that every game i have tried that was made for xp runs fine doom 3 and fnal fantasy xi work fine for instance.

prior to xp though you will probably have a problem - most of my games prior to xp are dos so there's dos box. i had a little trouble getting monkey island 3 to run because the emulator that plays old lucasarts games scummvm required files that needed to be unpacked from a compressed file on the cd and the windows installer wouldn't work. eventually i found a fan made installer, (required original disks) job done -

i would imagine there's allot of these fan made installers about for old populer games that no longer run or games with a cult following. heck i even managed to find 1 for phantasmagoria ii and that game bombed.

 

[baz047]

Pretty much ever game I've triad has worked fine, if it doesn't then setting the compatability mode to XP or 98 seems to work fine.

Although worms world party never worked, ever.

 

[Ghost-Reaper]

Pretty much ever game I've triad has worked fine, if it doesn't then setting the compatability mode to XP or 98 seems to work fine.

Although worms world party never worked, ever.

yeah this is about the only one I am having trouble with, have had to install it on a XP vm but the mouse goes crazy fast then lol

 

[saguy]

I have Vista 64 and have not been able to get the following games to work.

Thief 3
Gothic 2 – annoyed about this was this was one of my favourite games
Silent Storm