this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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Easiest way to get old Windows games to run? (self.retrogaming)
submitted 2 weeks ago by leisesprecher to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
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I'm trying to get an old Windows game running for a friend.

It seems to be a 16bit macromedia app and I kind of got it running in a Win 98 VM using Virtualbox. DOSBox seems to get confused by it being a Windows app.

Thing is, the friend is very much not good with tech and I want to set everything up for him to "just work". Installing VBox might be a bit too much.

Apparently, you can install Windows inside DOSBox, but is that really stable and usable for layman? Are there any other approaches?

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[–] cafeinux@infosec.pub 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Try running it in Windows 3.11.

There was a game I was playing on Windows 95 or 98 when I was a child. I had success running it in Windows 3.11 on DosBox (with no instability to report, even the sound was crisp).

I setup Windows 3.11 to start my game upon OS startup, I then found a little software made for Windows 3.11 that exits Windows when a given program closes.

I put the Windows 3.11 .IMG and the game .ISO in a folder along with a DOSBox portable installation, created a shortcut which launches the DOSBox instance with the correct parameters to mount the ISO and IMG files and start Windows 3.11, Windows launches the game, then exits when the game does.

All of this means that I can just click the shortcut to have the game start with very little overhead, for the price of a little portable folder and it's shortcut, and the underlying DOSBox or Windows system are basically invisible to the end user.

Try to see if your game runs in Windows 3.11 and if this is the case, I will try to find back any documentation or resource I used at the time to help you package that game as I did.

Edit: Windows 3.1 or even Windows 1 might be worth a shot as well if you want to go as minimal as possible.