What games can Windows 8 play?

[Night Hawk]

The thing I was finding which is obviously the case was with some old titles the main folder is not seen a sub directory under Programs but found on the root of C. The game installer creates the program folder there and finds no problems. With other titles trying to install on one version to copy over to 8 as well as backing up the registry entries may still fail when the installer can't find Program Files(x86) on the 64bit Windows for the obvious reasons as well as the registry entries themselves pointing to "C:\Programs\" not "C:\Program Files\"!

Remember the old 9x Legacy compatible games look for the 9x directory structure as well as the newer 98, ME, XP compatible titles. Simply expecting to use the same registry values without modifying them to adjust for this problem still sees a game fail on the spot. Another things depends on whether the game itself installed fully to the hard drive or ran from cd back in those days. The titles here running into the OpenGL errors also ran from cd! SoF I + II required the cd in the drive as seen with many other older title. RTCW on the other hand installed to one main folder with several subs on the hard drive directly and hasn't run into any issues at all with 8 or the 64bit anything.

 

[Hopachi]

The thing I was finding which is obviously the case was with some old titles the main folder is not seen a sub directory under Programs but found on the root of C. The game installer creates the program folder there and finds no problems. With other titles trying to install on one version to copy over to 8 as well as backing up the registry entries may still fail when the installer can't find Program Files(x86) on the 64bit Windows for the obvious reasons as well as the registry entries themselves pointing to "C:\Programs\" not "C:\Program Files\"!

Remember the old 9x Legacy compatible games look for the 9x directory structure as well as the newer 98, ME, XP compatible titles. Simply expecting to use the same registry values without modifying them to adjust for this problem still sees a game fail on the spot. Another things depends on whether the game itself installed fully to the hard drive or ran from cd back in those days. The titles here running into the OpenGL errors also ran from cd! SoF I + II required the cd in the drive as seen with many other older title. RTCW on the other hand installed to one main folder with several subs on the hard drive directly and hasn't run into any issues at all with 8 or the 64bit anything.

Good point.

The registry entries need to be modified in this case: pointing all the Program Files to the (x86) folder and the entries go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Wow6432Node instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software.

Example between Win7 and WinME registry entries:

7:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\7-Zip]
"Path"="C:\\Program Files\\7-Zip\\"
"Path64"="C:\\Program Files\\7-Zip\\"

ME:

REGEDIT4


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\7-Zip]
"Path"="C:\\Program Files\\7-Zip\\"

I've had to manually convert something like this for RA2 because I had entries for XP. The test was in WinME this time and registry gave errors, so yeah, it had to be modified. I exported something to see what's different.
The difference is the fist line noting the version and that in XP and later it uses Unicode instead of ASCI.

All up to now was ran from the disk and not from the CD, that is safer and you have more speed anyway.

 

[Hopachi]

I can confirm 2 games that DON'T work, at least not for me. They are rather old (Shogun Total War: Warlord Edition, and Medieval Total War Gold). I just recently tested them and it looks like I'm going to have to retract my statement about being able to get any game to work. I previously had them working on 7 on the exact same hardware i'm using now (see my specs below, but I dont think it makes a difference). There were minor issues, like the ingame menus flickering, but both were still very much playable overall. I really cant think of anything about my PC that might have changed, except the OS and drivers, which can make a big difference for some games. But I've tried them on 8, they both install, but crash shortly after launch where the publisher/dev logos appear. I can never make it into the games themselves or even the main menu. Anyone got any ideas?

If you were already using the latest NVIdia drivers and Intel Chipset then I have nothing more to add here.
For old releases this is not important anyway.

Are there any crash errors reported or logs? Try to use the latest game version (patch)... but in the end, it's just the same problem: older releases don't know what OS we're running.

I've just saw Shogun Total War on Wikipedia and it says it was made in 2000.
If those game detect the OS somewhere in the options menu, try to run them with compatibility mode XP or even Win98/ME if the game is older or up to year 2000.

I've already mentioned some info in my previous posts (see the long one #19): you might wanna install the game in XP in a VM and then see if it runs there to then 'move' it to Win8.

There is no 100% guarantee it will run but it increases the chances greatly.
Don't rely on old installers, they might fail you when you need them.

 

[Wenda]

These all work. Some needed compatibility-mode, many did not.
SoF won't work, nor does Max Payne 2 or Deus Ex 2.
Wenda.


**Edited 23-2-13 with more games tested and working.**

 

[Night Hawk]

I know the original SoF won't! SoF II went on but ran smack into the OpenGL issues the sequel saw. Now as for the 2005 SoF: Payback i didn't get a chance to try that one due to problems that came up when trying to boot into 7 from the 8 boot screen resulting in both versions locking up solid after so long due to errors on both C volumes.

As for VM programs another one I mean to try out is called Bochs That's an open source program that emulates hardware detection not simply sharing host resources on a limited basis offering more support for pc games and older desktop apps. Here's the front end description of that one found at sorceforge's page for that one.

[FONT=arial, helvetica]Welcome to the Bochs IA-32 Emulator Project[/FONT]
Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom BIOS. Bochs can be compiled to emulate many different x86 CPUs, from early 386 to the most recent x86-64 Intel and AMD processors which may even not reached the market yet.
Bochs is capable of running most Operating Systems inside the emulation including Linux, DOS or Microsoft Windows. Bochs was originally written by Kevin Lawton and is currently maintained by this project.
Bochs can be compiled and used in a variety of modes, some which are still in development. The 'typical' use of bochs is to provide complete x86 PC emulation, including the x86 processor, hardware devices, and memory. This allows you to run OS's and software within the emulator on your workstation, much like you have a machine inside of a machine. For instance, let's say your workstation is a Unix/X11 workstation, but you want to run Win'95 applications. Bochs will allow you to run Win 95 and associated software on your Unix/X11 workstation, displaying a window on your workstation, simulating a monitor on a PC.

That one sounded a bit more encouraging over VBox or VM Player for getting into gaming on a VM since it emulates the hardware side rather then just grabbing some virtual ram. The latest versions of VBox and VM Player have seen one improvement however with those two now seeing a 256mb max for shared video over the long time 128mb.

If you do have a Linux distro on by chance obviously seeing VFat Bochs allows you to run 95 and the old Legacy stuff as if you had an old museum piece up and running. Once I get the 90 Win 8 Enterprise on and later off I was going to give this a try on Linux Mint Debian there while it would be interesting to try out the Windows version on the 90day 8 trial.

 

[RedDeadDinosaur]

Every game I have played works except the sims 3 where I needed to launch it into windows 7 compatibility mode and it works fine

 

[Hopachi]

I know the original SoF won't! SoF II went on but ran smack into the OpenGL issues the sequel saw. Now as for the 2005 SoF: Payback i didn't get a chance to try that one due to problems that came up when trying to boot into 7 from the 8 boot screen resulting in both versions locking up solid after so long due to errors on both C volumes.

As for VM programs another one I mean to try out is called Bochs That's an open source program that emulates hardware detection not simply sharing host resources on a limited basis offering more support for pc games and older desktop apps. Here's the front end description of that one found at sorceforge's page for that one.

Welcome to the Bochs IA-32 Emulator Project
Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom BIOS. Bochs can be compiled to emulate many different x86 CPUs, from early 386 to the most recent x86-64 Intel and AMD processors which may even not reached the market yet.
Bochs is capable of running most Operating Systems inside the emulation including Linux, DOS or Microsoft Windows. Bochs was originally written by Kevin Lawton and is currently maintained by this project.
Bochs can be compiled and used in a variety of modes, some which are still in development. The 'typical' use of bochs is to provide complete x86 PC emulation, including the x86 processor, hardware devices, and memory. This allows you to run OS's and software within the emulator on your workstation, much like you have a machine inside of a machine. For instance, let's say your workstation is a Unix/X11 workstation, but you want to run Win'95 applications. Bochs will allow you to run Win 95 and associated software on your Unix/X11 workstation, displaying a window on your workstation, simulating a monitor on a PC.

That one sounded a bit more encouraging over VBox or VM Player for getting into gaming on a VM since it emulates the hardware side rather then just grabbing some virtual ram. The latest versions of VBox and VM Player have seen one improvement however with those two now seeing a 256mb max for shared video over the long time 128mb.

If you do have a Linux distro on by chance obviously seeing VFat Bochs allows you to run 95 and the old Legacy stuff as if you had an old museum piece up and running. Once I get the 90 Win 8 Enterprise on and later off I was going to give this a try on Linux Mint Debian there while it would be interesting to try out the Windows version on the 90day 8 trial.

I didn't know about Bochs. Thanks for the link. It runs on many hosts...including Playstation 2 ?!
But I don't know about releases from 2005 to test here.

About Win95: it runs fine on VM Player, read the user manual to see how to get the sound going.
Fot VirtualBox I provided a link to how to get stuff working with such old releases.

The latest VM Player works pretty well here. You don't need 256mb graphics if the host cannot provide the needed acceleration. XP machines are known to use a max of 128mb managed graphics memory with the VM tools installed.
Older releases line Win95 and up to ME don't use graphic acceleration on the tools so you cannot test much but all basics should work because if the host is powerful enough, the guest will be too.

If you use VirtualBox and want to install older OSes like 95,98,ME then you need to look here:
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=9918
The audio, video drivers are covered since you cannot install (not available) the VBox Additions to increase resolution.
You start with 4bit (very low) color mode only and as you can see in the link, a new driver will be used that provided 32bit color (actually it has them all: 4, 8, 15, 16, 24 and 32bit color modes, impressive to test!) and also openGL support so you can give this a try.

 

[Enigma]

@ Hopachi There were no crash errors or logs at all that i could see, it just played the logos and disapeared w/o a trace. I'm a member of the official Total War forums and the guys there say that you're lucky if you can make these 2 games play on Vista/7/8 at all. Apparently it's an issue that alot of people have had, really hit-or-miss. I'm guessing it's down to my hardware config, or what you said, that it's not correctly detecting my OS. I have tried compatibility modes for 95/98/2000/XP/ME, and even installed the games in compatibility mode, made no difference. I have also tried 16 and 32 bit color modes, no antialiasing/anisotropic filtering, turning vsync on and off, as well as "software mode". My game is the latest patch version. I am using a no-cd crack, and have tried lauching with disc images mounted, same thing happened either way, so i'm thinking the crack has nothing to do with it. I may just try to install these 2 games in a small dedicated VM since I'd really like to be able to play them again. I dont think "moving" (copying files and Registry entries) the installation to 8 will help.

Thanks!

 

[Hopachi]

@ Hopachi There were no crash errors or logs at all that i could see, it just played the logos and disapeared w/o a trace. I'm a member of the official Total War forums and the guys there say that you're lucky if you can make these 2 games play on Vista/7/8 at all. Apparently it's an issue that alot of people have had, really hit-or-miss. I'm guessing it's down to my hardware config, or what you said, that it's not correctly detecting my OS. I have tried compatibility modes for 95/98/2000/XP/ME, and even installed the games in compatibility mode, made no difference. I have also tried 16 and 32 bit color modes, no antialiasing/anisotropic filtering, turning vsync on and off, as well as "software mode". My game is the latest patch version. I am using a no-cd crack, and have tried lauching with disc images mounted, same thing happened either way, so i'm thinking the crack has nothing to do with it. I may just try to install these 2 games in a small dedicated VM since I'd really like to be able to play them again. I dont think "moving" (copying files and Registry entries) the installation to 8 will help.

Thanks!

I understand. The patch or crack is OK... the OS is not properly detected or something, not sure since I didn't tested Total War.

In case of a VM, the best would be an XP (small size) and installed in VMware Player (latest) with 3D acceleration (dx9 + ogl 2.0) and 2GB RAM, would be worth trying.

Cheers
Hopachi

 

[Night Hawk]

I know the original SoF won't! SoF II went on but ran smack into the OpenGL issues the sequel saw. Now as for the 2005 SoF: Payback i didn't get a chance to try that one due to problems that came up when trying to boot into 7 from the 8 boot screen resulting in both versions locking up solid after so long due to errors on both C volumes.

As for VM programs another one I mean to try out is called Bochs That's an open source program that emulates hardware detection not simply sharing host resources on a limited basis offering more support for pc games and older desktop apps. Here's the front end description of that one found at sorceforge's page for that one.

Welcome to the Bochs IA-32 Emulator Project
Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom BIOS. Bochs can be compiled to emulate many different x86 CPUs, from early 386 to the most recent x86-64 Intel and AMD processors which may even not reached the market yet.
Bochs is capable of running most Operating Systems inside the emulation including Linux, DOS or Microsoft Windows. Bochs was originally written by Kevin Lawton and is currently maintained by this project.
Bochs can be compiled and used in a variety of modes, some which are still in development. The 'typical' use of bochs is to provide complete x86 PC emulation, including the x86 processor, hardware devices, and memory. This allows you to run OS's and software within the emulator on your workstation, much like you have a machine inside of a machine. For instance, let's say your workstation is a Unix/X11 workstation, but you want to run Win'95 applications. Bochs will allow you to run Win 95 and associated software on your Unix/X11 workstation, displaying a window on your workstation, simulating a monitor on a PC.

That one sounded a bit more encouraging over VBox or VM Player for getting into gaming on a VM since it emulates the hardware side rather then just grabbing some virtual ram. The latest versions of VBox and VM Player have seen one improvement however with those two now seeing a 256mb max for shared video over the long time 128mb.

If you do have a Linux distro on by chance obviously seeing VFat Bochs allows you to run 95 and the old Legacy stuff as if you had an old museum piece up and running. Once I get the 90 Win 8 Enterprise on and later off I was going to give this a try on Linux Mint Debian there while it would be interesting to try out the Windows version on the 90day 8 trial.

I didn't know about Bochs. Thanks for the link. It runs on many hosts...including Playstation 2 ?!
But I don't know about releases from 2005 to test here.

About Win95: it runs fine on VM Player, read the user manual to see how to get the sound going.
Fot VirtualBox I provided a link to how to get stuff working with such old releases.

The latest VM Player works pretty well here. You don't need 256mb graphics if the host cannot provide the needed acceleration. XP machines are known to use a max of 128mb managed graphics memory with the VM tools installed.
Older releases line Win95 and up to ME don't use graphic acceleration on the tools so you cannot test much but all basics should work because if the host is powerful enough, the guest will be too.

If you use VirtualBox and want to install older OSes like 95,98,ME then you need to look here:
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=9918
The audio, video drivers are covered since you cannot install (not available) the VBox Additions to increase resolution.
You start with 4bit (very low) color mode only and as you can see in the link, a new driver will be used that provided 32bit color (actually it has them all: 4, 8, 15, 16, 24 and 32bit color modes, impressive to test!) and also openGL support so you can give this a try.

I never was able to get 95 to run on any VM since the original disk was an upgrade not full version cd when going from 3.1 to 95. I used to swing by with booting up with a 95 floppy and likewise when later getting 98SE I still had to boot from a 3 1/2" floppy to select the "with cd support" option chosen to begin the install.

On VBox(back in 2009) however I was able to copy a setup file over to a new folder on the VHD I labelled Win98 and then saw the 98 installer run without any virtual floppy image needed. At the time the XP Mode was still new the 98SE VM wasn't alone by itself having company with that as well as an XP Home VM and ubuntu VM to go into the mix. You can see how all that turned out until running "out of resources" on the old Vista 4gb case.



Another image here shows the 98 logo without the Linux VM showing and of course no gaming since Duke3d ran live from cd back in those days when having that one on 95 and 98 as well as running in dos.



The Bochs program looked the best however for getting into any gaming on VM since this has always been a problem for most. Some have been able to get a few Steam games running on VBox while older desktop apps is the usual goal. This one however provides more hardware type emulation to create a more suitable virtual gaming rig type platform likely since it is open source those that have gotten games to work added their own contributions for it to get that far while programs like VBox and VM ware is aimed far more at the business community and where the support is.

 

[Hopachi]

I know the original SoF won't! SoF II went on but ran smack into the OpenGL issues the sequel saw. Now as for the 2005 SoF: Payback i didn't get a chance to try that one due to problems that came up when trying to boot into 7 from the 8 boot screen resulting in both versions locking up solid after so long due to errors on both C volumes.

As for VM programs another one I mean to try out is called Bochs That's an open source program that emulates hardware detection not simply sharing host resources on a limited basis offering more support for pc games and older desktop apps. Here's the front end description of that one found at sorceforge's page for that one.



That one sounded a bit more encouraging over VBox or VM Player for getting into gaming on a VM since it emulates the hardware side rather then just grabbing some virtual ram. The latest versions of VBox and VM Player have seen one improvement however with those two now seeing a 256mb max for shared video over the long time 128mb.

If you do have a Linux distro on by chance obviously seeing VFat Bochs allows you to run 95 and the old Legacy stuff as if you had an old museum piece up and running. Once I get the 90 Win 8 Enterprise on and later off I was going to give this a try on Linux Mint Debian there while it would be interesting to try out the Windows version on the 90day 8 trial.

I didn't know about Bochs. Thanks for the link. It runs on many hosts...including Playstation 2 ?!
But I don't know about releases from 2005 to test here.

About Win95: it runs fine on VM Player, read the user manual to see how to get the sound going.
Fot VirtualBox I provided a link to how to get stuff working with such old releases.

The latest VM Player works pretty well here. You don't need 256mb graphics if the host cannot provide the needed acceleration. XP machines are known to use a max of 128mb managed graphics memory with the VM tools installed.
Older releases line Win95 and up to ME don't use graphic acceleration on the tools so you cannot test much but all basics should work because if the host is powerful enough, the guest will be too.

If you use VirtualBox and want to install older OSes like 95,98,ME then you need to look here:
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=9918
The audio, video drivers are covered since you cannot install (not available) the VBox Additions to increase resolution.
You start with 4bit (very low) color mode only and as you can see in the link, a new driver will be used that provided 32bit color (actually it has them all: 4, 8, 15, 16, 24 and 32bit color modes, impressive to test!) and also openGL support so you can give this a try.

I never was able to get 95 to run on any VM since the original disk was an upgrade not full version cd when going from 3.1 to 95. I used to swing by with booting up with a 95 floppy and likewise when later getting 98SE I still had to boot from a 3 1/2" floppy to select the "with cd support" option chosen to begin the install.

On VBox(back in 2009) however I was able to copy a setup file over to a new folder on the VHD I labelled Win98 and then saw the 98 installer run without any virtual floppy image needed. At the time the XP Mode was still new the 98SE VM wasn't alone by itself having company with that as well as an XP Home VM and ubuntu VM to go into the mix. You can see how all that turned out until running "out of resources" on the old Vista 4gb case.

View attachment 17089

Another image here shows the 98 logo without the Linux VM showing and of course no gaming since Duke3d ran live from cd back in those days when having that one on 95 and 98 as well as running in dos.

View attachment 17090

The Bochs program looked the best however for getting into any gaming on VM since this has always been a problem for most. Some have been able to get a few Steam games running on VBox while older desktop apps is the usual goal. This one however provides more hardware type emulation to create a more suitable virtual gaming rig type platform likely since it is open source those that have gotten games to work added their own contributions for it to get that far while programs like VBox and VM ware is aimed far more at the business community and where the support is.

Interesting.

You can try the VBox tricks from the tutorial link I gave to improve video performance. Compared to VBox, VMWare has already drivers included.

You don't need to install a OS in a VM from scratch, especially the problematic ones: if you have VDI disk files convert them to VMDK or VHD and these two can be used in VMware (make new machine, use existing disk later).

My only Win95 VM was installed just once: way back on the MS Virtual PC 2004, there it had support. The same VHD works on VBox and on VMWare Player without issues. VBox was pretty basic with no additions and a small resolution, Player had additions for it (tools) and you can resize the screen and copy/paste files between host and guest.

As for Steam in VMs... not too common or too good performance but you should try and go with the 3D acceleration and 128MB graphics as a minimum.

 

[Night Hawk]

With VMs I generally install from scratch since they are usually a Linux distro. I still have the 8 RP running on VBox however until that one expires itself.

Some were saying they had managed to get Steam running on a VM while I wouldn't be needing Steam there at all since it went on the CP and RP builds without any fuss. The more recent games as well as those only going back to about 2005 shouldn't be any stumbling block while SoF II was the one here that would likely need the Bochs approach.

That still brings up the game needs cd problem that was another issue over any game that installs fully to the hard drive. Steam on the other hand is run off of their servers for the most part. You mainly see the Steam engine and local game save content stored locally on the drive while the game maps are out in hyperspace.

 

[Wenda]

Windows 95 upgrade should install in DOS-Box as long as you install Win 3.1 first.
Win 3.1/3.11/WfW runs well in DOS-Box.
Haven't tried the W95 upgrade personally in DOS-Box, as I have Win 95C and Win
98SE running elsewhere, but there's no reason it shouldn't work.
Worth a try, anyway....
Wenda.

 

[Night Hawk]

The first 3 1/2" for the 6 floppy set is history as far as 3.1 is now concerned. On the last build I had a floppy mounted in a 5 1/4 bay adapter to try to create floppy images when VBox wouldn't boot from any floppy despite having the A drive there! When then going to create a bootable floppy image as well as trying to wrap all 6 floppies into one main iso I found the first floppy had had it's day!

For the 95 upgrade surprizinlgly I only had to use the "sys C:" command from the MS Dos 6.0 floppy(installs dos system files on drive) and then reboot with the W95 startup floppy to select the start with cd rom support and 95 went right on! In fact when first looking at 98SE I actually installed 98 into a "Windows98" folder with the custom options seen back then and had the option to boot into 95 when 98 was first starting up.

The two versions were running while you know the two wouldn't last together very long not able to install anything on 98 not being installed into the Windows folder. What many did back then was copy everything into a folder on the drive and you could reinstall the old 9x family from a folder. Of course if the drive was nuked inbetween installs that option went down the drain fast. And you know 98SE was there to replace 95 anyways at the time.

It's ironic when looking back and the minimum system specs for any game back then was 4mb-8mb! Compare that to the typical 4gb for 32bit Windows, 6gb or more for 64bit Windows seen at this time. As for DosBox I run the original Duke Nukem and Nukem 2 8bit not 16 or 32bit dos games on the 64bit 7 and tried those out on 8 as well.

It wouldn't be very suitable for 95 however while you are able to squeeze by with 3.1 since it is a dos not VM type emulator seen there. W95 brought in a new type of shell over what was seen in the Win 1.0, 2.0, 3.1, 3.11 for networking and why 8 is now being seen as the next major gui change in 17yrs. with the Win RT gui slapped on the desktop 8. The Bochs program looked a bit more promising for any actual gaming on any of the older versions however.

You may even get away with Duke3D and Doom as well as trying to run the 8bit dos games in the shutdown to dos mode with either 9x version running. With 98 however you had to manually skip over several while allowing a few basic processes to load using the old manual step by step startup of each item rather then letting the old version auto load itself. That allowed the dos games to run when only seeing the Autoexec.bat file and a few other dos processes to run.

 

[Hopachi]

It wouldn't be very suitable for 95 however while you are able to squeeze by with 3.1 since it is a dos not VM type emulator seen there. W95 brought in a new type of shell over what was seen in the Win 1.0, 2.0, 3.1, 3.11 for networking and why 8 is now being seen as the next major gui change in 17yrs. with the Win RT gui slapped on the desktop 8. The Bochs program looked a bit more promising for any actual gaming on any of the older versions however.

You may even get away with Duke3D and Doom as well as trying to run the 8bit dos games in the shutdown to dos mode with either 9x version running. With 98 however you had to manually skip over several while allowing a few basic processes to load using the old manual step by step startup of each item rather then letting the old version auto load itself. That allowed the dos games to run when only seeing the Autoexec.bat file and a few other dos processes to run.

That's true. I also don't recommend DosBox for Win95 because DosBox already has DOS and was made for it.

VirtualBox with the Nucleus Driver (tutorial on their forum) has all color modes included (even 15bit).

VMWare Player (with VM tools installed) has 8bit and 32bit colors: to enable 16bit color on the older releases (with the VM tools installed) you need to add a line to the VMX file of the VM in question:
(First power off the VM)

[COLOR=#333333][FONT=Courier New]svga.spoof16bppHost = "TRUE"[/FONT][/COLOR]

Save it and you're ready to power on the VM and use 16 bit color resolutions.
This is rather important otherwise the programs using those modes wouldn't even run.
The downside is that this disables 32bit color from the list.

Source:
VMware KB: Setting a Windows 98 virtual machine to 16-bit color results in an error about adapter type

 

[vrosa]

100% Working Games (Tested):

• Age of Empires III
• Call of Duty: MW
• Call of Duty: MW 2
• Call of Duty: MW 3
• Crysis (versions 1.2 / 1.2.1)
• Crysis 2
• Crysis 3
• Crysis WARHEAD
• Lost Planet
• NFS Underground
• NFS Underground 2
• NFS Shift
• NFS Shift 2
• NFS World (Origin)
• NFS Hot Pursuit
• Metro 2033
• Bioshock 2

• Lost Planet 2 (some random crashes due to GFWL)

 

[Wenda]

Hopachi wrote: - "That's true. I also don't recommend DosBox for Win95 because DosBox already has DOS and was made for it."

No worries, as I said, I haven't tried it as I haven't needed to. Just thought it may be worth a try.
Cheers.
Wenda.

Edit: - Have updated the screenshot I posted earlier, with more working games.

 

[Hopachi]

Hopachi wrote: - "That's true. I also don't recommend DosBox for Win95 because DosBox already has DOS and was made for it."

No worries, as I said, I haven't tried it as I haven't needed to. Just thought it may be worth a try.
Cheers.
Wenda.

Edit: - Have updated the screenshot I posted earlier, with more working games.

It's nice to see how that game list grows over time.

No worries about DosBox, it would be an interesting test I'm sure but VM Player was designed to run Win95 that's why I use it.

I also like how Win8 handles the various games compatibilities compared to Vista/Win7.

 

[Night Hawk]

With an oldie like 3.1 that was a dos to Win type deal there where you manually typed in the win command to start the then dos based Windows application. Primariy without the Win shell for that and 3.11 you were in dos. With 95 you stepped up into a different ball park where a software like VM Player or VM ware's workstation was developed mainly for businesses to be able to run all or most of their old apps on the present hardwares and OS. VM ware gets into providing a lot more in the way of tools with their programs due to being a retail software with a free player on the side.

That was the idea behind the XP Mode as well. Too bad they dumped it for 8. They may still see some newer version of the Virtual PC but not so likely this time around as they did for the VPC 2007 and 2009 releases. With 8 the focus now would be more likely on the Hyper X as well as Tablets with MS selling those out in a heartbeat unable to keep up with the Surface Pro models lately.

The one thing that will help here on this thread the most however besides finding what makes old games run will be the sharing of game titles by name as well as their release dates. You are going to find that just about any game or game version released in 2007 or newer shouldn't see any real problems running on 8. The story can be different on individual machines however with differing av and other software situations that could pose problems with some however.

 

[Hopachi]

The one thing that will help here on this thread the most however besides finding what makes old games run will be the sharing of game titles by name as well as their release dates. You are going to find that just about any game or game version released in 2007 or newer shouldn't see any real problems running on 8. The story can be different on individual machines however with differing av and other software situations that could pose problems with some however.

I Agree.
Hope most people will understand this.