How to run old games for Windows and DOS: solving compatibility problems and improving graphics

There are always problems with old PC games. There is no guarantee that a 15 year old title bought on Steam will run at all. And remasters don't come out for everything.

The radical way to solve the difficulties is to build a PC from obsolete components and buy a CRT monitor. But then you will have to look for the necessary parts somewhere on "Avito" for a long time, and then agonize with the assembly of the device.

You can buy a modern mini-computer and just put an old operating system on it. But it will also take a long time to customize it, and it is not a fact that everything will work as it should. And buying an expensive device to install old games is not the best way out.

It is possible to run retrotitle on modern Windows without spending too much money. And often with fixes and graphics improvements. We tell you about the best ways.

What ready-made solutions can be found on the Internet

Before launching an old game, it is better to read ready-made instructions from fans. I've chosen sites that will help you run old games on modern systems.

Guides section on Steam. Even if your game is not officially sold on Steam, there may be user guides for it. Users create articles with links to translators and fan patches, instructions on how to fix bugs and improve graphics. If a game is popular enough, it probably has at least a few guides on Steam.

Go to "Community" on Steam. Select the game you are interested in and go to the manuals section. Instructions for working with game files - in the Modding Or Configuration section. Most of the manuals are not in Russian. Remove the language filter if you know English or are going to use a machine translator. Before using the manual, look at the rating of the manual and the latest comments. This way you will know exactly if this page will help you.

PCgamingWiki. This site is dedicated to optimizing video games on the PC and fixing problems with them. There's a lot there besides the Steam and GOG libraries. There's a lot more detail on games than the Steam communities, from maximizing original resolution to describing the most frustrating frequent bugs.

The site is entirely English - and there are very few detailed instructions on how to run the games. There are brief texts on fixing bugs, all other solutions are given in the form of mentions of useful programs or links to other sites with more detailed guides.

 

The page of the original Oddworld on PCgamingWiki. It has detailed information on the game's technical specifications, causes of crashes and modifications.

Fanatic sites. The most complete information on the launch of individual games can be found there. Fans of some titles have long ago collected a set of all the necessary fixes in convenient installers. Often these installers offer to return all the cut content, fix problems with the balance of the game and even improve graphics.

But not all communities have such sites, and not all games have their own fan resources. Russian-language fan pages are even rarer.

 

System Shock fan site page dedicated to mods of the second part.

Sometimes there are games that just can not get themselves normally run. And then to the rescue can come to the resources that specialize in already prepared compilations of all the forgotten games. These are AGDB, The Collection Chamber, Games Nostalgia, Zomb's Lair and others.

True, there is no guarantee that such a build will run. There are a lot of broken links on such sites - largely because the owners often abandon their resources. This, for example, happened with "Naphthalene quests" - where, however, you can still find some useful stuff. For example, a set of already russified adventures and evaluation of translation quality in some games.

 

How to quickly fix problems with an old game

Solution: First of all, try changing the properties of the EXE file.

In simplified terms, an EXE file is the one from which the game is launched. To change its properties, right-click on it and select Properties → Compatibility. Check the "Run the program in compatibility mode with" section and specify the version of Windows for which the game was released.

If you don't know the version, focus on the release date of the game. For example, the shooter System Shock 2 was released in 1999, when Windows 98 was used. So, choose it.

 

System Shock 2 is one of those PC games that is now best played with fan patches.

Enabling compatibility mode activates a set of patches for older programs from Microsoft. If the game still won't launch, choose a different version of Windows.

In the same menu, select "Run the program as administrator". You can also do this with compatibility mode running. Even some modern games require all administrator rights to be enabled on the system to run.

Compatibility settings to run the EXE file of the long-forgotten quest Agharta: The Hollow Earth, released in 2000

A small part of games from the 90's is designed for a different color reproduction, so for them set the reduced color mode by selecting the corresponding item in the menu. But such options are rarely needed.

An alternative way to change the properties of an EXE file: right-click on the file and select "Fix compatibility issues". This way Windows will try to figure out by itself what settings to enable for the game. Sometimes this really helps.

If the graphics settings are not sufficient

Solution: Dig into your graphics card settings.

The graphics of older 3D games can be adjusted in the official application from your graphics card manufacturer:

• For Nvidia - "Control Panel", available in the Microsoft Store and on the company's official website;
• for AMD - AMD Radeon Settings, available in the AMD Radeon Software package on the manufacturer's website;
• for Intel - "Graphics Control Center", available from Microsoft Store..

Solutions for Nvidia graphics cards. Their owners are lucky enough to be able to fine-tune the graphics the most. If you're one of them, look under the spoiler: there's a lot of details there.

Solutions for AMD graphics cards. In the AMD Radeon Settings menu, global graphics options can be changed under the "Graphics Card" tab. There, increased antialiasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled, and the quality of texture filtering is improved. But there are far fewer options than on Nvidia graphics cards.

Solutions for Intel graphics cards. There are even fewer options in the "Graphics Control Center" than in competitors' applications. You can only enable anti-aliasing with anisotropic filtering for individual installed games, not for all of them at once.

If you are having problems with drivers

Solution: install a glide emulator. It can fix the problem and improve the game's graphics at the same time.

A glide emulator is a program that replaces old driver libraries. With them, games run as if they were running on an old video card. Alas, glide-emulators are not compatible with all titles: some will work with glitches or will not run.

The best glide emulator is dgVoodoo 2. It is regularly updated, easy to use and versatile. In this, dgVoodoo 2 has beaten out competitors like nGlide, which used to be considered the best, but now it is rarely updated and doesn't work well.

For dgVoodoo 2 to work, you need to copy the dgVoodooCpl and dgVoodoo.conf files to the game folder. You also need to move the necessary libraries there. To do this, you can put files that emulate graphics cards of the company 3dfx Interactive, because in the second half of the 90's it was almost a monopoly in the market of 3D-accelerators. Most often it will be the contents of the folder MS\x86, which will activate the drivers of the old versions of DirectX.

Before launching the game, you first need to configure the glide-emulator. Open the dgVoodoo 2 application in the game folder. Go to the DirectX tab and specify the GeForce 9800 GT graphics card. This is a powerful Windows XP-era graphics card that will work well for Windows 95/98 games.

Turn on Force vSync to prevent horizontal tearing of the picture.

Then turn Filtering and Antialiasing options to maximum. This will make the picture much clearer. However, in games with a lot of two-dimensional backgrounds, such settings may cause the image to "float" around the cursor. In what kind of games - you will have to find out in practice or from ready-made instructions in the network.

For the first time I advise you to run the game with enabled votermarka program. To do this in the DirectX tab, select the item dgVoodoo Watermark. This way it will be clear whether dgVoodoo 2 has worked at all. In most cases, everything will run without problems, but the solution for individual faults will have to search the Internet.

If you have problems, dig into the emulator settings, read instructions on PC Gaming Wiki and on the program's website. If nothing works, you will have to do without it.

 

On the left - Grom: Terror in Tibet running without dgVoodoo 2. On the right is the same game, where glide emulator has improved graphics.

It's hard to run an old adventure game

Solution: use the ScummVM program.

ScummVM replaces a large part of the game, which will allow you to run it on modern hardware without any problems. The program was created primarily for the sake of adventurers, but now through it run and some games of other genres. For example, RPGs from the Might & Magic series.

It is easy to launch an installed video game through ScummVM. Turn on the program, click "Add Game", select the folder with the EXE- or BAT-file of the game and select the desired version. The program will select the settings itself.

BAT-file is another type of file to run the program. It is typical for older games

Just in case, enable additional settings. This can be to improve the quality of music, and redesign the interface, and smooth fonts. To do this, select a game from the list, click "Game Settings" and enable the options you need.

The second important tab is "Graphics". There you can enable full-screen mode, through "Stretch Mode" to adjust the game to the size of the screen and select zoom mode - it changes the picture. Read more about these settings in the ScummVM user manual.

 

How to run a game for the DOS operating system

Solution: download the free emulator DOSbox..

Nowadays DOSbox is the main application for running games made for old DOS operating systems. Every such tittle in digital stores works through it, and works well. But sometimes you need to look into the program settings.

For example, the Alt + Enter key combination switches the game to full-screen mode and back. Ctrl + F10 switches the mouse between the desktop and the DOSbox screen. The emulation speed is adjusted with Ctrl + F12 and Ctrl + F11.

In the GOG Galaxy app, you can customize the display mode in the settings to the right of the "Play" button. In "Additional Files," open Graphic Mode Setup. There customize the size of the window in which the game opens, and the display method. Graphic mod is desirable to leave overlay. Outside GOG these and other settings can be changed in the file dosbox.conf through "Notepad".

Video games for DOS came out on monitors with an aspect ratio of 4:3. I advise you to play at a resolution with the same ratio. DOSbox sometimes malfunctions in full screen mode, so it is easier to play in windowed mode.

Another peculiarity is related to CRT monitors, which were used to play games in DOS times. They displayed the picture differently than modern LCD or OLED screens and smoothed out sharp pixel edges. Developers created games with this in mind. There are entire Twitter accounts devoted to the effect of CRTs on game visuals.

Because of this, there are problems with DOS games on modern screens: the picture often looks unpleasant. Retro fans often argue about how to deal with this, but no one has ever found the perfect solution. One of the most successful attempts is scaler programs like tv3x or rgb3x. You may not like them, but they are worth checking out.

Alone in the Dark, a horror game released in 1992 for DOS. On the left, the game is running with rgb3x scaler. On the right, with normal3x, which simply increases the resolution.

In the past, game platforms differed from each other much more than they do now: back then, few people thought about any standardization at all. That's why the same game could look different on different hardware.

In the late 80s and early 90s, the Amiga line of home computers was much better suited for video games than the familiar IBM PC with DOS installed on it. That's why many games looked and sounded more interesting on Amiga - however, some projects, on the contrary, worked worse.

Just take this into consideration: emulation of IBM-incompatible computers is a different story.

 

The game Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess. On the left is the DOS version. On the right is the Amiga version. The difference is obvious.

Where to download DOS games that are not officially sold. Sites like My Abandonware can download "abandoned" DOSbox games. The right holders do not prosecute the authors of the site for the possibility to download games for free, but use the site at your own risk.

To run them it is better to use programs like D-Fend Reloaded. Drag the folder with the game into its window so that it gets into the program library. For the installed game, specify the startup and settings files, and select scaler in the edit menu. To install, drag the disk image and write the name of the installation EXE- or BAT-file. Install the game according to the instructions, and then select settings.

 

If the game came out in the 20th century, read the manual before playing through. Only by the end of the 90s did comprehensible in-game tutorials become the norm. Before that, developers left all the necessary information in booklets that were sold with the game.

Without a manual, you might miss important gameplay details. For example, in the role-playing game Ultima Underworld you may accidentally learn in the middle of the passage that the main character can jump. And this skill would greatly simplify life already at the tenth minute of the game: one jump would allow you to immediately find yourself in the human settlement, while without this knowledge you have to wander through a huge water labyrinth.

 

If nothing works with the old game

Solution: emulate a computer running an earlier version of Windows.

The previous tips will not help in all cases. Some titles were not released on DOS, do not work well on modern hardware and do not lend themselves to glide emulators. There are no instructions for them to run on modern systems. So you'll have to "trick" them by imitating an entire PC.

Emulation is the only way out. Early versions of Windows have long been unsupported and are not sold in digital stores. So download operating system emulators at your own risk.

How to run early versions of Windows. The same DOSbox will do: it already emulates some PC hardware like video cards. However, DOSbox does not cope well with complex 3D models and other graphical tricks from games of the late 90's. To run some MechWarrior 3 at a normal frame rate would require too much effort - and not much of it would lead to anything.

DOSbox is better used to run games on Windows 3.11. Curious adventurers Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth, The Residents' Bad Day on the Midway and many other games are still locked on this operating system.

Based on DOSBox Daum - an unofficial version of the program with various improvements like support for glide emulators - there are ready-made builds of Windows 3.11. It will be easier not to dig into the settings, but to use them.

 

How to emulate Windows 98. For this purpose I advise you to use the program PCem. It is not updated since 2020, but it still works well.

Choose the configuration of the virtual computer in PCem - there are different variants in the network for the power of different hardware. Take into account that if you put, for example, a processor stronger than Pentium II/300, in resource-intensive games will drop performance. This is because the emulator loads the processor first of all, but it uses only one core.

 

Installing Windows 98 is very easy. Start the virtual machine. In the Disc section through the Image item, specify which disk or optical drive to use. Then follow the instructions in the PCem folder.

Keep in mind that language packs worked differently in older operating systems. If you install the English version, it will be difficult to enable the Russian layout. If you install Russian-language Windows, only Russian and English games will work normally. For Swedish games like Kosmopolska you will have to download Swedish Windows.

After installing the operating system, the virtual PC will be ready for use. Install the drivers for your video card packaged in an ISO file.

Lastly, remember a few important keyboard shortcuts:

1. Enable full screen mode - Ctrl + Alt + PageDown.
2. Take a screenshot - Ctrl + Alt + PageUp.
3. Make the cursor move outside the application window - Ctrl + End.

 

How to run flash games now

Solution: download the BlueMaxima's Flashpoint. program.

As of December 31, 2020, Adobe has discontinued support and distribution of the Flash Player platform. Tens of thousands of video games created on it are being saved by enthusiasts.

BlueMaxima's Flashpoint is one of the fan inventions. It is a standalone Adobe Flash player, it is enough to download it from the developers' site and unpack it. And then turn on the game from BlueMaxima's huge library.

 

QWOP runner simulator running through BlueMaxima's Flashpoint.

How to fix some annoying problems

If an error pops up at startup, sometimes the problem is in the executable's wait chain. Usually this means that the game or installation file is already on, but Windows is not starting the process for some reason.

Some games, such as the localized version of The Sting, hang after launching or setting up. And in the case of the translated version of the strategy The Nations Gold Edition, you can click on setup.exe as much as you want - nothing happens.

To figure this out, open the Task Manager. Go to the "Details" tab and find the line with the running game. Right-click on it, select "Analyze Waiting Chain" in the drop-down menu. There will be a process nvspcaps64 hanging there in parallel with the game - this is an abbreviation for Nvidia ShadowPlay Capture Service. It is this process that prevents the program from running. Select this process and terminate it. The game should start.

In some cases, incompatibility with Nvidia or Logitech programs may occur. One such game is the action-RPG Deus Ex: Invisible War. If Nvidia or Logitech programs are running in parallel, it hangs even with a fan patch designed to optimize the game for modern systems.

There are two ways to avoid incompatibility:

1. After each boot of the computer disconnect the process nvcontainer.exe from the waiting chain in a special way. But this is extremely inconvenient.
2. Turn off Nvidia or Logitech programs before playing.

 

Problems with application bitness. Sometimes the operating system simply refuses to install the game, referring to incompatibility with 32- or 64-bit version of Windows.

There are several ways to try to solve the problem:

1. Locate the "Command Prompt" application on your computer. Run it as an administrator. Type there the path to the file and its name. This way it may run to bypass the reported problem.
2. use the Is3Engine program. It should be copied to the folder where all the contents of the installation disk are unpacked. And then run this application instead of the installer.
3. Try to find an already fixed version of the game.

Mouse cursor problem. In some games it slows down, because of this it is almost impossible to get out even beyond the start menu. For example, this problem is relevant for the quest Sublustrum.

To fix it, enable a program with your mouse drivers. For example, for a Bloody mouse it's Bloody7, for Logitech it's Logitech Options Customization Software. There, find the section where you customize the mouse polling frequency and lower it to 125 Hz. This will make the cursor nagging disappear.

Try different startup parameters. Thanks to them the game will start with certain conditions. For example, the -novid parameter in some video games disables startup videos.

Some of such commands are in the text from Steam tech support, but in general there are much more parameters. For example, Soldiers of Anarchy strategy can be launched with the -o condition, which allows you to customize more detailed graphics options.

In Steam they are specified in the properties of the game in the "General" tab. In game shortcuts outside of Steam, they can be inserted with a space after the quotes in "Object Location". For example, the -fullscreen parameter helps to launch the game on full screen, if it is opened only in windowed mode. However, this does not always work.

Lack of DLL-files. Even digital stores sometimes sell games with missing DLL-files. Usually the problem is solved by downloading an archive from Steam manuals section. But sometimes it is easier to visit special site with a collection of different DLL-files. You need to move them to the folder with the game yourself.

Problem with CD Audio technology. Sometimes music is played in the game, but then it disappears. This is because the winmm.dll system library from Windows Vista no longer works with CD Audio in older games. This is a global bug that affects hundreds of games, from Outlaws to Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II.

The solutions are different for each game, most often the appropriate fix can be found on the same PC Gaming Wiki. However, there are some games where the music doesn't start in any of the ways - for example, in the strategy game Merchant Prince II.