yawetaG wrote:

firage wrote:

There are a lot of games that visually blend nicely with Windows 3.1x. All those windowed games from the middle of the decade, even Civilization II, with their menu UI's.

Win9x's taskbar used to annoy the hell out of me.

Win 3.x Program manager was still available as an alternate shell in Windows 9x.

That's a good point. Never thought about that; it's so unnatural though, Leviticus wouldn't approve.

On 486's, I'm pretty sure Win 3.11 is better than running the GUI on top of Win95, though haven't tried it.

Auzner wrote:

Win 95/98 was always better and had pretty much no issues with "win 3.1 era" games. People who still used Win 3.1 over 95 probably had a 386/486 @ 25/33MHz instead of a DX2 or Pentium.

Yeah the issue are more likely hardware rather and the OS.
I remember win3 games that perfectly playable at 486, but its too fast and thus unplayable at pentium 133 MHz.

cyclone3d wrote:

Are there any real world applications that had those issues or just the cube demo?

I don't remember ever having issues with in Windows 9x running games that were meant for 3.1.

Maybe ? I don't own that much retail games, sadly. Myst and other adventures rather use QuickTime.
The Atari 2600 Action Pack (Win31 edition) had an odd colouring, though.

Graphics aside, Windows 3.1 also has another advantage. A full-featured MIDI mapper. 😀
It comes in handy if you like to arrange your own MIDI setup, and want to include pre-General MIDI instruments.
Re: list of soundcards that work in windows 3.1/3.11??

Edit: I forgot to mention - Windows 3.1x can be run from within Win95, as well.
It's explained at win31.de/tips.htm (English translation).

Edit: Link dead. New link to Englisch tranlation.

Auzner wrote:

Win 95/98 was always better and had pretty much no issues with "win 3.1 era" games. People who still used Win 3.1 over 95 probably had a 386/486 @ 25/33MHz instead of a DX2 or Pentium.

Or just not enough RAM. 4MB is fine for Win 3.1, 8MB is generous. For 95 8MB is the official minimum and no fun to use.

8MB is okay with the plain unupdated floppy edition as long as you never go online.

Or install any demanding drivers with try icons and what not.

Oh god yeah, I forgot that dumbassery, configuration panel in .NET under lastest (at time) IE, fatass tray thing.

Edit: that's more in the middle age of 98 though I guess.