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Any good Windows 3.1 games?

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Reply 20 of 112, by collector

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Serious Callers Only wrote:

I own the game but i need a virtual machine to even copy the files of the 3rd cd 🤣

That is one of the pains with Antara. XP mode works, but that is not an option for later Windows.

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Reply 21 of 112, by Serious Callers Only

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Mmmm, since i mentioned it i thought it best to test it out and installed Noir a shadowy thriller in dosbox.

First the good news: it works
Then the bad news: until it asks you to change discs, then it cant find a file.

The reason is obvious if you look at the name of the file it's looking for. It's > 8 characters. Therefore either the game only ever worked in later windows 95 with unicows support, or dosbox cdrom emulation is screwed in windows 3.1 and it supported > 8 characters in at least some versions.

Now this places us in a bind to play this game. A windows 95 install would work, except that windows 95 doesn't see the local drives mounted by dosbox (including isos !)

Therefore the only way is to install a cd emulator that runs on win95, create a image that windows 95 can see and dump the isos there to mount during gameplay.

This is too stupid to contemplate so i anxiously await the decade in which dosbox imgmount is fixed so windows 95 can see it as a cdrom. Or at least where win3.1 can see > 8 characters in cds (how did they advertize win3.1 support in the game without this anyway? ).

Does anyone know if the redbook standard (i think that's the right one, or maybe that is just for cd audio) allowed filenames with > 8 characters (not the complete file path, just the filename).
Me thinks some lazy code sharing between mount and imgmount is happening

Reply 24 of 112, by DosFreak

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Betrayal in Antara:
I got the game working in Windows 3.1 in DOSBox 0.72 years ago. It ran fine. IIRC GOG has it on their website too.

Noir:
Are you using the SVN? How are you mounting the CDs? Daemon Tools on the host and then mounting as a CD in DOSBox or mounting the ISO in DOSBox? Did you try refreshing the cache?

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Reply 25 of 112, by Serious Callers Only

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That LFN thing was for Noir: A shadowy thriller which ambushed me just now by requiring LFN support on the second cd. That other Antara error occurred in real windows 98 or XP (can't recall), so i was just looking for a ending save so i could see if it goes away in win3.1 or my cds are defective (quite possible being over 20 years old).

edit: i ended up playing until completion and it worked fine, including the ending, which i finally saw. Of course it had to be a cliffhanger. Of course.

I wish the game supported color depths > 8 bits 256 colors. The Pallette of the game realy suffers, especially at night funny enough (which is where the error if you use > 8bits manifests as purple night).

Reply 28 of 112, by JayCeeBee64

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Jorpho wrote:

PCMag just published this little article:
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/336891/7 … ming-classics/1

I haven't heard of half of those.

I remember playing 4 of them (The Adventures of MicroMan, Slam!, SkiFree and Nanotank). MicroMan and SkiFree were my favorites.

I knew about Castle of the Winds but never played it. Didn't know or read about Zombie Wars and Operation: Inner Space until now.

Ooohh, the pain......

Reply 29 of 112, by dunz

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I remember enjoying The Incredible Machine quite a lot when on my 486 DX2. A-Train is good as well(if you like trains).

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Reply 30 of 112, by MusicallyInspired

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Does The Incredible Machine even have a Windows version?

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Reply 37 of 112, by autoexecdotbat

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the edutainment titles put out by 7th level (tune land, great word adventure, ...) are masterpieces. I also would recommend castle of the winds. that game was recently released as freeware by it's creator, by the way. That was one of the games that came on an old shareware compilation that came with my grandma's old compac computer back in 1998.

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Reply 38 of 112, by Dominus

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Castle of the Winds was mentioned 😉

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Reply 39 of 112, by Sutekh94

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Jorpho wrote:

PCMag just published this little article:
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/336891/7 … ming-classics/1

I haven't heard of half of those.

Operation: Inner Space! I remember playing the absolute crap out of that one back in the day.

While I'm here, I should give a mention to Space Empires II. Best 4X strategy game for Windows 3.1 that's not named "Civilization". 😀

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