One of the semi early Arkanoid clones would run on vintage hardware with hardware EMS. Guessing 8086/286 target

There are some games from 1993 that require EMS. Master of Orion for example. Perhaps there are even later games like that.

With DOS extender games you don't need any memory managers running. Though I have a feeling I've seen misbehavior in some cases without HIMEM.SYS.

Doom 3 was also considered demanding with the minimum requirement being 384MB. Neither the manual, nor the box recommends more, but I remember reading a magazine back in the day stating the game benefits from having 1GB RAM. Also 384MB for Vampire the Masquerade. Though from the same year Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault lists 512MB for minimum.

My copy of Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia both lists 256MB on the box as minimum requirement which was on the high side for a minimum in 2002.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-29, 20:54:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-29, 20:47:

Back in the day, Diablo 2 was stuttering like crazy while I only had 64MB RAM. It felt noticeably smoother after I upgraded to 96MB.

PCGamingWiki lists 128MB recommended for Diablo 2.

Meanwhile the original box lists 32MB RAM minimum requirements (64MB for multiplayer), while the Battle Chest states 64MB required.

My copy of Diablo 2 for multiplayer lists 128MB as recommended and 256MB RAM for multiplayer if there are more than 4 players.

1nsane from the same year also recommeds 128MB, though the minimum is still 64MB.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-10-30, 19:09:

Also 384MB for Vampire the Masquerade.

I'd even say that's the devs being optimistic.

VTM: Bloodlines was extremely demanding for 2004, mostly due to poor optimization and a rushed development cycle. It barely chugged along even on the most powerful hardware of the time. Having around 1GB RAM did help a bit though.

swaaye wrote on 2024-10-30, 17:55:

There are some games from 1993 that require EMS. Master of Orion for example. Perhaps there are even later games like that.

With DOS extender games you don't need any memory managers running. Though I have a feeling I've seen misbehavior in some cases without HIMEM.SYS.

Lollypop uses EMS, too. It's an 386/486 era game, but doesn't need DOS/4GW. Has an Amiga port, too.

It worked on a Pentium with an AST RAMpage 286 (2 MB), last time I tested the memory board.

"Requires at least 704 KB free EMS."

https://www.mobygames.com/game/4808/lollypop/specs/

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-10-30, 19:09:

My copy of Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia both lists 256MB on the box as minimum requirement which was on the high side for a minimum in 2002.

meanwhile xbox has 64 MB unified and i'm not sure these games look any worse on there. i suspect this requirement is due to XP being the standard at the time, perhaps one could get away with less RAM if running 98SE instead.

also halo 2 PC wants 1 GB minimum which is expected for 2007, but kind of silly when considering the xbox version makes due with the same 64 MB unified+a little HDD cache.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-10-30, 19:09:

My copy of Diablo 2 for multiplayer lists 128MB as recommended and 256MB RAM for multiplayer if there are more than 4 players.

which version is this? LoD says 64 MB minimum but recommends against running the new 800x600 mode if being near the minimum processor or memory requirements. it's possible that the requirements crept up over the years with all the patching going on, i know for a fact win95 support was already out the window with the 1.13 patch.

I assume we are sticking to PC compatibles only right? Wing Commander for FM Towns (CD rom), will use as much RAM as it can find. It will simply keep loading data into RAM until it fills up and needs to dump something in order to keep CD loading times minimal. I have 2 systems, 1 with 10mb and 1 with 38mb, and there's a huge difference in how often they stop to load. The minimum to run the game is 2mb. Lol.

A lot of X68000 games will also use as much RAM as available (12mb max) to limit floppy loads.

under dos, Quake will try to load as much ram as possible (up to 64mb) and requires 8mb. Under Windows 95, it'll restrict itself to 8mb (-winmem ## can override this and a lot did that) and requires 16MB to run in Win95 at all to begin with.

quake also seems to run exactly the same with 16 MB as with 64 MB under DOS (and doesn't seem to need smartdrive at all). >16 MB is perhaps only of use when loading some heavy mods.

auron wrote on 2024-10-31, 01:23:

which version is this? LoD says 64 MB minimum but recommends against running the new 800x600 mode if being near the minimum processor or memory requirements. it's possible that the requirements crept up over the years with all the patching going on, i know for a fact win95 support was already out the window with the 1.13 patch.

It is definitely a later version, the discs have the copyright dated to 2003 while the manual says "2000-2007 Blizzard Entertainment. All Rights Reserved!" It was published by CD Projekt.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-10-29, 22:22:

jakethompson1 wrote on 2024-10-29, 20:34:

I guess my question is more along the lines of: what percentage of XT and XT clone machines had any EMS, and for 286 chipsets supporting hardware EMS, what percentage of systems actually had it enabled.

Hi. I think those that ran AutoSketch 3, Windows 2.x together with commercial applications, DESQView (for mailboxes operated by their sysops) and so on.
Some compilers like Power Basic 3.5 or Microsoft BASIC PDS 7.1 could use EMS, too.

Just to be clear, I think it's not just that these things supported EMS, but that they didn't support XMS - or didn't support it to the same extent. I'm pretty sure that DESQview falls into that category.

As another example, the Borland C++ 2.0 compiler's manual says it uses EMS by default, but only uses XMS if you tell it to, because using it could cause conflicts with other software that uses it. It has an option described in this way:

This option instructs the compiler to reserve nnnn Kbytes of extended memory for other programs and use the rest for itself. To […]
Show full quote

This option instructs the compiler to reserve nnnn
Kbytes of extended memory for other programs
and use the rest for itself. To figure out how much
memory to reserve, you have to add up the
memory that is used at the bottom of extended
memory by resident programs like RAM disks or
disk caches.

For example, if you use a disk cache, you might
set it up so that it uses the first 512 Kbytes of
extended memory. To tell the compiler to use the
rest, you would specify -Qx=512.

If you aren't sure how much extended memory is
used by resident utilities like RAM disks or disk
caches, it is better not to use this option.

This sounds pretty scary and would discourage me from using XMS - I wouldn't want to make something go wrong with my RAM disk or disk cache!