Microsoft Space Cadet works with win32s, as does the original Maxis Full Tilt games. Maxis requires 256 colours, but the Microsoft version will run with 16 colours.

Not sure if this fits with your rules though.

I don't have rules apart from the freeware/shareware/demos of commercial games requirement, just a priority on what I want to document first. Those priorities are listed at the bottom of the index page 😉

Designed to be compatible with Netscape Navigator 3

Wow. Netscape Navigator 3 is new to me! ^^
W?nwo?ld claims that "The Netscape 3.0.x browser was probably the most popular version."
That's interesting. I've used to use Netscape Navigator 2.01 in '96 and also played with Netscape Communicator 4.x in a VM just recently.

Edit: That's because Netscape 2.01 was part of the CD-ROM for T-Online software v1.20.
That one here: https://archive.org/details/t-online-decoder-1.20-1996
My father used in on Windows 95 RTM in 1996, despite it being 16-Bit software.
He also had WinCIM 1.x installed, I think. Later versions had IE 3 included.
Earlier versions of Internet Explorer were commercial software, I think.

Edit: It's not meant as criticism, Netscape 3/4 are fine, too.
Even Internet Explorer 5, would be fine, still. Windows 3.1 can run them all.

Edit: Just had browesed through the page. Well done! 😃👍
So far, there's little to add from my side. Most games I knew are there, too.
I didn't knew that Stellar Explorer had two versions, I have used v1 all time.
I merely knew that it seems to use Win 3.0 MME, accirding to the help file.

A few games that might be worth to add are JiJi series (part 12, maybe 3), Solar Vengeance v2 (now Freeware)..
WinTrek has sound, Warpath/Dominate do direct OPL writes. Some of these games are shown here.

Oh and a handful of games use SOUNDBLST.DLL SNDBLST.DLL (there are different versions) instead of Windows' Sound System. They're from ~1991 onwards, I think.
In theory, they could have been made to run in Real-Mode (with sound!) but are surprisingly demanding and require Standard-Mode or higher!
They're more demanding than the average Windows 3.xgame, I think.
They run on all Windows 3.x versions, if the sound drivers are removed in Control Panel and if Sound Blaster DLL is available in game directory or Windows directories.
We discussed this here, I think.

PS: Some Windows 3.1 games (a few) have 16-Bit WAVE files. I think by accident. I figured this out way in the 90s.
Anyway, they may not play on 8-Bit Sound Blasters due to driver reasons.
A few games also have MIDI support. Dare to Dream (generic MIDI?), Super Tetris etc.

Edit: Edited. What comes to mind, there are/were a whole lot of Japanese Win16/Win32 games.
They didn't really made it to western hemisphere, but can be found on internet archive or in places such as vector.co.jp, maybe.
In my opinion, they may need a dedicated sub page, maybe.
Because, some may need Japanese Windows 3.1/Win32s to display correctly.
Mixing them with "our" games might mess everything up. It's just a thought, of course, no demand.
By using a database software, for example, things could be filtered, too.

Really cool project!

indeed very nice, kudos DEAT!

Awesome!

Win3.x definitely deserves more love, glad someone got to it!

Just my two cents:

1) maybe add official updates from MS? There aren't a lot of them (I have under 30, and I can share what I got)
2) attached a couple versions of Trumpet that are newer that what you have, could be useful

There is a beautiful forbidden world called REMOVED..

Now you made me want to fire up PCEM.

It's good to see another website that can be rendered in Netscape without the use of proxies.

Norton Commander wrote on 2025-05-20, 17:56:

IE5 WFW311.png

Arachne DOS 622 MTCP.png

These last two screenshots show "win16.base" instead of "win16.page"? Was that a typo or are those two browsers switching the TLD around on you?

It's good to see this focus on 16-bit freeware, shareware, and demos.

If you come across any old Klik & Play games please contribute them to https://kliktopia.org/tool_KNP.html which already has a lot of old K&P games.

One source which might be helpful is the 1993-1998 archive of DOS/Win 3.x games at http://dose.0wnz.at/Shareware/

Theodor Lauppert's Download Central had a good selection of Win16 games:
http://www.download-central.ws/Win16/

I think that the downloads are mostly not preserved, but at least you have info on the games themselves.

DracoNihil wrote on 2025-05-21, 18:02:

Norton Commander wrote on 2025-05-20, 17:56:

IE5 WFW311.png

Arachne DOS 622 MTCP.png

These last two screenshots show "win16.base" instead of "win16.page"? Was that a typo or are those two browsers switching the TLD around on you?

Looks like it was a typo. Beer may have been involved.

Norton Commander wrote on 2025-05-22, 17:12:

Looks like it was a typo. Beer may have been involved.

No worries, we all make mistakes.

That's impressive it works in Arachne.

Hi, just tested in on Minuet, running on a Commodore PC10. Can’t complain. I'm positively surprised.
Photos taken and attached.

Thanks everyone for the positive comments! I've just updated the site to browse by sound support - turns out I had quite a few entries with incorrect data (definitely a lazy copy+paste job on my end for a few of them) so that has been all fixed. The updates page lists all the changes to the pages. I had to rewrite my bash script for generating the index/category pages to properly list each sound mode, which should allow for greater flexibility in the future for other category browsing... and also a fair amount of rework to update every game listing with a better layout for minimum CPU/minimum Windows mode, as I can see my script getting confused with no easy workaround.

Cool to see it working in Arachne and Minuet - I've noticed that MicroWeb compiles for DOS and Win32, but not Win16. Looks like the Win32 code needs to be converted to WinSock v1.1, and then it should work on a 286 with Trumpet v1.0 beta 24. Would be great to have something significantly better than Mosaic 2.0 alpha 2 available.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-05-20, 11:48:

I didn't knew that Stellar Explorer had two versions, I have used v1 all time.
I merely knew that it seems to use Win 3.0 MME, accirding to the help file.

v1 of Stellar Explorer is fairly unique in that it has its own SESOUND.DLL file - it's intelligent enough that you can run it on plain Windows 3.0 and it will be perfectly fine. I did a playthrough attempt recently with my NuXT w/V20 at 9.55Mhz and it was surprisingly well-optimised.

A few games that might be worth to add are JiJi series (part 12, maybe 3), Solar Vengeance v2 (now Freeware)..

Thanks for those - noted on Solar Vengeance being liberated.

WinTrek has sound, Warpath/Dominate do direct OPL writes. Some of these games are shown here.

WinTrek (but not WinTrek, or Win Trek 😉 ) and Warpath were incorrectly listed - fixed. I double checked Dominate with only using the built-in Adlib driver in Windows 3.1 and there was no output - it does have MIDI files, however. Blackout v2.4 apparently has Adlib/Sound Blaster support, but it doesn't appear to be MMSYSTEM-compatible - I'll need to hunt down and test FM.DRV (referenced in the text file) at some point.

Oh and a handful of games use SOUNDBLST.DLL SNDBLST.DLL (there are different versions) instead of Windows' Sound System. They're from ~1991 onwards, I think.
In theory, they could have been made to run in Real-Mode (with sound!) but are surprisingly demanding and require Standard-Mode or higher!

The only games I've seen which reference SNDBLST.DLL (I just used a quick bash script to string search every single file within ZIP files) so far are games by Glacier Edge Technology - STARDATE 2140.2: Battles on Distant Planets, Battles on a Distant Desert and WWII BATTLES: Normandy.

The SNDBLST.DLL support in WWII BATTLES: Normandy is redundant since it requires Windows 3.1 at a minimum. I have archived several versions of SNDBLST.DLL, but I haven't had time to investigate them yet.

As far as other games that have unique sound support, Lucas' Problem supports Covox devices - I don't have any to test with, however.

Edit: Edited. What comes to mind, there are/were a whole lot of Japanese Win16/Win32 games. They didn't really made it to wester […]
Show full quote

Edit: Edited. What comes to mind, there are/were a whole lot of Japanese Win16/Win32 games.
They didn't really made it to western hemisphere, but can be found on internet archive or in places such as vector.co.jp, maybe.
In my opinion, they may need a dedicated sub page, maybe.
Because, some may need Japanese Windows 3.1/Win32s to display correctly.
Mixing them with "our" games might mess everything up. It's just a thought, of course, no demand.
By using a database software, for example, things could be filtered, too.

I'm aware of Vector Software Pack for Win Gold - 20,000 Titles, CD 9 and 10 are exclusively for games. There's also DOS/V Magazine and DOS/V Power Report coverdisk CDs to sort through as well, I believe I've already grabbed a few versions of games from those coverdisks. Finally, I am aware of two Klik & Play CDs with 50 games each that were distributed by Fujitsu, but I haven't looked at those yet.

Not interested in doing a sub page - I do need to add a language field and then set up category browsing for that 😀

jheronimus wrote on 2025-05-20, 13:17:

Just my two cents:

1) maybe add official updates from MS? There aren't a lot of them (I have under 30, and I can share what I got)
2) attached a couple versions of Trumpet that are newer that what you have, could be useful

Thanks for the Windows updates - much appreciated, I'll check those out. I did intentionally stop at the last 286-compatible version of Trumpet, but I'll get around to uploading the other versions at some point.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2025-05-20, 16:23:

There is a beautiful forbidden world called REMOVED..

I'm not going to respond in context of the deliberate misunderstanding of what I'm doing, but I will say this much if you're referring to a certain project that starts with e - there is significantly less overlap than expected between the two projects. Not only that, but everything that is currently available can fit on a single CD (and I did make a deliberate effort to ensure that every filename, including HTM files and screenshots are 8.3-compliant, as a future idea of making an offline version - random.php won't work for obvious reasons) while that project likes to bloat every single game with ~25-30MB of redundant Windows 3.1 installs. Riddle me this - if you chose 40 games that appear in both projects, can you fit all of those 40 games from that project as-is onto a single CD?

Joshtek wrote on 2025-05-21, 19:04:

It's good to see this focus on 16-bit freeware, shareware, and demos.

If you come across any old Klik & Play games please contribute them to https://kliktopia.org/tool_KNP.html which already has a lot of old K&P games.

One source which might be helpful is the 1993-1998 archive of DOS/Win 3.x games at http://dose.0wnz.at/Shareware/

Thanks - noted. I have a script for reliably detecting Klik & Play/Click & Create games and they are filtered into their own sub-folders when I've been cleaning out duplicates of files I've already archived.

As for that archive link, I've already used most of those CDs as sources. The Pegasus CDs have a lot of unique sources, but they also inject ZIP files with this whenever pkunzip -d is used to extract them:

1╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
2║ Diese ZIP-Datei wurde mit der neuesten Version von SCAN auf Vi-  ║
3║ renfreiheit geprüft.                                             ║
4║                                                                  ║
5║ Entpacken der Datei mit: PKUNZIP -d zipfile                      ║
6║                                                                  ║
7║ Zahlreiche Programme dieser CDROM sind Shareware. Bitte beachten ║
8║ Sie die Lizenzbestimmungen und unterstützen Sie die Autoren mit  ║
9║ Ihrer Registrierung.                                             ║
10╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Which is annoying.

MrFlibble wrote on 2025-05-22, 10:49:

Theodor Lauppert's Download Central had a good selection of Win16 games:
http://www.download-central.ws/Win16/

I think that the downloads are mostly not preserved, but at least you have info on the games themselves.

Thanks a lot for this - this will be incredibly useful to reference once I've mostly exhausted the usual CD sources.

DEAT wrote on 2025-05-23, 03:20:

As for that archive link, I've already used most of those CDs as sources. The Pegasus CDs have a lot of unique sources, but they […]
Show full quote

As for that archive link, I've already used most of those CDs as sources. The Pegasus CDs have a lot of unique sources, but they also inject ZIP files with this whenever pkunzip -d is used to extract them:

Copy code to clipboard

1╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
2║ Diese ZIP-Datei wurde mit der neuesten Version von SCAN auf Vi-  ║
3║ renfreiheit geprüft.                                             ║
4║                                                                  ║
5║ Entpacken der Datei mit: PKUNZIP -d zipfile                      ║
6║                                                                  ║
7║ Zahlreiche Programme dieser CDROM sind Shareware. Bitte beachten ║
8║ Sie die Lizenzbestimmungen und unterstützen Sie die Autoren mit  ║
9║ Ihrer Registrierung.                                             ║
10╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Which is annoying.

I've long been involved with the RGB Classic Games community, whose members taught me the value of original clean ZIP files. I found that simply removing the appended ZIP comment (for example, using Info-ZIP's z command) may restore the original form of the file -- provided that the comment was added, and not created with a completely repackaged archive.

The same goes for injected FILE_ID.DIZ files, deleting them with the DOS version of Info-ZIP may revert the ZIP to its original state, byte-by-byte identical to what you could get from the devs/pubs/distributors.

Concerning Pegasus CDs, I've used them as a source and the archives may be completely repacked, at least some of them, but don't quote me on that.

While I never took much interest in Win16 games (apart from a few titles like the Exile series RPGs), but perhaps you could find something useful in this topic, and maybe here too.

I can give a few more insights on the matter of ZIP originality if you're interested. First off, the whole process of establishing if a ZIP is original or not would not be possible without any samples of unambiguously original ZIPs, thankfully provided via some still-existing FTP sites, sometimes at FilePlanet, but mainly thanks to whatever was preserved by the Wayback Machine -- which is a lot more than I originally thought back in the early 2010s. Also some archived websites provided the exact file size in bytes, which is still helpful even if the downloads themselves were not archived by the Wayback Machine.

For unpacked files on a CD, I've noticed that using 7-Zip or WinRAR to extract them from a CD image might result in the date/times stamps being off due to time zone differences. Whenever possible, I try to mount an ISO in DOSBox SVN Daum and copy the files from the ISO to DOSBox's virtual hard drive, which seems to preserve the "original" date and time stamps -- again, compared against known authentic unmodified ZIPs.

Oh, and I can also share a Win16 game that you appear not to have yet: Rogue's Quest, which is a graphical roguelike, originally a Win16 app then ported by author to Win32. The Wayback Machine has preserved only this latter Win32 release (which I gather is the latest version in the game's development), but I found one of the Win16 builds elsewhere: RQ10G.ZIP. DiscMaster only finds an even earlier version, but you might want to archive that too. The game also had quite a few add-on scenarios.

BTW, since I'm predominantly on Win10 now, I've found myself using winevdm to successfully run a lot of Win16 stuff. (By "a lot" I mean those infrequent few games that I happen across.)

Also concerning obscure Win16 game suggestions, you might want to look at the archived site of French shareware publisher TLK Games. They had DOS stuff but also Windows, which I think in some cases was Win16, including Farocar, a neat Soko-Ban variant.

Personally, I say that Windows 3.1x has a lot of potential as a DOS GUI, and if you can create modern apps and games with WIN32'S subsystem, wow, that sounds great, oh yeah!

Regarding game suggestions, there's a blog called Juegos Liberados that lists liberated (=officially declared freeware) games which can be listed by platform, here's what they have for Win16:
https://juegosliberados.blogspot.com/search/l … l/Windows%203.1

I would certainly suggest Stars!, a shareware space 4X game. The latest shareware version is available here. The game was later acquired by Empire Interactive and sold commercially, a demo was available from their website. Both are working Wayback Machine links. The demo has an 80-turn limit, but the shareware version only has a limit on game world size (IIRC).

Bad Toys 3D -- shareware, you can get the ZIP version here.

Nitemare 3D -- Win16 shareware at RGB Classic Games.

There's also a Win16 demo of The Rise & Rule of Ancient Empires, found here.

The chess programme Centaur has a Win16 version, available here. It doesn't have the fancy 3D board of the DOS version though.

Atomic -- Win16 clone of Atomix, source code included.

I'm sure DEAT has a lot of Win16 games lined up already (which is why I haven't suggested all-time classics of game Slam! yet or any of those "welcome" 3d games)

Though I can suggest some way of listing networked play support. Thinking about Lord Soth's page...