I talked about the "TC Games" with him on stream, unfortunately at the time he was testing Windows 3.0 compatibility and the TC games are for 3.1, and I also just learned that apparently all those 3D graphics it does is just through GDI itself, no WinG.
There are some I don't actually have the shareware copies of, like the Spy Hunter clone for example. I only have "Asteroids", "Bout", "Car War", "Defender", "Space Invaders", "Joust", "Ping Pong", "Star Fighter", "Skirmish", "Star Trek", "Sword Play", "Trek War," and "Virtual World".
All of these I pulled off Disc 2 of "The Complete Encyclopedia of Games on 2 CDs!" by "Microforum Publishing".
“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων
MrFlibblewrote on 2025-05-24, 16:26:I've long been involved with the RGB Classic Games community, whose members taught me the value of original clean ZIP files. I f […] Show full quote
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.
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.
I've been fairly vigilant on preserving the file dates of ZIPs/self-extracting EXEs themselves from CDs (when possible) for the future possibility of providing an offline version - does Info-ZIP preserve the file date of the ZIP or does it modify it? That's my main concern regarding stripping ZIP comments. Of course, there's also the rare instance of when the authors make ZIP comments themselves (ie. Flip Aces, Electro-Cute v1.00, Football for Windows v4.0, Win Slot v2.13) so those will never be touched.
Thankfully with regards to FILE_ID.DIZ files I've had good success with finding copies without those files - at the same time, when you read enough of them it becomes easy to pick up when they were written by the authors themselves - I've been making a good effort to preserve those, only a couple of them have been ambiguous.
Since I use Linux, it's fairly easy to preserve file dates by just mounting the CD and running cp -p and it keeps the exact date and time. That said, I have noticed that ext4 filesystem permissions seem to be preserved within the ZIP file. I might need to transfer the content to a Windows system and repack those pre-extracted sources.
Good point regarding archived websites listing the exact file size - that's something I will keep in mind.
While I never took much interest in Win16 games (apart from a few titles like the Exile series RPGs), but perhaps you could find […] Show full quote
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.
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.
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
Thanks a lot for these - I appreciate lists like this the most as it helps with knowing what's out there.
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 […] Show full quote
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.
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).
As leilei correctly pointed out, I already have a large pile of games that are already shortlisted for being added next when I do the next content update in July - there's 37 286-compatible Windows 3.1 games where I've archived all versions I could find, some number of 386-minimum games (fun note, I currently have 26 versions of Operation: Inner Space archived), and another 195 folders of extracted ZIPs where I was testing for Windows 3.0 compatibility. DracoNihil did point out to me that the file command in Linux does distinguish between Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1 within the NE header, so moving forward I have a significantly more efficient way of testing the minimum Windows version especially as I move beyond 1993. With regards to those archived games, I haven't done any kind of documentation or screenshots for those games at this point.
Couple of specific notes about the above games you've listed - I have v1.2 of Nitemare 3D archived, and I believe I may have encountered v1.4 or v1.5 on a CD I have locally stored but I could be wrong on that. Untested as of yet, but I don't expect anything beyond 386+WinG. Bad Toys 3D I have v1.0, v1.9, v1.91 and v1.95 archived - v1.0 is quite literally the best example of GDI usage I've seen in any Windows game, and I'd be very surprised if anything surpasses it. The fact it has built-in demos is icing on the cake - if only it had a timedemo function.
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.
These post-1998 games on the other hand are exactly what I'm interested in feedback from with regards to what to individually add to the site - thanks!
Though I can suggest some way of listing networked play support. Thinking about Lord Soth's page...
Good idea - I'll work on this. I might as well go all the way and just replicate what Lord Soth had with regards to what to list for multiplayer support, including local multiplayer.
I talked about the "TC Games" with him on stream, unfortunately at the time he was testing Windows 3.0 compatibility and the TC games are for 3.1, and I also just learned that apparently all those 3D graphics it does is just through GDI itself, no WinG.
There are some I don't actually have the shareware copies of, like the Spy Hunter clone for example. I only have "Asteroids", "Bout", "Car War", "Defender", "Space Invaders", "Joust", "Ping Pong", "Star Fighter", "Skirmish", "Star Trek", "Sword Play", "Trek War," and "Virtual World".
All of these I pulled off Disc 2 of "The Complete Encyclopedia of Games on 2 CDs!" by "Microforum Publishing".
I did eventually find "Basketball", so now I have the complete TC Games collection - "Image Editor" that can be seen here is elusive, however.
Though I can suggest some way of listing networked play support. Thinking about Lord Soth's page...
I was going to say the same! on my own little spreadsheet I list:
Release year (which you already have)
Sound support (which you already have)
Multiplayer (Split screen, Null Modem, Network)
Do love the fact it's Netscape 3 compatible, for me that's THE browser for Win3x and funny enough I still miss it, maybe cause it was how I first accessed the internet?
However it's missing from your utilities folder!
Nice site, thanks! I checked and you already have all the games that were in my games group in Program Manager in December 1991, so unfortunately I have nothing to contribute there.
Have you considered including icons as well as screen shots? Perhaps they would be "useful" as people might recognise them.
Current priority list of games to document is as follows:
WinG games
Win32s games
I see you have only two WinG games.
One interesting game is Microsoft Fury 3. It uses both WIN32s and WinG, even if it was marketed for "Windows 95". I think I saw a demo while searching game magazine CD archive on Archive.org.
I've been fairly vigilant on preserving the file dates of ZIPs/self-extracting EXEs themselves from CDs (when possible) for the future possibility of providing an offline version - does Info-ZIP preserve the file date of the ZIP or does it modify it? That's my main concern regarding stripping ZIP comments. Of course, there's also the rare instance of when the authors make ZIP comments themselves (ie. Flip Aces, Electro-Cute v1.00, Football for Windows v4.0, Win Slot v2.13) so those will never be touched.
Do ZIP files actually store their creation/modification date somewhere? (not the date stamps of the files inside) I think LHA archives do that, but I'm not sure about ZIP.
It's been quite some time, but I do believe I ran byte-by-byte comparisons between known original files and those restored via the techniques that I described above, and I think that after stripping the comment the resulting file was byte-by-byte identical to the original one (using the COMP command to compare the two).
[Edit] On a side note, it appears that external comments can be appended to an authentic file, as exemplified by this distribution of Duke Nukem II. Removing the comment (e.g. by using the Info-ZIP edit comment function) does not in any way violate the authenticity verification procedure. This means that files with external comments can be cleaned up without breaking authenticity.
The discussion was concerning PKZIP's Authenticity Verification routine though, but I gather that if ZIP files somehow document their creation date, the AV feature would detect this piece of data being modified too (?).
If you're talking about the date stamps on the ZIP files as appearing on a particular CD, I feel that generally these are quite arbitrary and will most likely indicate the time when the file was downloaded to the machine where the CD was put together. However, if you want to preserve those, there's no reason why you should not manually modify the date/time stamps back to their original values after removing the extra comments and FILE_ID.DIZ files.
Thankfully with regards to FILE_ID.DIZ files I've had good success with finding copies without those files - at the same time, when you read enough of them it becomes easy to pick up when they were written by the authors themselves - I've been making a good effort to preserve those, only a couple of them have been ambiguous.
With DOS games at least, I noticed that third-party FILE_ID.DIZ files often have extremely odd dates, like from 1987 (for a reason that was never fully clear to me), clearly standing out from the actual dates of the game files.
Generally, I've always tried to track down as many ZIPs of the same release/version of a game, if it comes as a zipped collection of loose files, to try to determine which comprise the original pack. Also thankfully, not a few shareware game devs would very kindly list the exact ZIP contents somewhere in the documentation.
I also love this convention when the timestamps on the files actually indicate the version number (thus 1:00am/pm means version 1.00 and so on), but it wasn't too widespread and only some authors followed it.
Good point regarding archived websites listing the exact file size - that's something I will keep in mind.
Here's a fairly well preserved site (not all downloads though) that was not an official source but still has the exact file sizes at least for some downloads: The Gamer's Inn
The games are categorized by genre (very loosely though) and marked by platform (standard Windows icon means Win3.x, the Win95 icons has a red "95" imposed over it), although sometimes there are errors.
Of course, there is also no guarantee that the files referenced are in any way original or come from third-party sources and have been modified in some way or other.
Hi, I think the mismatch with file dates could be because the files had been re-packed.
It's also worth to keep in mind that ZIP wasn't the only archive format in use.
Japan used to use LZH, which also was popular in the west once.
Amiga and Atari ST use LHA archives to this very day, still.
Then there was ARC format in the mid-80s, which was standard on CP/M.
The shareware files might have been shipped with a different archive format originally, thus.
So the PD/shareware collections on CD-ROMs over time had been altered slightly, maybe, in order to be used by DOS/Windows users with then-current PKZip and WinZIP.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
Hello everyone... How happy I feel, knowing that there are many Windows 3.1x enthusiasts just like me, I'm really passionate about everything I have to do with this graphical interface, and more and more every time hehehe. My dream would be for Microsoft to release the source code of Windows 3.1... Anyway, long live Windows 3.1x!!
^Hi, I think it has already leaked surfaced years ago, along with that of W2K/DOS6..
But I won't go into any detail here. Just stating the obvious. It's an open secret, so to say.
PS: Windows 3.1 had been used in many places.
It's in Windows NT, in OS/2, in the C64 Web.It (as WebOS), in the Tandy VIS console (as Modular Windows), in Windows 9x Setup (in mini.cab).
It also can be run in a window in DESQVIEW/X and on Unix/Linux (WABI).
The predecessor Windows 3.0 existed in WLO, a Windows runtime for 16-Bit OS/2.
In the 90s, the Windows API was almost becoming an industry specification.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
One interesting game is Microsoft Fury 3. It uses both WIN32s and WinG, even if it was marketed for "Windows 95". I think I saw a demo while searching game magazine CD archive on Archive.org.
FURY3.EXE does not use WinG whatsoever. There's no references to the DLL file anywhere and does not come with it either on the CD-ROM. As far as I know it just uses custom GDI code.
“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων
The demo's Fury3x.exe does have WinG function references relating to stretching BLTs through WING32.DLL
On topic of WinG, one of the earliest WinG games i've ever played was Defendroid off one of those CD-ROM Today! discs then. It also used Dispdib (a Video for Windows component) to do 320x200x256 on 3.1 so maybe having VFW/Dispdib could also be worth noting.
Speaking of WinG (and Win32s), Creatures! came to mind..
But so far, only own statements show up on search engine.
Emulators running on Win95/Win32s also used it, I think.
There's also a WinG benchmark from Japan, I think. Test suite for Win32s/WinG?
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
One interesting game is Microsoft Fury 3. It uses both WIN32s and WinG, even if it was marketed for "Windows 95". I think I saw a demo while searching game magazine CD archive on Archive.org.
FURY3.EXE does not use WinG whatsoever. There's no references to the DLL file anywhere and does not come with it either on the CD-ROM. As far as I know it just uses custom GDI code.
Well, this is what the trial version says in its README:
NOTE: The Fury3 Trial Version requires additional utilities (win32s, wing, dispdib.dll) to run under Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups. During installation you may be prompted to install each one.
Well, this is what the trial version says in its README:
NOTE: The Fury3 Trial Version requires additional utilities (win32s, wing, dispdib.dll) to run under Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups. During installation you may be prompted to install each one.
okay I somehow missed the DLL reference because I was dumb and looking for the 16-bit DLL, not the 32-bit DLL... Sorry about that.
“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων
Have you considered including icons as well as screen shots? Perhaps they would be "useful" as people might recognise them.
I did a bit quick of research into this and icoutils is perfect for my needs - easy enough to set up a bash script to extract icons with icoutils, convert to GIF with imagemagick and have them output in the correct folder. Only amount of real effort I need to do is track the changes in the icons between versions - quick thought is to have a horizontal display of all icons (double-sized) above the game title and then have the icons (actual size) in the downloads listing - ie. icon 1, (which corresponds to) version 1, version 2, icon 2, (which corresponds to) version 3 etc.
I'm open for feedback on whether it's better to have screenshots or icons in the category listings 😀
Do ZIP files actually store their creation/modification date somewhere? (not the date stamps of the files inside) I think LHA archives do that, but I'm not sure about ZIP.
[Edit] On a side note, it appears that external comments can be appended to an authentic file, as exemplified by this distribution of Duke Nukem II. Removing the comment (e.g. by using the Info-ZIP edit comment function) does not in any way violate the authenticity verification procedure. This means that files with external comments can be cleaned up without breaking authenticity.
The discussion was concerning PKZIP's Authenticity Verification routine though, but I gather that if ZIP files somehow document their creation date, the AV feature would detect this piece of data being modified too (?).
This is a good question, and I'll need to investigate this further.
If you're talking about the date stamps on the ZIP files as appearing on a particular CD, I feel that generally these are quite arbitrary and will most likely indicate the time when the file was downloaded to the machine where the CD was put together. However, if you want to preserve those, there's no reason why you should not manually modify the date/time stamps back to their original values after removing the extra comments and FILE_ID.DIZ files.
Fair point, and I agree thinking about it more critically - it's not like the creation dates would be preserved in the first place when I'm copying them. I have a strong feeling that any ZIP that has a modified date stamp that matches the content would have had its date stamp touched by some program in the first place - I doubt that some of the CD sources would have immediately received those files.
With DOS games at least, I noticed that third-party FILE_ID.DIZ files often have extremely odd dates, like from 1987 (for a reason that was never fully clear to me), clearly standing out from the actual dates of the game files.
Regarding the 1987 dates I figured out the answer for that one specifically, and it's basically all Walnut Creek CD-ROMs from late-1994 to late-1995 that put in those FILE_ID.DIZ files with the absurd file date - bizarrely they just disappear afterwards, even if some of the content is the same on later CDs. It's also a pretty sure sign where other shovelware CDs had stole its content from those specific CDs when you see those 1987 FILE_ID.DIZ files appear. Compare the following, for a few examples:
Generally, I've always tried to track down as many ZIPs of the same release/version of a game, if it comes as a zipped collection of loose files, to try to determine which comprise the original pack. Also thankfully, not a few shareware game devs would very kindly list the exact ZIP contents somewhere in the documentation.
Yeah, that kind documentation is always authoritative to me - I have bash scripts to compare sources by unzipping the contents to temp folders and if they don't match, diff will output a file for me to investigate further. At some point this month I'll need to clean up/rewrite the bash scripts I've been using regarding managing the content and upload them to GitHub - I figure it would be useful for other people interested in doing this kind of archival work.
Another common file that is injected is DESC.SDI - I'm convinced that almost no author has even written that file themselves.
Here's a fairly well preserved site (not all downloads though) that was not an official source but still has the exact file size […] Show full quote
Here's a fairly well preserved site (not all downloads though) that was not an official source but still has the exact file sizes at least for some downloads: The Gamer's Inn
The games are categorized by genre (very loosely though) and marked by platform (standard Windows icon means Win3.x, the Win95 icons has a red "95" imposed over it), although sometimes there are errors.
Of course, there is also no guarantee that the files referenced are in any way original or come from third-party sources and have been modified in some way or other.
Can't state enough how much I appreciate these links - thanks a lot for sharing all of these.
Hi, I think the mismatch with file dates could be because the files had been re-packed.
It's also worth to keep in mind that ZIP wasn't the only archive format in use.
True, I've come across ARC, RAR, ARJ and LZH sources, along with self-extracting EXEs. I've repacked the ARC/RAR/ARJ/LZH sources but left the self-extracting EXEs intact. I'll leave the LZH files for Japanese games intact while keeping a ZIP download for easier access.
I've noted when possible where file dates of the content don't match what should be expected - Block Breaker is an example of both where a version has incorrect file dates due to either repacking or pre-extracted content where the source CD has every file dated when the CD was mastered, and a example where it's obvious that the system clock on the author's PC was incorrect.
I'm pretty certain that ARC (I'm convinced that none of which that I've used are original sources) does not preserve the file date.
FURY3.EXE does not use WinG whatsoever. There's no references to the DLL file anywhere and does not come with it either on the CD-ROM. As far as I know it just uses custom GDI code.
I haven't checked the full version of Fury3 so I can't comment on that specifically, but it's not completely unheard of for Windows 3.1 games to use a backbuffer with outputting via GDI - I'm 99% convinced that the Windows 3.1 version of Spectre VR is one example, which both makes sense due to its cross-platform network nature to keep things consistent and the fact that the mach32 drivers (at least the latest drivers) with its default settings offsets the entire output by about 150 or so pixels to the left. README.DOC specifically says:
11. Windows users: If you are using an ATI video card or a video card 2 that controls bitmaps with the hardware, be sure you have hardware 3 control of bitmaps turned off in the Windows driver.
Another example is an ancient Doom source port, of all things - WDMP has a Win32s EXE that only outputs via GDI.
I swear I haven't had a crazy idea pop in my head in the past week about mashing the FastDoom core with NTDoom/WDMP/Doom Legacy v1.40/v1.42 rendering/audio code, thinking about how to write a WinG renderer and potentially using Sierra's Win32s DSOUND.DLL wrapper that they used in 1996 demos, no siree
On topic of WinG, one of the earliest WinG games i've ever played was Defendroid off one of those CD-ROM Today! discs then. It also used Dispdib (a Video for Windows component) to do 320x200x256 on 3.1 so maybe having VFW/Dispdib could also be worth noting.
I'll be consolidating the Visual Basic/WinG/Win32s fields into a single "additional runtime" field - I know that when I finally get around to Klik & Play games that there's more than enough justification for that, same with Macromedia Director (Soleau Software games are the prime example I can think of off the top of my head). It'd be better in the long run to deal with it before I add more games, plus it'd be easier to browse by Asymetrix Toolbook and Realizer games which I already have added.
And no, before anyone asks I don't consider WAP to be an additional runtime unless there's a game that isn't from Brian Goble that's out there.
