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Reply 40 of 44, by DEAT

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A fairly significant update has been uploaded to the site today - I have added icons for almost every game (except for those that require a runtime EXE, such as Asymetrix ToolBook and KnowledgePro) and also kept track of icon changes between versions. I've limited it to 50 icons per page because a small number of games have (almost) all of their images as icons - Castle of the Winds has 236 of them in the shareware episode, and 288 in the registered episode! I've also added information regarding language support, minimum RAM, multiplayer support (a few games are ambiguous and will need further testing) and consolidated additional runtimes into a single field for each page for future proofing.

On the index page, you can now browse by multiplayer support, language, minimum Windows version, minimum RAM, and additional runtimes. Browsing by minimum CPU now lists multiple entries of games if different versions have different CPU requirements instead of whatever the lowest CPU was in total. Minimum video has now been changed to video support in general.

Finally, a bunch of minor updates have been made to several pages - check the updates page for more details.

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Reply 41 of 44, by WolverineDK

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DEAT wrote on 2025-06-13, 06:46:

A fairly significant update has been uploaded to the site today - I have added icons for almost every game (except for those that require a runtime EXE, such as Asymetrix ToolBook and KnowledgePro) and also kept track of icon changes between versions. I've limited it to 50 icons per page because a small number of games have (almost) all of their images as icons - Castle of the Winds has 236 of them in the shareware episode, and 288 in the registered episode! I've also added information regarding language support, minimum RAM, multiplayer support (a few games are ambiguous and will need further testing) and consolidated additional runtimes into a single field for each page for future proofing.

On the index page, you can now browse by multiplayer support, language, minimum Windows version, minimum RAM, and additional runtimes. Browsing by minimum CPU now lists multiple entries of games if different versions have different CPU requirements instead of whatever the lowest CPU was in total. Minimum video has now been changed to video support in general.

Finally, a bunch of minor updates have been made to several pages - check the updates page for more details.

I really enjoy watching and reading your site. And I think it is a fantastic piece of work you are doing. Also you mentions icons (game icons I presume). I must point out, that irfanview on Windows can extract some of those icons from the exe files. Anyway keep up the great work ! 😀

Reply 42 of 44, by MrFlibble

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I have a question to the fine community here, how do you go about running these Win3.x titles on modern high-res LCD displays? From what I understand, not all of them will stretch the image to desktop resolution (and if they do, the proportions will likely be wrong), and many simply do not have any proper fullscreen mode.

I'm not happy with the solution to use DOSBox/other emulator + a copy of Win3.1, since I don't have one and there is no legit way to get ahold of one currently.

I haven't used Wine in a while, so I'm not sure if it supports any kind of out-of-the-box scaling, but perhaps there is a way to switch to a lower resolution when running? On Win10, I use winevdm, which definitely does not provide such a feature, although I think you can configure an EXE to switch to 640x480 as part of the legacy mode or something. I haven't tried this out yet though.

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Reply 43 of 44, by Jo22

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Hi there! My "trick" with hi-res LCD monitors is to try to use 800x600 resolution.
Because a big 4:3 monitor panel often uses 1600x1200 natively,
which is two times the resolution (2x2 or 4x the pixels).

It also has the advantage that many Super VGA games on DOS had supported 800x600 16c.
Especially flight simulators, city sims or graphical adventure games (Magnetic Scrolls, Legend Entertainment games).

Windows 3.1 has an 800x600 16c driver shipped, as well, which works with modest 256KB VGA cards, even.
WfW 3.11 has an additional 256c driver for 640x480/800x600/1024x768 as well.
- If possible, using 256c on Windows 3.1x is favorable also. It supports palette cycling, most importantly.

Another advantage is that 800x600 resolution has a reasonable information density,
but same time isn't making Windows GUI elements too tiny.
Many Windows games (such as Warpath!) had the option to expand the play area to about 800x600.
The flight tower simulators for Windows 3.0 looked less crowded on 800x600, too: Tracon for Windows aka ATC: Air Traffic Controller

So yeah, Windows 3.1 often is being remembered for Standard VGA in 640x480 16c, but 800x600 16c was recommended in practice.
It's like as with minimum requirements and recommended requirements.

Windows for Workgroups built on this by making 256 colours a common minimum colour depth, thanks to its universal 256c SVGA driver(s).
Games using WinG or QuickTime or playing FMVs via Video for Windows do benefit from 256c, for example.
GIF files can be fully viewed in 256c, as well. And 256c allows for 20 Windows system colours, rather than just 16.

But that's just my opinion, of course.
800x600 wasn't an ideal resolution, but it's a historical compromise that's acceptable, I think.
If it was IBM, then 640x480 and 1024x768 are the standard resolutions (IBM 8514/A used these resolutions).

Way back in the mid-80s, many EGA cards had the ability to go up to 800x600 16c on a "multisync" monitor.
A monitor that's more of a general-purpose monitor rather than an EGA or VGA specific monitor.

Such universal monitors had been used in Japan with Sharp X68000 or PC-98, for example.
I mention this, because TV companies such as Sony came from Japan.

Edit: My comment was about using vintage hardware (such as a 486 PC) with a big LCD monitor.
In emulators, it might be a good chance to run sophisticated CRT pixel shaders! 😃
They need the highest resolutions anyway in order to simulate a CRT screen the most authentic.

Edit: If you're into Unix/Linux, you might also be giving WABI a chance.
Long story short, it runs a copy of Windows 3.1x 386 Enhanced-Mode kernal on the *nix kernel.
There's no DOS involved, it's just Windows 3.1x - with all its utilities.
WABI also supports Windows for Workgroups (both versions).
That way, you can run Windows environment on about any resolution.
(You need to have the required Windows 3.1x files, obviously.)

Edit: It's a bit like using WIN-OS/2, maybe. Except that there's no DOS VM involved.
Speaking of OS/2, Ecomstation and ArcaOS still have WIN-OS/2 included.
They're operating at high resolutions, too.

"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

//My video channel//

Reply 44 of 44, by MrFlibble

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DEAT wrote on 2025-06-03, 01:47:

Can't state enough how much I appreciate these links - thanks a lot for sharing all of these.

I remembered one more source that is sadly down with no downloads, but it lists file sizes in bytes, as well as developer/publisher homepages in many cases.

It was the Italian site called VOLftp. They had a pretty big listing of downloads spanning across multiple pages and split into platforms (DOS, Win3.xx, Win95 and even Win98 as a separate subset). The lists themselves are available via the Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://volftp.ti … /win3xx/games/*

As usual there were some mislabellings, so you might want to look under the Win95/Win98 folders too I guess (yeah, they also had WinNT separately too):
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://volftp.ti … s/win95/games/*
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://volftp.ti … s/win98/games/*
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://volftp.ti … winnt50/games/*

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