dr.zeissler wrote on 2022-11-19, 16:39:
Crazy! Gog sell's old games that do not run on old-pc's they were released for and also they don't work on new PC's...so where is the sweet-spot here....CRAP!
My experience with GOG releases has been as follows. DOS era games usually ship with DOSBox and can be installed on a modern PC without much hassle. After that, it's easy to copy over the folder containing the game to a real DOS machine and run it from there. Preferably, delete any files from the game folder which don't conform to the 8+3 naming convention beforehand, as they aren't needed on a real DOS system.
Games from the WinXP era generally work fine, and their installers can be used on a real WinXP system. However, in some rare instances, GOG includes modified versions of DirectX DLL files which make it easier for a game to work on newer (post-XP) operating systems, but may cause issues on a real DX9 compatible WinXP machine. Deleting these DLL files usually solves the issue.
For Win9x era games, the situation is not so great. GOG offline installers don't run under Win9x, so you need to use a different OS to perform the installation and then copy the game folder over to your actual Win9x system. However, this doesn't always work since GOG often integrates Glide wrappers and fan-made patches into their releases which cause problems when you want to use the game on real, period correct hardware. This varies on a case by case basis.
In conclusion, I too wish that GOG would offer unaltered images of older games (in addition to their current offline installers) but I gather that this might not be feasible from a server maintenance standpoint. But again, this mostly seems to be an issue for Win9x era games, while DOS and WinXP titles can (usually) be made to run on real hardware with minimal effort.