DOSGuy wrote:

Has anyone successfully managed to get 256 or more colors in Windows 95 in DOSBox?

Using a 1996-ish dated S3 Trio 64v+ driver may work. Also, use machine=pentium_slow

DON'T INSTALL DIRECTX YOU'LL RUIN EVERYTHING

Windows 9x DOSBox Guide (Not officially supported)

Victory! w950109b.zip was the missing piece of the puzzle. Three cheers for DosFreak!

DirectX 5 installs and works great!

Old DirectX games just don't work under Windows 7 x64, even in Compatibility Mode, and Windows 95 under VirtualBox and VirtualPC is flaky at best. DOSBox is officially the best way to play old Windows 95 games!

Nope, officially Dosbox is NOT intended for Windows 9x (even though you are right, it's a working mostly great 😉)

DOSGuy wrote:

Old DirectX games just don't work under Windows 7 x64, even in Compatibility Mode

Huh?

Dominus wrote:

Nope, officially Dosbox is NOT intended for Windows 9x (even though you are right, it's a working mostly great 😉)

How do you get Windows to work in DOSBox? Wouldn't you have to reinstall it every time you restarted?

sliderider wrote:

Dominus wrote:

Nope, officially Dosbox is NOT intended for Windows 9x (even though you are right, it's a working mostly great 😉)

How do you get Windows to work in DOSBox? Wouldn't you have to reinstall it every time you restarted?

Huh? There are some locked guides on this on the forum.

I meant unofficially "officially". 😜

And yes, there are many guides on this forum, and I'll be adding a guide to RGB Classic Games as well, so there's no need to go over the procedure in this thread.

@sliderider: No, because you save the installation on a hard drive image.

@Jorpho: All Sega PC games are unplayable on Windows NT-based operating systems (although there is a patch for Sonic CD). Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II is horrible under Windows 7 x64 on my computer, and completely unplayable in Windows XP Mode because the mouse goes crazy (impossible to aim). Klingon Honor Guard doesn't work with crap for me in Windows 7 either, although I can run it in Windows XP Mode. It's just a pain to get many older DirectX games to work in modern Windows. You pretty much need Windows 95/98/Me to play a lot of those games.

DOSGuy wrote:

@Jorpho: All Sega PC games are unplayable on Windows NT-based operating systems (although there is a patch for Sonic CD). Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II is horrible under Windows 7 x64 on my computer, and completely unplayable in Windows XP Mode because the mouse goes crazy (impossible to aim). Klingon Honor Guard doesn't work with crap for me in Windows 7 either, although I can run it in Windows XP Mode. It's just a pain to get many older DirectX games to work in modern Windows. You pretty much need Windows 95/98/Me to play a lot of those games.

Yes, there are some specific games that do not run under Windows 7, but the reasons are varied and complex and often have nothing to do with the fact that they use an older version of DirectX. There are also plenty of other older DirectX games that do cooperate with Windows 7.

And I'm sure there's got to be a patch of some sort for Dark Forces II. They still sell it on Steam, after all.

As for Sega's PC games, they were so varied that I kind of doubt you've tried them all. Offhand, it looks like there's also a patch for the Windows version of Ecco the Dolphin at http://web8.orcaserver.de/ecco/downloads/programs/index.php .

There may very well be a patch for all of them, but a patch is unnecessary if you just use Windows 95. Windows 95 runs too slowly for me under Bochs, and I've never been happy with the experience under VirtualBox and Virtual PC. The experience of running Windows 95 games under DOSBox is the same as the experience of running DOS or Windows 3.1 games under DOSBox. I can also easily record my gameplay in DOSBox's lossless ZMBV format, which I use to find the screenshots that I use in my game reviews.

To each his own, of course, but for me, running Windows 95 under DOSBox is the perfect way to play early Win9x games.

By the way, you're not using one of those builds with Voodoo emulation, are you? Or when you say "DirectX 5 installs and works great", do you mean everything except Direct3D?

I'm just using standard DOSBox 0.74 at the moment. Everything I've tried to run has worked so far, but I'll remember your warning about Direct3D if anything doesn't work in the future. Thanks for the heads up.

It would actually be kinda cool if there was a custom build of DosBox designed specifically for running Win95.

Just sayin'. 🤣

Someone would probably have to fork the code and make it himself. As for actually improving its stability and such forth, it has been repeatedly asserted that things are a hideous, nightmarish mess at that level.

There's simply no point, if you address compatibility issues you'll be below bochs level so why not use bochs in the first place or some virtualizer.

You have a valid point, but I haven't seen any virtualization apps that work as well for playing older games as DosBox, mainly because most of these virtualizers lack vital gaming-related features that are already a part of DosBox, such as on-the-fly speed control and decent soundcard emulation.

Bochs has SB16 emulation. Have you tried Bochs lately?

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

but I haven't seen any virtualization apps that work as well for playing older games as DosBox

...zuh? What does this have to do with Windows 95?

because most of these virtualizers lack vital gaming-related features

Then ask them to add those.