F2bnp wrote:You are right of course, but even such titles usually run fine under Win9x. Most of them do anyway.
Win9x to Win2000 and XP though... Would you call the games don't run on the latter OSes "Win9x exclusives" ?
Fair enough, that's a good point! 😀
In case of Windows 3.x, things get philosophical quite quickly, hah. 😅
On one hand, Win9x is a descendant and allows us to use all sorts of low-level stuff like accessing the OPL3
synth or the PC-Speaker, while it still has 16-Bit components such as GDI.
On the other hand, Windows NT -just like OS/2- runs a more or less complete Windows 3.1 VM (in terms of system files).
Thus, it can still run unsupported Win 2.x applications that Win95 refuses to run (no issue for most users).
Now, when is the application/game run more natively ?
When executed "natively" on the mutant (aka Win95) or when it is run on
the original Win 3.1 architecture that sits in a cage (VM) ?
Technically, a 3.1 VM can be made to support direct hardware access.
On OS/2, that's just a few clicks away. On NT, there's Port-Talk among other hacks.
By the way. that leads us to another question:
If Windows NT/XP has Win3.1 built-in, how can it not be considered to be 3.1-related?
Or how can an Exlusive games list even exists, if later OSes contain a copy of the older OSes?
It's a bit like XP-Mode for Windows 7 and DOS 7 in Win9x. Or Mac OS 9 as part of the Classic Environment on OS X.
Just a tad more complex. Windows 3.1 "Win16" games would run through the WoW layer,
while Windows 3.1 "Win32s" games would run directly on the NT side.
This gets even funnier when it turns out that several Win9x Exclusives are really just Win32s titles.
Two of the key elements of a valid Win32s app are: relocation tables, no use of threading.
As for me, I don't know what is the right answer to this.
Perhaps 3.x is a special case here.
Especially Win31+Win32s, since it is really unique for beeing the one and only
cooperatively multitasked Win32 flavor. It even got it's own Platform ID.
F2bnp wrote:
I think the idea put forth by the OP, making a list of games that rely on 3D accelerators that do not offer drivers on newer OSes is a little more interesting and cohesive, but even then wouldn't it be a better idea to compile a list with games supporting specific APIs, which is something that people are already doing?
Obsolutely, that's also a good idea. 😀
Though, I have to admit at one point I understand the OPs idea of an Exclusive Windows Games List.
Some games were quite picky about the OS they ran on. I recall there once was a Windows port of Super Tetris (?) that would
run properly only on Windows 3.0. I think it also tried to communicate directly with the MPU-401 in order to play MT-32 music.
This was before Windows 3.1 or Windows 3.0 MME, so the MCI API didn't exist yet. Perhaps such special cases also existed for Win95 titles ?
A game that does deeply mess with its system internals (hooks mouse/keyboard drivers, etc) ?
Edit: I apologize for the long posting. I tried to keep it at a minimum, but it became pretty long nevertheless.
I hope you don't mind. I do have one consolation, also : Reading my own stuff often quite annoys me, 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//