What specifically does the installer say when you try to run it?

If it's a 16-bit installer, then you may be able to install on a machine with a 32-bit Windows OS (or in virtual XP mode if you have Win7 Pro or higher) and then copy the installed files (and possibly registry data) over.

Yep, you'll have to install it on a 32bit OS and apply a NOCD patch and then copy it to your host.

CDDrive:\Game

Copy the contents of that somewhere to your HDD, select all files and deselect read only. CD crack not needed (I have the CD in my second CD drive and Shogo still finds it), but you need to patch the game to the latest version.

CDDrive:\Data
CDDrive:\Movies

Copy the content of those folders to the same place you have shogo.exe (shogo rez for example should be in the same folder as shogo.exe) and you'll have a full install that can be no-cd cracked, but as said, it is not necessary as long as you don't mind inserting the CD each time you want to play.

The installer does create a reg key:
HKLM/SOFTWARE/Monolith Productions/Shogo/1.0
Key type REG_SZ, name "WorkingDirectory", you should be able to figure out the value yourself, but the reg key doesn't seem to be needed at all.

Yes! result!

Thank you ZellSF. As I said, I've been out of gaming for years - it appears these old games stood the test of time well!

It also seems that the 64 bit OS only ever has trouble with installers, never games!

Most games designed for Win9x or newer are 32-bit, but some use 16-bit installers. 64-bit versions of Windows do not support 16-bit applications.

DosFreak wrote:

Yep, you'll have to install it on a 32bit OS and apply a NOCD patch and then copy it to your host.

You wouldn't even need a no-CD patch. Start the game up in multiplayer. There, your cd check is averted. 😀

Are there still no convenient InstallShield unpackers for this kind of thing?

I keep a ton of them around along with Universal Extractor but it's easier to just load up a VM, install, patch, crack, archive (along with registry keys) and then copy to host. That way you can at least be reasonably certain that the game is properly installed.

On the backburner for my compat list is to go through each and every game with a software virtualization program and monitor the exact registry and files extracted and put that on the list......

Heard the other day that GOG uses Inno Setup to pack it's installers, so you can use this: http://innounp.sourceforge.net/ to extract them. 😁

I tried using Universal Extractor a while back on something and it didn't work - I think maybe it was a Planescape: Torment patch installer that silently failed to run at all on Win7 x64 RC1 until I thought to disable UAC.

I plan to run most early Win9x stuff via Wine on Linux now. Games like Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and Baldur's Gate 1 seem to fare a little better with Wine than even WinXP (though they still have quirks).