First post, by BEEN_Nath_58
What is this?
This is a list of RETAIL games released for Microsoft Windows 95 until Microsoft Windows XP(pre DX9) that work under Microsoft Windows 7 and later operating systems. This list only includes retail releases, no re-release by Steam or Good Old Games. The games listed uses OpenGL 2.0 and earlier, DirectX 8 and earlier, and older APIs, utilising the IA-32 architecture. This list doesn't guarantee every game will work under the mentioned operating system as many factors are decided by compatibility of the hardware and the drivers.
You can access the spreadsheet by clicking here.
Colour codes with a rating are used to determine a playability level, note that the description below is for the view of explanation and comparison between them and they don't depict the state of the game:
(S) Green= Perfect, every required component works.
(A) Cyan= Very playable with some things like intro video or higher resolutions or graphical settings that don't work.
(B) Yellow= Things like cutscenes or music or CD music doesn't work. Audio glitches may be present too.
(C) Orange= Runs but there are major issues in gameplay, graphics or no audio. The game may not save so you have to finish it in one run.
(D) Red= Doesn't work at all.
Can I post my games?
A few rules that you need to follow before entering anything in the spreadsheet:
- The games that require patches to run should be limited to using emulators, installing shims, modifying dynamic link library or executable file or configuration file, or changing some system features like disabling DEP or disabling sound devices(neither of the latter two which I would recommend).
- Games can use update patches and no-CD.
- The default DirectX, DirectDraw, WinMM, Glide emulation wrappers should be used from the "TESTING SOFTWARE" section. If you use a different wrapper for the same, for example, if you use dgVoodoo2 for Glide, it is required to be mentioned.
- Games typically have problems with old CPU instructions, old graphics APIs or WinMM. Although less in number, fixes for games having problem with DirectInput or DirectSound can be added to the list.
- Most game mods change the original engine of the game or modify the game data. Games requiring these necessities to run on the mentioned operating systems are not qualified for this list. However mods that redefine the game engine files to disable hardware checks or remove unsupported code allowing the games to be run, are qualified for this list.
- Some games have problem with CD audio emulation using WinMM. If your game uses CD audio, you are required to check if the audio works properly(repeat of music or changing track of music).
- Some problems exist in the games and not in the system. For example, FOV bugs and crosshair bugs on higher resolutions, are game engine problems and are not mostly because of the modernity of the PC. Therefore, the spreadsheet isn't the list for fixing such games, games should be added following the fact that it runs with the original files(with a few tweaks at most as mentioned earlier).
- Entry should be made on the basis of whether the game runs on a Microsoft Windows 7 PC or later
MY TESTING HARDWARE
The games should be more compatible according to the list by me with the following hardware configuration:
OS- Microsoft Windows 10 19H2 and later/Windows 11
CPU- AMD Ryzen 5 1600
GPU- nVIDIA GTX 1050Ti
Sound card- Realtek HD Audio
GPU driver- After 400.x
Audio driver- After June 2019 (6.x)
TESTING SOFTWARE(Default)
CD emulation- Alcohol 120%(when I don't have the retail copy or to bypass copy protection)
CD audio emulation-CDAudio proxy/DxWnd
Glide emulation- nGlide v2.10 or later
DirectX emulation- dgVoodoo v2.61 and later, DirectDrawCompat, DirectDraw Compatibility Tool, WineD3D, DxWnd
Another emulation tool- DxWnd
Additional Information
- Some games have problems when pausing/playing CD Audio. Use the 'CDAudio proxy' or 'DxWnd' wrapper to play the audio from the PC storage disk. Extract the files from the CD in formats like '.ogg', '.flac' and rename all the files, the first music ALWAYS starting with 'track02', followed by 'track03', 'track04'. Put the files in a folder 'Music' besides the MAIN executable file. If the game has multiple CDs, then put the tracks of the first CD in 'Music' directory, second CD in 'Music02' directory, third CD in 'Music03 directory', n'th CD in 'Musicnn' directory. A more detailed information is available in the official documentation of DxWnd.
- Some games have wrong shims applied to them and refuse to launch or run properly. In that case, rename the game executable(s).
- Applications utilising Microsoft Direct3D Mono (Ramp) device won't render correctly (most likely will have pink colour at least somewhere) on any Windows version since Windows 10 1809. Read more about a possible solution here.
- Some games don't run because of DEP enabled. If you face problems in running any of these games, try disabling DEP both in Windows and also in BIOS and then try to run the game.
- Intel HD Graphics and AMD Radeon users may have problems in using dgVoodoo2 with D3D11 because of incompatibility with drivers. In such cases DDrawCompat or DxWnd or WineD3D may be used instead or rather use dgVoodoo2 with D3D12.
- dgVoodoo2 emulates the old API in D3D11/D3D12 so performance may be worse on old/weak hardware. Under such cases, using a different wrapper is advisable.
- dgVoodoo2 doesn't behave well with AMD GPUs under DirectX 11 mode. DirectX 12 has been reported to work correctly, but it may be required to disable 'Radeon Anti-Lag' if crashes occur.
- Some games use Indeo. Check the guides to enable or disable them.
- Every PC has different applications installed, different drivers, different hardware. There is no surety that it will work on every PC, but at least this list can confirm that a certain game can run given modern hardware. For a general requirement, I would say most of these fixes should work fine on AMD Catalyst drivers or Nvidia driver after 2017?(not quite sure).
- Some of the games I tried refused to play CD audio or functioned differently with CD audio when not using Alcohol 120%. I assume Alcohol 120% drivers are more compatible with older software thus working properly on most cases. If you don't want to use Alcohol 120% but want to achieve proper CD Audio emulation, you can use DxWnd.
previously known as Discrete_BOB_058
