First post, by Vic Zarratt
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This thread is my report dump on speed sensitive games that require windows to run, but happen to be picky about CPU speed. It is aimed at users who run the old retail disks on hardware from late90s-mid00s, often without game patches. It does not refer to OS/software/driver issues, but the speed of the actual metal causing the game to crash or become unplayable because of uncapped AI or framerate.
I decided to do this in the light of DOS games being found with the same issues such as wing commander and early test drive installments. Now this might be a trivial matter since a windows user can run utilities like CPUKILL without having to worry about conventional memory usage like a DOS gamer would, however well all this might get on together remains unconfirmed to me.
My findings so far:
Legacy of Kain: blood omen = win95, 1997
will crash on anything faster than 1.5ghz (IMO impressive for a 1997 game)
Resident Evil = win95, 1997 or early 1998
supposedly capped at 30fps, but characters animate way too fast on later pentium hardware (min90mhz-reco133mhz)
Lego island = win95, 1997
AI of chase scenes will become impossible to beat on anything faster than a socket7 and animation can be a little too lush at times
Pandemonium! = win95, 1997
reported as being so by another vogons member
Laserstrike = win3.x, 1993
shareware, apparently prone to giving a "Runtime Error 200" message errors when run at higher speeds
Expert software's 40games for windows = win 3.x, 1997
I used to have the bigbox of this one and many of the included free/sharewares ran too fast on a 133mhz pentium
Havoc = win95, 1995
early directx title said to have cpu speed issues
Burn:cycle = win3.x, 1995
one of my favorite FMV adventures. I don't think this is actually CPU sensitive, but it often seems that the aerial shooting segments have an odd case of CD-ROM speed sensitivity. Designed for 2x drives, it gets noticeably challenging on quad speed and impossible at 8x. I can usually beat it on 3x or a sluggish parallel CD with minimal CD cache.
sonic & knuckles collection (and possibly other early sonic/sega pc games) = win95, 1997
Will run too fast on anything later than a pentium II when played in a window, though in full screen the game is unaffected.
Command and conquer: red alert = win95, 1996
Yet to be confirmed, i wouldn't be surprised if it is though.
I manage a pot-pourri of video matter...