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First post, by retardware

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I am setting up my retro gaming PCs and I now ask whether it makes any sense to install Windows 3.x.

So I would like to ask whether there are any relevant games that require pre-95 Windows to run.

Reply 1 of 15, by leileilol

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The only example that sticks out in my mind is WinTrek, only because of the minimized window system making for a differently annoying experience in Win95. They're much better as icons.

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Reply 2 of 15, by Zup

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Windows 9x still retained all those 16 bit stuff of Windows 3.1, so it's hard to find any Windows 3.x game that doesn't run in Windows 9x. Maybe an obscure game using some kind of obscure function deprecated, or trying to access directly a function in a DLL that changed in 9x, but that's all.

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Reply 3 of 15, by Dominus

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Yeah, I had a couple of programs (2 or 3) that were affected like that and didn't work in Windows 95, but no games. But I'm hardly the definite source of Win3.1 gaming 😉
(I can't even remember those programs)

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Reply 4 of 15, by retardware

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Thank you all!
Thats good to read!

Now I am confident that I can save me the difficulties of installing Windows 3.x together with 4.x, without losing access to any relevant (non-annoying) games 😀

Reply 5 of 15, by Andrew T.

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Windows 9x had very good compatibility with 16-bit applications. Most of the few exceptions fall into these categories...

* Games that make creative use of the minimized icon.
* Games that make use of the entire screen space, where the overlapping taskbar serves as a distraction.
* Games that make use of "undocumented" hacks and system calls for sound. (Though in my experience, multimedia authoring programs are more prone to this than games)
* Games developed for Windows 2.x that refuse to run on 9x. (Ironically, these same games run fine on Windows 7 32-bit.)

Reply 7 of 15, by Jo22

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Andrew T. wrote:

* Games developed for Windows 2.x that refuse to run on 9x. (Ironically, these same games run fine on Windows 7 32-bit.)

Yup. Ironically, unlike the mutant that 9x is, Win NT has a modified copy of plain old Win 3.1x built-in.
Though I really recommend playing Balance of Power and Klotz! on, say, Windows/386. In 64 or 256 colours for the latter.. 😉
(As a workaround, you technically can run Windows 2.x also atop of another Windows. Provided the reported DOS version is right, I guess. *link*)

Davros wrote:

How about games that use winG ?

Re: Uses for Each Windows
Perhaps only a driver issue, seriously needs more investigation to be sure.

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Reply 8 of 15, by Zup

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Davros wrote:

How about games that use winG ?

I'd had to test that, but I remember that WinG could be installed in Windows 9x (or Windows 98 was compatible with it).

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 9 of 15, by red_avatar

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Older Quicktime games can give you a headache. In typical Apple fashion, they decided to make early and "later" Quicktime versions completely incompatible. Older games require older Quicktime, newer games require newer Quicktime and you can't have both versions installed.

For Windows 3.1, you could overwrite the new version with the old one whenever you wanted to switch versions but I recall Windows 95/98 being less forgiving and Quicktime ending up broken if you try that. I think it's because Win 9X doesn't allow easy overwriting of DLL files with older versions but it's been a while since I've tried it since I clearly don't want to break my Quicktime installations and since I use my Win 3.1 PCs for those Quicktime games.

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Reply 10 of 15, by Dominus

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Yes, I think for Windows 95 they made a new 32bit version with version number 3.x. But that was not compatible with the old Quicktime games. And the Qicktime 2.x versions had problems when the newer version was installed. I remember this being a clusterfuck...

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Reply 11 of 15, by red_avatar

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Dominus wrote:

Yes, I think for Windows 95 they made a new 32bit version with version number 3.x. But that was not compatible with the old Quicktime games. And the Qicktime 2.x versions had problems when the newer version was installed. I remember this being a clusterfuck...

Yes, this was my first contact with the marvellous company that was Apple 🤣 . I had quite a few Quicktime games and that gave me so many headaches it wasn't funny. Heck, the later Quicktime 3.x did have a 16bit install but didn't even properly work in Windows 3.1 despite claiming it was compatible. Not many games used it luckily.

Retro game fanatic.
IBM PS1 386SX25 - 4MB
IBM Aptiva 486SX33 - 8MB - 2GB CF - SB16
IBM PC350 P233MMX - 64MB - 32GB SSD - AWE64 - Voodoo2
PIII600 - 320MB - 480GB SSD - SB Live! - GF4 Ti 4200
i5-2500k - 3GB - SB Audigy 2 - HD 4870

Reply 12 of 15, by Dominus

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I think no game required it and it just messed everything up if you didn't stay on the 2.x versions. The mistake was thinking that upgrading makes everything better. I did fall for that a lot of times 😉

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 13 of 15, by red_avatar

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Dominus wrote:

I think no game required it and it just messed everything up if you didn't stay on the 2.x versions. The mistake was thinking that upgrading makes everything better. I did fall for that a lot of times 😉

Well I know one or two games that did require it - one being a strip poker game from VCA. But few games used Quicktime once Windows 9X came around - it was no longer needed since DirectX allowed for so much more.

Retro game fanatic.
IBM PS1 386SX25 - 4MB
IBM Aptiva 486SX33 - 8MB - 2GB CF - SB16
IBM PC350 P233MMX - 64MB - 32GB SSD - AWE64 - Voodoo2
PIII600 - 320MB - 480GB SSD - SB Live! - GF4 Ti 4200
i5-2500k - 3GB - SB Audigy 2 - HD 4870

Reply 14 of 15, by Jo22

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Didn't the popular game Myst also use QuickTime (Win31/95/System) ?
- It's a while since I played it.. 😅

Oh, there's something I also remember. 😀
If my memory serves me well, early QuickTime ran on my 286 Personal Computer, too (like Video for Windows 1.0 did)..
WinG by comparison, required a 386 for sure, though. On the other hand, games like Creatures also needed Win32s, so that wasn't so bad.

I remember that fondly, because the early Comet Busters (GDI) ran on my 286,
while the newer version used some audio mixing DLLs and WinG.

Another thing that I remember, is, that later QuickTime 2.x had several display modes (it supported the ET4000 directly, too).
I believe that was quite handy in the days of outdated VGA chipsets, strange RAMDACs and buggy drivers. 😉

Edit: There's another thing that I remember. Windows 3.1x, or rather the 3.1x drivers, supported DCI, Display Control Interface.
Not sure how compatible Win95 was to that. DCI was more for video stuff (framebuffer, off-screen drawing) than geometric figures (shapes, brushes, etc.)
Speaking of DCI, there also was DCI32, but I don't know how much it was related to it. Anyway, likely no game used that API directly, so that's no loss either.

"Microsoft Corp. dropped support for some features of DCI from Windows 95 in favor of its
Direct X technology, which is still not shipping. The Communications .."
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"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

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Reply 15 of 15, by Jo22

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By the way, there's some other possible compatibility problem that might occur.
Some Windows 3.x programs consumed a lot of system resources.
Under some circumstances, these programs couldn't run on the somewhat larger Windows 95,
since the resources (GDI, etc.) still were limited to the same 64KiB.
Anyway, I can't name a game that's affected by this. Just remembered that.

Edit: To be fair, there also were some additional feature that Windows 95 brought to the aging Win16-API..
One of them being bezier curves for GDI, if memory serves.
So in theory, there might be Win16 programs ou there that don't run properly on Win 3.x. 😉

"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//