Hi there! Graphics acceleration for Windows XP was droppen from Virtual Box 6.1 onwards, I think.
Older releases of Virtual Box still have experimental 3D acceleration for Windows XP (6.0.24 for example).
The "guest additions" must be installed in Windows XP safe mode, though.
That's because some XP system files are being replaced with files from WineD3D.
That's the Direct3D that WINE and ReactOS use..

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=106674

Please keep in mind that this only covers support for Direct3D 8/9 games.
And games that use Voodoo graphics via Glide wrapper that uses Direct3D 8/9.
Older Direct3D games (7 and earlier) do run in software rendering.
OpenGL, too, maybe. It depends. XP has its own OpenGL renderer, I vaguely remember.

If you can't get it going, then there's still another solution..
Virtual Box 7+ and SoftGPU. SoftGPU runs on Windows 98SE/Me.
And with KernelEx you can make modern applications/games run on Windows 98SE/Me.
So you literally must downgrade to an older Windows in order to run newer games "accelerated".

Just asking is there a specific reason to play it on XP over Win10?
Also VMware could be a better choice

Hi again, I had a quick look at the game at mobygames.com.
There seems to be at least 3 releases of the game on Windows.

Minimum for the 32-Bit version from '98 is a 486 with Windows 95. 256 colours or 16-Bit colours.
Maybe we're looking at it the wrong way here? How about using an PC emulator, instead?

PCem v17 and 86Box can emulate an Pentium MMX PC, for example.
That should be okay for lightweight games running on Windows 95 to XP, but same time shouldn't overburden the physical PC's CPU.
A Pentium MMX 166 or 233 with 64MB of RAM (or more: say 256 MB) is sufficient to run Windows XP SP2 and earlier (with unnecessary features being disabled).

For an emulated Windows 98SE PC, an 486 PC with a Pentium Overdrive might be an acceptable compromise.
A "POD83" can still be emulated on an older PC with less processor power.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-02-15, 17:52:

Hi there! Graphics acceleration for Windows XP was droppen from Virtual Box 6.1 onwards, I think. Older releases of Virtual Box […]
Show full quote

Hi there! Graphics acceleration for Windows XP was droppen from Virtual Box 6.1 onwards, I think.
Older releases of Virtual Box still have experimental 3D acceleration for Windows XP (6.0.24 for example).
The "guest additions" must be installed in Windows XP safe mode, though.
That's because some XP system files are being replaced with files from WineD3D.
That's the Direct3D that WINE and ReactOS use..

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=106674

Please keep in mind that this only covers support for Direct3D 8/9 games.
And games that use Voodoo graphics via Glide wrapper that uses Direct3D 8/9.
Older Direct3D games (7 and earlier) do run in software rendering.
OpenGL, too, maybe. It depends. XP has its own OpenGL renderer, I vaguely remember.

If you can't get it going, then there's still another solution..
Virtual Box 7+ and SoftGPU. SoftGPU runs on Windows 98SE/Me.
And with KernelEx you can make modern applications/games run on Windows 98SE/Me.
So you literally must downgrade to an older Windows in order to run newer games "accelerated".

I don't actually know which renderer this particular game uses, or if 3D acceleration would even make a difference.
I actually tried to set up a Win 98 VM for this earlier but the OS refused to install—from what information I was able to find it seems it doesn't like trying to virtualize on my AMD processor.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2025-02-15, 18:00:

Just asking is there a specific reason to play it on XP over Win10?
Also VMware could be a better choice

Supposedly this will run in Win 10 if one uses the 32-bit installer, but it's glitchy.
I could try VMware, I only defaulted to Virtualbox because it's what I'm used to from a while back.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-02-15, 18:52:

Hi again, I had a quick look at the game at mobygames.com. There seems to be at least 3 releases of the game on Windows. […]
Show full quote

Hi again, I had a quick look at the game at mobygames.com.
There seems to be at least 3 releases of the game on Windows.

Minimum for the 32-Bit version from '98 is a 486 with Windows 95. 256 colours or 16-Bit colours.
Maybe we're looking at it the wrong way here? How about using an PC emulator, instead?

PCem v17 and 86Box can emulate an Pentium MMX PC, for example.
That should be okay for lightweight games running on Windows 95 to XP, but same time shouldn't overburden the physical PC's CPU.
A Pentium MMX 166 or 233 with 64MB of RAM (or more: say 256 MB) is sufficient to run Windows XP SP2 and earlier (with unnecessary features being disabled).

For an emulated Windows 98SE PC, an 486 PC with a Pentium Overdrive might be an acceptable compromise.
A "POD83" can still be emulated on an older PC with less processor power.

The CD case has a copyright date of 1999 and I believe this is either the 1996 version or an update of such.
I didn't consider hardware emulation; that might be a route to try, especially if it proves more reliable with some of the other games I want to test run. I've not done this in a few years so I'm a bit behind on the state of virtualization.

NovaCN wrote on 2025-02-15, 19:12:

Supposedly this will run in Win 10 if one uses the 32-bit installer, but it's glitchy.
I could try VMware, I only defaulted to Virtualbox because it's what I'm used to from a while back.

OTVDM for 16 bit executable? Or else just copying the files?

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2025-02-15, 21:50:

NovaCN wrote on 2025-02-15, 19:12:

Supposedly this will run in Win 10 if one uses the 32-bit installer, but it's glitchy.
I could try VMware, I only defaulted to Virtualbox because it's what I'm used to from a while back.

OTVDM for 16 bit executable? Or else just copying the files?

What I mean is it installs fine but the game has graphical issues on 64-bit OS'es. So I've read at least.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2025-02-15, 18:00:

Just asking is there a specific reason to play it on XP over Win10?
Also VMware could be a better choice

Tried VMware. The sound is funky already just booting into Windows and then the game itself doesn't start, only changes the color depth and screen resolution and stops there.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-02-15, 17:52:

Hi there! Graphics acceleration for Windows XP was droppen from Virtual Box 6.1 onwards, I think. Older releases of Virtual Box […]
Show full quote

Hi there! Graphics acceleration for Windows XP was droppen from Virtual Box 6.1 onwards, I think.
Older releases of Virtual Box still have experimental 3D acceleration for Windows XP (6.0.24 for example).
The "guest additions" must be installed in Windows XP safe mode, though.
That's because some XP system files are being replaced with files from WineD3D.
That's the Direct3D that WINE and ReactOS use..

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=106674

Please keep in mind that this only covers support for Direct3D 8/9 games.
And games that use Voodoo graphics via Glide wrapper that uses Direct3D 8/9.
Older Direct3D games (7 and earlier) do run in software rendering.
OpenGL, too, maybe. It depends. XP has its own OpenGL renderer, I vaguely remember.

If you can't get it going, then there's still another solution..
Virtual Box 7+ and SoftGPU. SoftGPU runs on Windows 98SE/Me.
And with KernelEx you can make modern applications/games run on Windows 98SE/Me.
So you literally must downgrade to an older Windows in order to run newer games "accelerated".

Went back to Oracle, this time downgrading to 6.0.24, and while it wouldn't boot at first (I tried a bunch of different things and ultimately succeeded by disabling both Hypervisor and WSL) I got that old version of Virtualbox to work and the game actually runs at normal speed... but the audio skips. A lot. Particularly in the quicktime FMVs but also during gameplay. Any ideas how to fix that?

NovaCN wrote on 2025-02-16, 15:09:

Jo22 wrote on 2025-02-15, 17:52:

Hi there! Graphics acceleration for Windows XP was droppen from Virtual Box 6.1 onwards, I think. Older releases of Virtual Box […]
Show full quote

Hi there! Graphics acceleration for Windows XP was droppen from Virtual Box 6.1 onwards, I think.
Older releases of Virtual Box still have experimental 3D acceleration for Windows XP (6.0.24 for example).
The "guest additions" must be installed in Windows XP safe mode, though.
That's because some XP system files are being replaced with files from WineD3D.
That's the Direct3D that WINE and ReactOS use..

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=106674

Please keep in mind that this only covers support for Direct3D 8/9 games.
And games that use Voodoo graphics via Glide wrapper that uses Direct3D 8/9.
Older Direct3D games (7 and earlier) do run in software rendering.
OpenGL, too, maybe. It depends. XP has its own OpenGL renderer, I vaguely remember.

If you can't get it going, then there's still another solution..
Virtual Box 7+ and SoftGPU. SoftGPU runs on Windows 98SE/Me.
And with KernelEx you can make modern applications/games run on Windows 98SE/Me.
So you literally must downgrade to an older Windows in order to run newer games "accelerated".

Went back to Oracle, this time downgrading to 6.0.24, and while it wouldn't boot at first (I tried a bunch of different things and ultimately succeeded by disabling both Hypervisor and WSL) I got that old version of Virtualbox to work and the game actually runs at normal speed... but the audio skips. A lot. Particularly in the quicktime FMVs but also during gameplay. Any ideas how to fix that?

Tried 6.1.44 and the audio skipping and crackling is even worse. I've also tried messing with several toggles in the VM settings and a few things in the virtual XP's control panel to no avail. I'm officially out of ideas.

NovaCN wrote on 2025-02-16, 21:32:

Tried 6.1.44 and the audio skipping and crackling is even worse. I've also tried messing with several toggles in the VM settings and a few things in the virtual XP's control panel to no avail. I'm officially out of ideas.

Hi, I don’t know either. I'm still thinking.
You could try an emulator or a Linux VM with WINE.

The game seems to use 2D graphics (GDI, WinG or DirectDraw) and thus maybe DirectSound/DirectMusic, as well.

(If that's the case, then even something exotic as OS/2 Warp 4/eComStation/ArcaOS with ODIN could work.
ODIN is like WINE, but for OS/2 family of OSes. It's just a crazy idea, though!)

Generally speaking, for 2D games from the 90s a 2D acceleration in XP should be good enough in the VMs.
But I'm not familiar with newest versions of VMware or Virtual Box..

There's also this project to try out: Boxedwine (Wine on multiple platforms)

Alternatively, some people's got Windows 95 to work in DOSBox and DOSBox-X..
It needs a bit of fiddling, though. PCem v17 or 86Box are more like real old computers.

Out of desperation I tried going back to Virtualbox 7.1.6 (the one used during my initial post at the top of the thread) to see what settings might differ, but this time instead of uninstalling and reinstalling entirely I just used the updater and for some reason the game works fine now. I am utterly baffled regarding what actually solved the problem but at least it runs. Going to mess around in it for a bit and then finally move on to the next CD in the pile.

NovaCN wrote on 2025-02-17, 14:46:

Out of desperation I tried going back to Virtualbox 7.1.6 (the one used during my initial post at the top of the thread) to see what settings might differ, but this time instead of uninstalling and reinstalling entirely I just used the updater and for some reason the game works fine now. I am utterly baffled regarding what actually solved the problem but at least it runs. Going to mess around in it for a bit and then finally move on to the next CD in the pile.

Hi there, glad it works now! ^^

Btw, *if* the game uses DirectDraw then theres DXGL that might help.
It's a wrapper that translates old DirectDraw to OpenGL.

https://dxgl.org/

It supports 256 colour modes and other things that nolonger work on modern Windows.
Again, not sure if it's helpful. It just came to mind right now.

If it works, it could help getting the game to run on Windows 10/11.

Good luck! 🙂🤞

PS: The replacement DLL belongs in the game directory, I think, but not the Windows directory.

Edit: There's something else that comes to mind.
If you have any Windows 3.1 games you want to play, then OTVDM aka WineVDM will make it happen.

It's meant for Windows x64 and installs a Windows 3.1 emulator with a 286 or 386/486 CPU emulator.
It makes many, but not all Windows 3.x games/programs run on Windows x64.

For WinG or QuickTime games, DOSBox and Windows 3.1 (or WfW) are the better solution.