Good games that run on Windows XP?

[Edmond Dantes]

I just built a Windows XP gaming comp. Its a 2.80ghz Pentium 4 (so single core), 512 ram (though the motherboard can be upgraded to 2gig), with a Geforce 4 ti4200 and a Soundblaster Audigy 2. In other words, a comp I would've considered a powerhouse at the time, but it can only run Doom 3 on medium settings.

But ya know... got new hardware, wondering what games to run on it.

Games I already own are Doom 3, but also the Myst series (I got all of them in a box last year) and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. But this was the period where I basically stopped paying attention to PCs so I'm not sure if there's any underappreciated XP gems to look out for.

(EDIT: It just occured to me that in my "list" I forgot to mention Windows 98 games that also have XP compatibility, so I probably have more than I think I do).

So, suggestions?

[YoshiM]

I just built a Windows XP gaming comp. Its a 2.80ghz Pentium 4 (so single core), 512 ram (though the motherboard can be upgraded to 2gig), with a Geforce 4 ti4200 and a Soundblaster Audigy 2. In other words, a comp I would've considered a powerhouse at the time, but it can only run Doom 3 on medium settings.

But ya know... got new hardware, wondering what games to run on it.

Games I already own are Doom 3, but also the Myst series (I got all of them in a box last year) and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. But this was the period where I basically stopped paying attention to PCs so I'm not sure if there's any underappreciated XP gems to look out for.

(EDIT: It just occured to me that in my "list" I forgot to mention Windows 98 games that also have XP compatibility, so I probably have more than I think I do).

So, suggestions?

Well, I guess the question is: whaddayawanna play? I'm assuming FPS games and visual puzzlers by what you have on there now.

While I didn't game a ton on PC, here's what I can think of:


Freedom Force
Star Trek:Elite Force
Tron 2.0
Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Pirates Gold might work
Civilization 2 or 3

[Edmond Dantes]

I'm not really picky about genre--FPSes just happen to be a good go-to for testing hardware, and I really do like adventure games (exploring beautiful mysterious landscapes is part of gaming's joy), but I'm just having trouble remembering what all I've wanted to play before that is now open to me.

One I just thought of... Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. I need to see if that'll run on this rig (IIRC I'm well over the recommended specs).

Pirates... Gold? Isn't that a DOS game? (I have the Sega Genesis version personally)

[Cornelius]

I keep thinking of games that were just before Windows XP, but maybe that'll work since they should run well:

System Shock 2 (maybe check the rebirth(?) mod)
Deus Ex
American McGee's Alice
Baldur's Gate
Grim Fandango (There are remastered versions now, though)

[YoshiM]

I'm not really picky about genre--FPSes just happen to be a good go-to for testing hardware, and I really do like adventure games (exploring beautiful mysterious landscapes is part of gaming's joy), but I'm just having trouble remembering what all I've wanted to play before that is now open to me.

One I just thought of... Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. I need to see if that'll run on this rig (IIRC I'm well over the recommended specs).

Pirates... Gold? Isn't that a DOS game? (I have the Sega Genesis version personally)

I'm pretty sure it was. There's Gold and Gold Plus. It's been years since I played it (I have Gold) but I remember it running in Windows. From what I can tell, Plus runs in Windows.

I'll have to dig it out and try. It's been since the late 90's since I tried it.

[jb143]

Pirates... Gold? Isn't that a DOS game? (I have the Sega Genesis version personally)

In 2004 they released an updated version called "Sid Meier's Pirates! Live the Life" at least that's what it says on the box I've got right beside me here. It's basically the same game with updated graphics and potentially more to do...I don't really remember what all the differences were. I had quite a bit of fun with it back then though.

[Edmond Dantes]

So did most people just stop PC Gaming around WinXP or something? Online most of the games I hear about are either A) Win98 games that just happen to still work in XP or else B) Windows 7 or later games that just happen to still work in XP. It's like the XP era itself is a black hole.

From my own collection I only have found the following:

Doom 3
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Echo (an adventure game that I think takes place in prehistoric times)
the Myst series--I think Myst IV and V require XP
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Warcraft III

I'm not sure how many of those are "actually made for XP" vs "Just happen to work in XP."

[jb143]

I think a lot of games were just compatible with multiple versions and not just XP... but to sort of answer your question more broadly, I thinks it's because that's when Steam started to take over on PC.

[Cornelius]

I think a lot of games were just compatible with multiple versions and not just XP... but to sort of answer your question more broadly, I thinks it's because that's when Steam started to take over on PC.

I agree. When did Half Life 2 come out? 2004, I looked it up. That'd be one to add to your list for XP. And bringing up a Valve game, I can't believe I didn't mention Portal! It is one of my all-time favorites. (portal 2 is great, too).

I also think a lot of people, like me, were clicking away in Diablo 2 and its expansion. StarCraft and Warcraft were still huge, and I think the Battle.net edition of the latter came during XP. But I thought you were looking for a little more obscure stuff, and these were huge. Other big ones I'd consider XP for would be Fallout 3 and Oblivion IV, both on console also, but really PC games IMO. KOTOR 1 and 2 are excellent. Other good Star Wars were Jedi Outcast and Academy and ... I think there's more. Was Dark Forces XP?

Vampire Bloodlines was a good one that went a little under the radar. Far Cry was pretty amazing.

So I don't have to look them up again for this thread:
Windows XP released Oct 2001
Windows 7 Oct 2009 (we won't count Vista in 2007 ;) )

[Edmond Dantes]

Was Dark Forces XP?

The original Dark Forces was an MS-DOS game. Then there was Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (which ran on a modified Quake engine so yeah) which started a weird Rambo-like thing where the series completely changed titles (the next game was called Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, and then the final one was Jedi Academy). I THINK Academy might be an XP game.

I never even beat the first Dark Forces tho (to be honest while I find a lot of Star Wars media competent and well-made its never been my cuppa java, the assertion that I'm not interested in the mainstream stuff is pretty accurate).


Vampire Bloodlines was a good one that went a little under the radar. Far Cry was pretty amazing.

So I don't have to look them up again for this thread:
Windows XP released Oct 2001
Windows 7 Oct 2009 (we won't count Vista in 2007 ;) )

I'll admit, I was shocked when someone on Vogons mentioned that the original Far Cry could technically run on 98SE.

I say "technically" because a lot of really late 98SE games required Direct X9, which while you can install that on 98se.... chances are, it'll break something, so anything that says "requires Direct X9" might as well just say "requires Windows XP." I ran headfirst into this with Warcraft III, which claimed Win98SE compatibility but then kept crashing no matter what I did.

But the thing is, it just made me realize how freaking old I was... and how old the Far Cry franchise is. I keep thinking of it as a franchise that began just like five years ago but if it was around long enough to have seen Windows 98se, that's just... I need to get dentures and a walking cane.

[jb143]

But the thing is, it just made me realize how freaking old I was... and how old the Far Cry franchise is. I keep thinking of it as a franchise that began just like five years ago but if it was around long enough to have seen Windows 98se, that's just... I need to get dentures and a walking cane.

Ha... yeah, that's how I feel about most of the games on this list. I bought Half Life 2 back in the day and still haven't gotten around to playing it. It still feels like a new game to me. The original Half Life feels like an "old" game though. I think the cut off for me is college. Anything during or after college (mostly) still feels new, even though that's starting to push 20 years now.

[Edmond Dantes]

A psychological side-effect of that, related to this topic even, is I keep thinking games like HL2 would require an ultra-modern 16-core machine with gobs of RAM to run. So I keep thinking none of my PCs can run it.

Even though technically the one I just built is probably what it was designed for...

[Cornelius]

Posts here got me to pull some boxes off the shelf and damn if I didn't find another way to feel old. You know the small-box form factor? Yeah, all of those that I have list windows 98 as an option. I would have thought those were squarely in the XP. Although if having 98 on the box rules it out as a "XP game", then you'd have to do the same for games that came out on XP and Windows 7. So some games like Mass Effect 3 have both of those listed. Same with Fallout 4.

So some I'm looking at that have 98 on the box, but I'd still consider XP are Max Payne, SW Republic Commander, Black & White, Doom 3, KOTOR II, and Beyond Good & Evil. Hell, even HL2 has 98 on the box. Of course, I think most of those were on consoles, too, so not exactly perfect for the list.

[Edmond Dantes]

Although if having 98 on the box rules it out as a "XP game",

It doesn't. I realized this would be silly.


So some I'm looking at that have 98 on the box, but I'd still consider XP are Max Payne, SW Republic Commander, Black & White, Doom 3, KOTOR II, and Beyond Good & Evil. Hell, even HL2 has 98 on the box. Of course, I think most of those were on consoles, too, so not exactly perfect for the list.

And add KOTOR to the list of "games I keep thinking are more recent than they really are."

LGR did a video about Big Box games (I think he did more than one). Apparently for awhile some games were released in both big-box and small-box format because some retailers preferred one over the other.

[Scream And Fly]

Don’t forget Serious Sam! My personal favorite is Unreal with the expansion, and of course UT.

[Edmond Dantes]

Heh, its funny but I was actually addicted to Unreal Tournament a month ago.

See, I started out playing Unreal, but I found the main campaign boring, so wound up loading up a botmatch... and was like "Wow, this is awesome," and so installed Unreal Tournament since it was basically that, but better.

This on a PC that had no internet access whatsoever.

So now I wonder if I should load up Quake III Arena (which yes I do own--a friend just dumped it along with other PC games on me when he went off to college and never asked it to be returned. It's the "Gold" release which includes Team Arena).

Perhap I should build another PC and invite people out so we can have classic LAN parties.

[Scream And Fly]

Oh man, UT and LAN parties! So much fun. Many years ago we would get together 10 friends or so and meet up at one of our houses for an all-night frag-fest. Somebody brings the network switch and everybody brings their own Cat5 cable. Such good times. All night of Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, Half-Life deathmatch, Quake III, and Team Fortress Classic. I miss those days.

[Cornelius]

Did anyone play Master of Orion 3? I played a lot of MoO2, but never the sequel. I think the buzz was pretty negative when it came out.

[Edmond Dantes]

I recall reading about MoO3 in an issue of PC Gamer but I never played any of the games in the series.

Speaking of PC Gamer, last month I bought some old issues on ebay (circa 1995-2001, most near the 1995-6 point) and well...

Reading those is a trip and a half. Among the highlights include:

* Predictions about how going online will radically change the face of gaming (yup).

* A long letter (and response from PC Gamer's editor) which talked about the possibility of PCs playing console games (they specifically cited the original--and at the time, only--Playstation), possibly with enhancements, but both sides seemed to think this was just a pipe dream that would never come to fruition. Kinda got a chuckle out of that one.

* There was a brief mention in the 2001 issue that the editor had gotten heat for saying bad things about Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. My, how times have changed...

* One recurring advertiser in the back of the 1995-6 issues was a company that specialized in... pornography on CD-ROM? Like, some of it was literally said to be just CDs full of JPEGs, but some sounded like they were some sort of interactive. I especially wonder what "Vampire's Kiss" is. Also, apparently the anime Urotsukidoji was sold this way (I'm guessing it was a hyper-compressed quicktime movie on CD-ROM or something), and it wasn't the only one, though I didn't recognize most of the other titles. Seriously, I should scan this page.

[jb143]

Just out of curiosity (and because I have several of these games on my backlog), is there anything that keeps these from running on a Windows 10 system? Most of my older software runs just fine so I never gave it too much thought. I know you have to install any DirectX components that aren't included anymore but that's not too big of a deal. Is there any gaming reason to keep an XP system around? Other than maybe hardware issues, such as old controllers not working anymore.

[Cornelius]

Just out of curiosity (and because I have several of these games on my backlog), is there anything that keeps these from running on a Windows 10 system? Most of my older software runs just fine so I never gave it too much thought. I know you have to install any DirectX components that aren't included anymore but that's not too big of a deal. Is there any gaming reason to keep an XP system around? Other than maybe hardware issues, such as old controllers not working anymore.

As a rule, no, not in my experience. I've recently run StarCraft and Diablo II. The former can be downloaded from Blizzard free now, so they have it working. DII I had to set compatibility mode and put to 16-bit, then there was some wrapper or glide thing that was recommended and super easy. I've also run Neverwinter Nights 2(?) without much problem. Diablo 1 took a bit more doing, but even that wasn't too bad.

[jb143]

I figured as much. I got the free Starcraft a while back, and all my Steam games still ran. I just wasn't entirely sure if most games would work in general.

[Edmond Dantes]

I've never heard of an XP game that won't work on later versions of Windows (hell for a long time modern-ish games were backwards compatible with XP IIRC).

Like was said most of it might be down to program issues. I know Riven: the Sequel to Myst will have graphical glitches if you install a version of Quicktime higher than (I think) Quicktime 5 or so--I had to go to Reddit for help on this once (https://www.reddit.com/r/myst/comments/6kb7v9/riven_10th_anniversary_dvd_sound_issues_on_win98se/) but wound up mostly soft-troubleshooting (see the responses). But then I think Myst III actually requires Quicktime 6...

I think some games also have speed issues where the comp can be just too fast. This mostly happens with really old MS-DOS games tho, but I know the PC version of Sonic & Knuckles (which was for Win95/98) has this issue too. That version also changed some of the music for some reason--I need to reinstall it to hear all the differences but I remember the Sonic 3 levels near the end having a lot of different music.

....

As for why have an XP machine, to be honest its because I mostly do older games and thus don't have need for modern OSes, but also because older OSes have little conveniences--like if you accidentally bork your installation, you can just wipe the C:\ Drive and reinstall (which isn't that big of a deal actually). Nowadays with DRM and Windows "licenses" I tend to not experiment as much because if I screw something up, I'm likely stuck with it. I remember having Windows 8 for awhile and absolutely hating how nothing was familiar and it even integrated with the BIOS which just bothered me to no end (you literally could only access the BIOS thru the OS, which is just wrong on so many levels. Fortunately removing the OS also made BIOS usage more traditional).

It's largely a matter of older OSes being simple and convenient and I don't have modern hardware (outside of this non-gaming laptop) anyway.

[Niku-Sama]

you should be able to get away with MechWarrior 3 and expansions on that hardware in xp.

but yeesh ti4200?

[Nz17]

First of all, yes, yes you should install and play Quake III Arena. It is excellent, and people still play it online frequently even today.

Second, I still run Windows XP on my main computer, and even "modern" games like the completely-up-to-date 2018 release of Team Fortress 2 runs just fine on WinXP. It is surprising how many new and recent games will run on XP even if they don't claim as such.

Third, search GOG.com if you want good DRM-free games that will run on Windows XP. Some of them won't, but they will state as such in their requirements and those are rare.

Fourth, are you principally interested in physical copies of the games (CD's / DVD's) or downloads? Knowing which will make recommendations simpler.

[gbpxl]

Did anyone keep their old computers from the 90s? I think we trashed ours every time we upgraded. It's harder to play those games on original hardware compared to console and portables from the same period

[jb143]

I still have my first PC from 94 or so. I keep telling myself that I'll set it up as a dedicated dosbox one of these days but lack of time (and DOSBox) has kept me from it. I mostly have the next PC I got around 97 but it got parted out over the years.

[Nz17]

I upgraded and upgraded my original 1993 PC until it couldn't be upgraded any more. Some time before the summer of 2002 though, it finally got recycled. However, as a memento, I kept its original floppy diskette drive from when the drive got replaced. I also kept that floppy diskette drive which replaced it after I recycled the computer.

When I finally got a newer desktop PC, I installed the still-working floppy diskette drive from my prior PC into it, and it's still there today. It was a way to pass the torch to the next generation. That newer computer, by the way, is the one I still use every day.

[Gameguy]

Did anyone keep their old computers from the 90s?
Yeah, we kept our old computers instead of getting rid of them. Ours from the 90's is an actual tower, but everything else bought new was a laptop as they took less space. I'm not sure if everything is still running properly but I'm planning to test it all out again and have it set up to actually use. It's been years since I've played old games properly on actual old PCs.

To the original topic, it's kind of hard to think of Windows XP specific games that run well. It's hard because I found Windows XP barely ran well on it's own.

[YoshiM]

I had to sell the old to buy slightly better. My first "current" and brand new PC was put together in 2002/2003ish- an AMD Athlon XP system. I used that until about 2007 or so when I started doing video for a local flag football league and picked up an Intel Core 2 Quad media machine-the most machine I ever had. And I still use it.

[Edmond Dantes]

Ok, was offline for a long time and forgot to check in on this topic...


you should be able to get away with MechWarrior 3 and expansions on that hardware in xp.

but yeesh ti4200?

What's wrong with the ti4200? It had good recommendations on places like Vogons (and I was told at the time that it was the best that would work in both 98SE and XP, though I've now heard contradicting info but the later cards that apparently still work are only slight improvements).


First of all, yes, yes you should install and play Quake III Arena. It is excellent, and people still play it online frequently even today.

Second, I still run Windows XP on my main computer, and even "modern" games like the completely-up-to-date 2018 release of Team Fortress 2 runs just fine on WinXP. It is surprising how many new and recent games will run on XP even if they don't claim as such.

Third, search GOG.com if you want good DRM-free games that will run on Windows XP. Some of them won't, but they will state as such in their requirements and those are rare.

Fourth, are you principally interested in physical copies of the games (CD's / DVD's) or downloads? Knowing which will make recommendations simpler.

That last one is tricky as I've played a lot of downloaded games, usually freeware and GOG purchases. Was an excellent puzzle game called Hex-a-Hop that I was hooked on for a bit.

But for the sake of narrowing it down let's say "commercial games that had a physical release back in the day."

Altho I also found that the fangame Mega Man Unlimited runs just fine on this doohickey, and using a Playstation-to-USB controller makes playing it indistinguishable from playing a console Megaman game...

[Nz17]

A ti4200 sounds good to me!

I actually was casually playing Hex-a-Hop for quite a few years. That's a good pick-up-and-play game all right!

Funny enough, I also use a Playstation-to-USB adapter for my current computer gaming. It works really well for the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night-esque game Timespinner (https://timespinnergame.com/), and Timespinner (which releases this month on September 25th) is compatible with Windows XP or newer as well as Linux and Mac OS.

Do you know that Steam still runs on XP? It might even run on 2000 still. Why do I mention this? A few years ago, Steam's refund policy changed. Now the general rule is, if you play a game for less then two hours, then you can get a full refund. So, as there are so many thousands of games on Steam which are compatible with XP, you can just buy what you find interesting, download them, and try to run them. In the minority of cases where they won't run, just request a refund. Simple as pie!

[Edmond Dantes]

The thing is, this XP machine has no internet access. There's no modem installed and I would have to literally drag it to another physical location to get a wireless signal (my internet situation is... weird).

If things ever change I'll look into that.

In the meantime I've been watching anime with it. This machine can play most videos fine.... tho I've noticed it have trouble with some, and I'm not sure if that could be fixed just by putting more RAM in it. Seems to always be stuff with larger file sizes (its using Media Player Classic with the CCCP by the way).

[Nz17]

Well, you could always buy computer games from eBay. There's a lot of XP-compatible software for sale on there, and most of those games don't require an Internet connection, just the DVD / CD to always be in the drive. That is, of course, unless you make ISO copies of the CD's / DVD's and use Daemon Tools to create a virtual DVD drive and then have the images mounted via Daemon Tools so that, to the program's CD checker, it appears that a real disc is in a real disc drive so you don't need to actually have the CD ever-present and spinning in the drive.

As far as Internet connectivity, I'm guessing you can't just run a CAT-5 Ethernet cable to your machine?

With regards to video playback, have you considered using SMPlayer or VLC? VLC is easy to set up and has a friendly interface (https://videolan.org/vlc), but SMPlayer has better performance (https://www.smplayer.info/en/downloads). Either way, even their newest versions are, last I checked, compatible with XP, but if they are not, let me know and I'll find older releases that are. Make sure that frame-dropping is enabled and you should have really good video playback with them. Either VLC or SMPlayer should give better playback than Media Player Classic with the CCCP.

[Edmond Dantes]

I'll try VLC, but thing is the files that tend to have problems tend to be like.... it seems like if the file is either 1080p or else 400+mb then it'll have problems playing on this machine. Now, the machine has 512mb of system ram and a 128mb video card so I'm not sure if that's the problem or what.

Then again, if I load a DVD movie with Daemontools and play that, MPC has no issue, and DVDs are far bigger than 500+mb so.... not sure how that works.

[Gameguy]

I'll try VLC, but thing is the files that tend to have problems tend to be like.... it seems like if the file is either 1080p or else 400+mb then it'll have problems playing on this machine. Now, the machine has 512mb of system ram and a 128mb video card so I'm not sure if that's the problem or what.
This is the exact type of experience I've had with XP, when watching any videos online above 240p it would play back choppy or worse. I maxed out the RAM to 512mb too. It's just a bloated OS that sucks up all resources.

As for DVDs, they can be played on Win 98 hardware so they better play fine on XP.

Also I remember trying to play the PC version of Shadow of Destiny and even though my hardware all surpassed the minimum requirements, it ran so poorly it was unplayable. This is a game from 2002, I used this PC from 2005-2009ish. I could play other games but it was common for me to have issues in some way.

[Nz17]

Edmond, the problem isn't the file size of the videos, it is the bit rate (the number of bits per second) and the level of compression. Basically, a low-compression DVD plays back fine with your setup, but a high-compression video file that requires a lot of CPU power to decode that ends up decompressing into a high-bitrate video stream is probably just too demanding for the hardware.

Personally, I still run XP, and the YouTube videos run just fine with it even at 480p, 720p, etc. I don't usually try to view anything at 1080p or higher because my monitor's resolution is only 900p.

Then again, I spend most of my time on the same machine booted into Linux, so I am using Window XP and Windows in general less and less.

And, as for running Steam with Windows XP, it looks like that is going to end with the end of this year. It was just announced that starting January 1st, 2019, Steam will no longer be compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista. (https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1558-AFCM-4577) It's too bad as XP is where I run most of my Steam apps and games. I guess this is just like years ago when I was saddened when Steam dropped support for Windows 98 and Windows ME. Otherwise Half-Life (1) would have continued to run just fine on my old computer! Alas.

[Edmond Dantes]

And, as for running Steam with Windows XP, it looks like that is going to end with the end of this year. It was just announced that starting January 1st, 2019, Steam will no longer be compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista. (https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1558-AFCM-4577) It's too bad as XP is where I run most of my Steam apps and games. I guess this is just like years ago when I was saddened when Steam dropped support for Windows 98 and Windows ME. Otherwise Half-Life (1) would have continued to run just fine on my old computer! Alas.

Half-Life 1 _still_ runs fine on Windows 98 in my experience. But I got the game before it got Steamed (somehow I actually wound up with two physical copies... the first was the Adrenaline Pack which I bought new at Wal-Mart, but later the same pack but now including Blue Shift got released, and a friend who went full digital-only gave me his copy of those discs. So ummm.... I guess I have extra discs of HL1, TFC and OpFor which I don't need...)

Why the hell did Team Fortress Classic need a separate CD when its literally just an update patch (indeed its auto-installed if you skip the TFC disk and install the OpFor disk)?

On that note... one thing that bothers me about Half-Life is it seems some of its mods actually require Steam now. Back in the day you could go to ModDb and get stuff like They Hunger (which I thoughtfully backed up on a CD-R) and others which only required the latest at the time patch (which I also backed up on a CD-R--I was in the habit of backing up downloads in case the internet went down, and actually still am, I just use external HDs now). Nowadays though? I can't say for sure any mod will work on a non-steam version (they don't tend to say so upfront). I remember trying to play Afraid of Monsters and it decided to be an asshole. Like geez... Half-Life 1 runs in 98SE and XP, its mods should too.

I mean at least Doom WADs tell you when they need a specific source port.

....

So, wound up getting addicted to one of my favorite Windows 98SE games (well, originally a DOS game but there was a slight updated version for 95/98 PCs). You'll probably recognize it from these quotes:

"Skooboo. Zugzug. They're destroying our city!"

Orcs are so adorable.

[Rickstilwell1]

Did anyone ever try running X-Men Legends II on these specs? I never installed it on my old tower, but I am assuming that if Marvel Ultimate Alliance ran too slowly then the average pre-built XP computer from that era would struggle as well. But maybe an upgraded one would work fine. I do have Windows XP installed on a hard drive for use on my Samsung AMD laptop though with SATA drivers. That is much higher specs than what you are comparing to though. But I bet when I swap that hard drive in to my laptop, it should run anything at all that is compatible with XP.

[Edmond Dantes]

I've never heard of X-Men Legends 1 or 2... well, I heard of the first one but I thought it was a console exclusive, surprised there's a PC version.

Anyway, lately I'm looking into adventure games. There was this company I used to see on store shelves all the time, The Adventure Company, whose games all came in these distinctive black boxes. I remember ignoring them because they somehow screamed "budget" and all seemed like Myst clones, but now they're all easy to get... and in fact, I found one by accident in Goodwill recently (Echo: secretso f the Lost Cavern) which it turns out, will run on this Dell but not my older PC, so its just what I'm looking for.

Myst IV and V will only run on my XP comp too... Myst III will run on my older 98 machine, but my XP machine has a better graphics card allowing me to enable some minor enhancements. Finally I can enjoy the entire Myst series....

[pacman000]

Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 & 2

Puzzle Bobble 2 (by Interplay, if memory serves.)

[Gamevet]

I have an XP machine from @2001. It has 750MB of RAM, a DVD drive, a 2Ghz Celeron CPU and an FX5200 Ultra. It ran games like Halo, Half Life, StarCraft, Star Wars: Jedi Knight, Star Wars: Empire at War and Unreal just fine. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was a buggy mess, that crashed way too often. I ended up getting an Xbox to play KOTOR, because of how poor it ran on PC.

[wizardofwor1975]

Edmond, if it hasn't been mentioned I would recommend Vietcong. It a great FPS for XP. I wish GOG would release a version of this game for Win 10. But that seems to be a pipe dream for a while now no matter how many people wishlist it. Who knows maybe its in the works. But in any event you may want to try Vietcong for XP.

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/vietcong

[Aswald]

There are many:

Deepica
Plumeboom: The First Chapter
The Golden Path of Plumeboom
Eternity
Wizard's Curse: Deadly Spell
Spunky's Supercar
Mahjong Dimensions: Tiles In Time
Gingertip's beautiful "Foxtail" (go to GOG and buy it!)
Inherit the Earth
Sanctuary Black
Elementals: The Magic Key
Ancient Wonderland
Azteca
Roller Coaster Tycoon
Exorcist 3: Stalker
Stargunner

Among many others. A number do depend on your hardware.

If you haven't already find and download "DOSBox 0.74." This incredibly easy-to-use emulator allows you to play MS-DOS games, like "Darkseed," the remarkable "Dreamweb," "The Legend of Kyrandia," "Dino Park Builder," "Bubble Bobble," "Arkanoid," and so many others. Since many great games are abandonware they are free to use.


Have fun!

[wizardofwor1975]

If you haven't already find and download "DOSBox 0.74." This incredibly easy-to-use emulator allows you to play MS-DOS games, like "Darkseed," the remarkable "Dreamweb," "The Legend of Kyrandia," "Dino Park Builder," "Bubble Bobble," "Arkanoid," and so many others. Since many great games are abandonware they are free to use.


Great suggestion on Bubble Bobble and Arkanoid! I remember playing them on a Tandy 1000 SL. If I remember correctly my Tandy 1000 had 384 KB of memory and an Intel 8086 processor running at 8 MHz! At the time it was a real step up compared to the earlier Tandy's with there 8088 processors. Good times...

[gbpxl]

A game I bought when I was younger that I really wanted to play was Neverwinter Nights. Took it home, installed it, and found out my PC was too weak to run it. Looked really cool though. I ended up buying Morrowind for Xbox and playing that instead.

[Edmond Dantes]

If you haven't already find and download "DOSBox 0.74." This incredibly easy-to-use emulator allows you to play MS-DOS games, like "Darkseed," the remarkable "Dreamweb," "The Legend of Kyrandia," "Dino Park Builder," "Bubble Bobble," "Arkanoid," and so many others. Since many great games are abandonware they are free to use.


Have fun!

Just pointing out that "Abandonware" isn't an official designation, its something websites made up to justify essentially the PC equivalent of rom downloads. So yeah its a means of playing games but we probably shouldn't give people the impression its legal.

One reason I ask about Windows XP specifically BTW is because I already have a separate comp that does a lot of older Win98 and DOS games (and Dosbox runs on anything really), I was wondering if there was anything on XP specifically that made it worthwhile.

I have found a few--Doom 3 (not the BFG Edition tho--that requires later hardware. Original Doom 3 will run fine tho), the later Myst games, freeware puzzler Hex-a-hop, the freeware ports of the Marathon trilogy (they're supposed to run on Windows 98 but in my experience they refused to).... I've also gotten a lot of mileage out of my XP desktop as a video-watching machine.

[Aswald]

Just pointing out that "Abandonware" isn't an official designation, its something websites made up to justify essentially the PC equivalent of rom downloads. So yeah its a means of playing games but we probably shouldn't give people the impression its legal.

One reason I ask about Windows XP specifically BTW is because I already have a separate comp that does a lot of older Win98 and DOS games (and Dosbox runs on anything really), I was wondering if there was anything on XP specifically that made it worthwhile.

I have found a few--Doom 3 (not the BFG Edition tho--that requires later hardware. Original Doom 3 will run fine tho), the later Myst games, freeware puzzler Hex-a-hop, the freeware ports of the Marathon trilogy (they're supposed to run on Windows 98 but in my experience they refused to).... I've also gotten a lot of mileage out of my XP desktop as a video-watching machine.


I don't think that's the case with what I found. Some of the links directed me to sites like GOG Games, so whatever site I was on was likely legit. Since many games were created by companies that no longer exist and were never bought up (including the rights to the games), many of them are in fact in a Limbo- abandoned.

Funny thing- there are two Mobile versions of DosBox-type software that run on my crummy Windows CE Sylvania netbook (with a whopping 50MB available...offline...): pckDOS and PocketDOS. The former is overall superior to the latter except for its inability to properly display CGA games like "Wizardry" and "Shadowgate." You get a jumble that looks like two small screens next to each other. PocketDOS handles them, but sound is inferior or non-existent.

Still, you do get the following (with a little help from SCUMMVM CE v1.3.1): Wizardry 1-3, Ultima (1 only), Shadowgate, Secret of Monkey Island 1 & 2 (play very well), Discworld (very well), Bubble Bobble, Arkanoid, Lemmings games (cursor is clumsy and sound effects only), Dreamweb, Darkseed, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Legend of Kyrandia 1-3, Blackjack!, Hold `Em Pocker, Crimson Crown, Sid Meier's Civilization, Dino Park Builder (sound effects only), Inherit the Earth (both versions), LOOM (both versions), among others. Remember this was a pitiful little netbook so even if sound lags a bit or is lacking at times this was an amazing leap in its game playing abilities.

DOSBox 0.74 runs almost as well on the 2001 Sony XP VAIO as it does on the far more formidable 2012 ASUS. Thus a vast collection of MS-DOS games run on just about anything out there since most people here are probably not into tinkering with antique computers as I am.

There is also SCUMMVM. It allows one to play games on systems those games were never intended for. The actual game files must be available for it to work so it's not a pirate program. It has gotten a number of games to work just fine on the netbook, albeit only in 320h x 240v mode. I also needed the GAPI application to get it and pckDOS running. But what a difference it made.


Truth be told, even now that netbook is quite useful. It has good multimedia players (240p being the practical limit though), SoftMaker CE gives it document abilities nearly equal to modern Office (plus PDF-making ability AND the ability to handle things like Apache OpenOffice documents), pretty good art and photo programs, browsers like Opera Mini 5 give it decent regular browsing abilities, a good Hex Editor, Foxit PDF Reader, an alarm clock application, and a few others. It's the weakest of my gadgets but still surprisingly handy. Now that its game collection has been so greatly improved it's well worth keeping.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

SimCity 4 (make sure to get Deluxe Edition)
SimCity 3000
RollerCoaster Tycoon 1, 2 or 3 (take your pick)
The Sims 2 (the more expansion packs the better)
Mall Tycoon 1-2
Capitalism II
Oregon Trail 5th Edition

[Edmond Dantes]

I don't think that's the case with what I found. Some of the links directed me to sites like GOG Games, so whatever site I was on was likely legit. Since many games were created by companies that no longer exist and were never bought up (including the rights to the games), many of them are in fact in a Limbo- abandoned.

Just pointing out that abandonware is not a proper legal term. Granted yeah companies that don't exist anymore are unlikely to care if you download their games, and honestly I'm no legal eagle.... but just, yeah, don't get blindsided if someone with legal authority contradicts you on this.

I've seen weird cases where a page will link to GOG.... but then still offer the game for download for free. Like, seems like a bit of a conflict of interest there.


Funny thing- there are two Mobile versions of DosBox-type software that run on my crummy Windows CE Sylvania netbook (with a whopping 50MB available...offline...): pckDOS and PocketDOS. The former is overall superior to the latter except for its inability to properly display CGA games like "Wizardry" and "Shadowgate." You get a jumble that looks like two small screens next to each other. PocketDOS handles them, but sound is inferior or non-existent.

That sounds perfect for Wizardry, which didn't have sound anyway. ;)

Did you ever see my post about Wizardry with my "Tales from Wizardry" stories? I really should do something similar soon.

[buteau57]

GTA Vice City and San Andreas are all you need in a computer with XP. In addition Unreal Tournament, KOTOR, Battlefield 2 are the great games which I used to love playing on my previous PC. I've stuck with an XP recently, we came to Montenegro 2 weeks ago to visit my uncle and find a property for sale in Montenegro (https://tranio.com/montenegro/). He has this very old computer, you can only play GTA Vice City on it. Anyway it's always fun to play this game.

[Aswald]

No, the site I went to didn't do both- for some games just a link leading to those other sites. The button even said "Buy It Here." "Might and Magic" was one such game.

Is it possible the cases you saw actually involved just a free demo version? But I get what you're saying.

Yes, Wizardry did too have sound- a little "puht" here and there. Truly awesome soundtrack...but trust me, in 1981 that game was THE BEST. Funny thing...it still is great. Curiously enough the Wizardry games alone are shown with RED, blue, black and white rather than purple. This is not the case for any of the others.

Currently that netbook can reasonably play 50 such DOS games nicely enough, but is incapable of playing others (e.g. Q*Bert and Crimson Crown). However, its gaming abilties have been increased many times over now, all thanks to the GAPI app that lets those other three apps run.

I am trying to contact the CORE Player programmers to find out if it can be made to skip video frames by default. Tests with converters indicate that if so the netbook can play 360p and even 480p videos reasonably well; imagine what this technique can do for the 2001 Sony VAIO (480p already) or even the 2012 ASUS!

What I'm doing is to try and show that older hardware need not become obsolete. Puppy Linux, installed as one of a Dual Operating System, has made that old Sony into a viable and 100% safe online device thanks to Opera Mini 8, which is sandboxed. There are other abilities too. Considering what that underpowered feeble netbook can actually do, more recent devices- which are overpowered for mundane things, as is the 2001 Sony- should be useful for a long time. That way they don't end up in those horrible landfills, which you see in Third World countries. Considering the rotten economy this will help everyone.

[Nz17]

freeware puzzler Hex-a-hop

Hex-a-hop is an awesome open-source game and it has a Linux port too!


lot of mileage out of my XP desktop as a video-watching machine.

Same here, but I also play a lot of games on it and even program software. The thing is, when you can find DRM-free software from places such as GOG (Some software downloaded from Steam is DRM-free too, though that's rare.), you can often get it to run without Steam /and/ on Windows XP even if the requirements don't list it.


Shadowgate, Secret of Monkey Island 1 & 2, Discworld, Bubble Bobble, Arkanoid, Lemmings, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Legend of Kyrandia 1-3, Sid Meier's Civilization

Excellent games!


Truth be told, even now that netbook is quite useful. It has good multimedia players (240p being the practical limit though), SoftMaker CE gives it document abilities nearly equal to modern Office (plus PDF-making ability AND the ability to handle things like Apache OpenOffice documents), pretty good art and photo programs, browsers like Opera Mini 5 give it decent regular browsing abilities, a good Hex Editor, Foxit PDF Reader, an alarm clock application, and a few others. It's the weakest of my gadgets but still surprisingly handy. Now that its game collection has been so greatly improved it's well worth keeping.

Nice setup! It sounds like you have really gotten the most possible out of the hardware. I also used to run a lot of those apps on my Windows XP desktop computer.


SimCity 4 (make sure to get Deluxe Edition)
SimCity 3000
RollerCoaster Tycoon 1, 2 or 3 (take your pick)
Oregon Trail 5th Edition

Cool picks!


Puppy Linux, installed as one of a Dual Operating System, has made that old Sony into a viable and 100% safe online device thanks to Opera Mini 8, which is sandboxed.

I run Puppy Linux too. That's a very good and very efficient Linux OS! It is awesome for "live" USB drives.

[Aswald]

Since XP can run DOSBox 0.74 there are a number of great games out there- I'm just beginning to find out about them.

There is a game called "Troddlers." It was inspired by "Lemmings" in that you are trying to get mindlessly marching critters to an exit, but instead of granting certain Lemmings certain abilities you control a hapless creature that makes boxes appear and disappear to accomplish this. You work for a wizard whom is slightly more tolerant of failure than Darth Vader. The graphics even by today's standards are BEAUTIFUL, the music is great, and the gameplay insanely addicting. It works surprisingly well on the netbook.

Then there is "Sixx." Another addicting puzzle game with good graphics and great music.

"Tiny Skweeks" is another great game, where you guide angry critters to resting places.

"Jinxter" is an odd text-based adventure with images. It was a Magnetic Scrolls game.

"Blockout" is a top-down version of "Tetris."

The classic "Digger," a "Mr. Do!" type game.

"Locomotion" can look like a ColecoVision game- change tracks, guide trains. Great fun.

And there are new DOS games, such as "EGACGA."


With the netbook, it's curious. "Last Half of Darkness" crashes every time, but with PocketDOS "Last Half of Darkness 2" works just fine.

To be honest that netbook's limits are showing. The libraries around here recently have agreement pages that block it from getting online, the Yahoo! search page does not work properly, the Youtube search page does not work properly, and since one cannot download 240p Youtube videos any longer from sites it can use- minimum 360p- that is a serious blow because its players cannot go beyond 240p for good playback. This is why I want to get either the TCPMP or CORE Players to deliberately skip every other video frame- converting 360p and even 480p videos to 12 FPS versions allow decent playback. But man, just try to find out how to get started on any of these projects, it would count as one of the Labors of Hercules.

The Sony of course has advantages. Now, if that technician can reinstall XP Home Edition in it, so it works again that would be great- it was clearly allergic to Professional.

And it's worth mentioning yet again

[Edmond Dantes]

With the netbook, it's curious. "Last Half of Darkness" crashes every time, but with PocketDOS "Last Half of Darkness 2" works just fine.

Last Half of Darkness 1 and 2 are finagly beeches. I can run them on my MS-DOS machine if I slow the machine way down (they have an issue where one mouse click will detect as multiple clicks which can cause text to clear away too soon). I recall the third game having a glitch that makes it unbeatable--there's a part where you're supposed to use something on a dog and it turns into a woman but whenever I played it just corrupts like hell.

There's apparently six games in the series, one a CD-ROM game just called Last Half of Darkness, which nobody seems to have an actual CD-ROM of but ISOs can be found online (I would love to have a complete boxed copy of this as it apparently came with feelies) plus two more that both have a subtitle like "The Souls of Soemthing or Other"

[Nz17]

youtube-dl (https://yt-dl.org/) can download 240p, 144p, and audio-only variants of YouTube videos. It is a Python program. So as long as you can run Python on the computer then you should be able to download videos in the resolutions you can use.

[Edmond Dantes]

Thanks, but I actually already have a way to download youtube videos.

Actually funny thing my XP machine can handle 720p... for some reason tho full 1080p can stress it (the audio often desyncs).

[Canija]

GTA Vice City and San Andreas are all you need in a computer with XP. In addition Unreal Tournament, KOTOR, Battlefield 2 are the great games which I used to love playing on my previous PC. I've stuck with an XP recently, we came to Spain 2 weeks ago to visit my uncle and found that some time soon local property would go down in price according to different articles (https://virtoproperty.com/info/spanish-property-market-forecast/). Hope to live next to him in a year or two :)
Are you sure that XP runs these games? Even Microsoft Office is too hard for this OS.

[Highwind Dragoon]

The ENTIRE (1-3) Empire earth Series. (Available on GoG.com)

[Rickstilwell1]

I just built a Windows XP gaming comp. Its a 2.80ghz Pentium 4 (so single core), 512 ram (though the motherboard can be upgraded to 2gig), with a Geforce 4 ti4200 and a Soundblaster Audigy 2. In other words, a comp I would've considered a powerhouse at the time, but it can only run Doom 3 on medium settings.

But ya know... got new hardware, wondering what games to run on it.

Games I already own are Doom 3, but also the Myst series (I got all of them in a box last year) and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. But this was the period where I basically stopped paying attention to PCs so I'm not sure if there's any underappreciated XP gems to look out for.

(EDIT: It just occured to me that in my "list" I forgot to mention Windows 98 games that also have XP compatibility, so I probably have more than I think I do).

So, suggestions?

I basically have two Dell towers from back in the day with these specs minus the Geforce and Soundblaster. Apparently they are a little bit better than the eMachines and the home built XP era towers I owned before them (both of which died due to being cheap components). I never really played anything graphics heavy for the time and just went with games that the processor and RAM could run on their own. My sound cards are generic so DOS games usually don't play any music when I choose Soundblaster. The disc games I usually played were just Sonic 3D Blast, Diablo, Diablo 2 and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 most of the time. I think I was able to run Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee without a graphics card too but I didn't get that on PC until 6 years ago.

It is pretty interesting though seeing you post this because it makes me realize that hey all I need to buy are two parts, plug them in, get drivers and I can have a good retro setup. Then maybe I can get the thing to run 3D games I couldn't run well or at all on these like Sonic Adventure DX, X-Men Legends II, or Serious Sam.

I also used to play with emulators and Mugen a lot on my Dell Inspiron 1100 which had an Intel Celeron Processor, which is supposedly a step below a Pentium of the same generation? My Dell Inspiron Mini netbook is even never and has an Intel Atom which is supposed to be a step below a Celeron of the same Generation. I think Atom is to Celeron is to Pentium as i3 is to i5 is to i7 from my understanding, but only if you're talking about the same generation. My inspiron Mini has Windows 7 on it and can run things just as well as the old Inspiron laptop. 1gb ram is definitely better than 512MB.

Without graphics cards, the best I could do emulation wise was Playstation. Nintendo 64 just wouldn't work well and don't even think about Sega Saturn or Dreamcast. Those start working on i3 era computers.


Looks like Sonic Adventure DX (disc release) might be a stretch because not only does it need a graphics card (GeForce 7300 series or better, which is more advanced than what you have), it also needs the processor to be set to 3GHz and at least 1GB RAM. I don't think I should get my hopes up on trying to run that on one of my XP machines. I could probably run it fine on any of my Windows 7 era laptops on processing power alone. X-Men Legends II however sounds like you could run it with what you have. It will even work on a Pentium 3 with just a GeForce 2+.

I guess to play Sonic Adventure DX for PC when it came out and used Windows XP, you had to have a pretty high end PC build for the time. Many specs of a 7300 are double those of a 4200.


Actually, it turns out the Dell Dimension 4300 I have used for years is an older generation copy of that model that is labeled "Designed for Windows ME/2000 and the Dell Dimension 3000 I have is newer, more compact and says "Designed for Windows XP." I bought the 4300 from a friend for $50 and a shared pizza after my home built PC from a relative died. Now I have no idea if this 4300 was weaker than my original eMachines or not. I am starting to think it probably was. I have no idea what the home built PC was but I am going to guess really cheap. Both of these Dell computers have Pentium 4's but the 4300 has a single core 1500MHZ processor while the 3000 has a dual core 2.80 + 2.79 GHZ processor. All I know is that the 3000 obviously wins among all my old towers and if I were to choose one to upgrade, that would have to be it. My 4300 actually has an old version of LxLe on it right now but that may be subject to change. Maybe I'll look for a Windows ME image and try out the Windows ME activation code it originally came with. I have enough old laptops and netbooks running LxLe.

[Mad-Mike]

Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy
The Sims
Diablo II
GTA San Andreas
GTA Vice City
Rock Manager
Lego Digital Designer
Diablo

That's what I played in the XP Era, though more often on 98 or 2000. I never had an XP machine until 2008. Always FAR behind the curve...that's me.

[Ostin Powers]

Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy
The Sims
Diablo II
Gta5grand (https://gta5grand.com/)
GTA Vice City
Rock Manager
Lego Digital Designer
Diablo

That's what I played in the XP Era, though more often on 98 or 2000. I never had an XP machine until 2008. Always FAR behind the curve...that's me.

Unfortunately my PC is not goot for GTA any more :( that was the main reason I updated it.

[Gamevet]

Unbelievable!

My last Windows XP build had a Core2Quad (Q9650) paired with 2 GTX 460s (1GB)in SLI.