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    Kirby (Level 13) Tanooki's Avatar
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    Default 64bit windows and the curse of the 16bit application

    I'm sure you've all see it before something like: This application is not compatible as it uses a 16bit operation, this will not work on your system, blah blah whatever.

    Is there much of a way around this? I know there are rare cases of games of high popularity where people will whip up some process to create a do it yourself installer, or they'll make one themselves to save you the headache which can use your original files off a disc/disk(etc.)

    I've been jonesing for the original Civilization and Sim City Classic, both Win 3.X 16bit games, and well on Win7 and now Win8.1 64bit I'm denied.

    Some people have been creative in making updated installers, some work (Dune Legacy for Dune 2 PC) and others worked fine through Win7 but died on Win8 (Mark from Germany, did all those installers for Tie, Xwing and Indiana Jones games of the mid 90s.

    Other than going the route of buying or pirating an old OS and throwing it inside of some VM which is just an overkill pain in the ass for a single game, can much be done?

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    Peach (Level 3)
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    Doesn't DOSbox work for this stuff?

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    Kirby (Level 13) Tanooki's Avatar
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    I'd think it would for DOS stuff, but you think it would run 16bit Windows games? I still have the CD discs for Civ and Sim City Classic.

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    Pear (Level 6) Gentlegamer's Avatar
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    Windows 3.x and Windows 95 are themselves MS-DOS programs, so you can use DOSBox to run almost everything that is supposed to run on those versions. You can in fact use DOSBox to run Windows 3.1 itself.

    Checking the compatibility list at dosbox.com confirms both Civ and SimCity are compatible.

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    ServBot (Level 11)
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    I would have thought that a work-around for this would have been developed by now, but instead it seems to be game specific. Many games can be repurchased fixed on GOG or Steam, but I am too stubborn to buy the same game twice.

    I keep older computers hanging around for this purpose, but I would love to have everything installed on one...

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    Pear (Level 6) Gentlegamer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trebuken View Post
    I would have thought that a work-around for this would have been developed by now, but instead it seems to be game specific. Many games can be repurchased fixed on GOG or Steam, but I am too stubborn to buy the same game twice.

    I keep older computers hanging around for this purpose, but I would love to have everything installed on one...
    GOG packages an installer and preconfigured DOSBox for the games to work.

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    Great Puma (Level 12) Niku-Sama's Avatar
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    I don't think at this point it would be considered pirating widows3.1 or 95. If i remember correctly after a certain age they release interest of sorts. That coupled with the fact that it's not even installed on a tangible machine....

    I forgot. If you can install a 32 bit version of your os on another partition on the same computer it should work still. 32 bit versions still have the ability to emulate 16 bit stuff. Although some of it is a bit buggy...
    Last edited by Niku-Sama; 02-05-2015 at 01:49 AM.

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