My dad is giving me his collection of physical PC games since I’ve become a collector of physical media…most of the games I grew up playing on the old family computer.

They all have the CD Keys for each still so I am wondering, are progress/accounts tied to the Keys? For example, Battlefield 2 (one of my favorite) is the account I used to play on it tied to the CD key?

Or how all does that work really

Hey All,

I've been wanting to build an old school RTS game for 486/pentium machines. It is written in C++ and using DirectDraw so that it will work on Windows 95 machines.

There is still a lot to go but I've got it working in a web browser and would love some feedback. The interface and design needs a lot more work but the basic game play and path finding should work well now.

Let me know what you think, it is called IronField https://starrts.vogonswiki.com/ironfield/

I will be posting exe/win9x versions once I have tested on my Pentium 233MMX machine.

Looking through my mom’s storage room I found these games I played long time ago. Gotta figure out how to play these games on my win11 64-bit machine.

I remember getting for PC a whole bundle of games that came in 2 soft disc containers that had 50 (?) cd rom edutainment games total. I know the Zoombinis, Math Attack by Compedia, and Carmen Sandiego: Math Detective, and Invention Highway are included. I also think it had the CD Rom Encyclopedia Britannica in it as well. Does anyone remember what the collections name was?

Finally found the 8 CD collection of DA: Pursuit of Justice, but it needs a real Win95 environment to run. Never set one up before, so need help

what do i do? VirtualBox, PCem, 86box? also curious if there's anything weird with video drivers on FMV games I should watch out for, or if this game specifically has any installer/CD issues people have run into.

also not sure if this is even the right sub for this, so let me know if I should post somewhere else. any help is appreciated, been wanting to play this one forever

So I, as many other people, have wondered what games from GOG are compatible with various retro pc builds and old operating systems. Since this information is often annoying to come across, I figured I would make a spreadsheet compiling this information for other people who try and build retro rigs. I added a submission google form aswell so hopefully with the help of others we can help grow the sheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Ly28JpQHHT_er30fJwgjpSmDyYQyIYS85TEYSNgsVM/edit?usp=sharing

I played a game at school either on windows 95 or 98 pcs

this is what I have managed to remember about it from help with chat gpt

only issue is that none of the games it gives me are correct.

any help to find this old gem so I can finally finish it would be really appreciated.

Platform / era

Played at school on a Windows 98 PC

Came on a CD-ROM in a normal-sized game case

Installed, but the disc was still required to play

Likely a late 1990s PC game

View and controls

Full-screen

Directly top-down 2D view

Black space background with stars

Your ship stayed near the centre while space moved around it

Keyboard controls:

Left/right = rotate ship around a central axis

Up = move forward/thrust

Down = reverse

Space bar = fire

Ships had shaded sprites (not flat shapes)

Starting ship and upgrades

Started as a normal civilian trader

Starter ship:

Small grey shuttle

Looked a bit like a classic Star Trek-style shuttle

Small cargo capacity

Only weapon was a single yellow laser

Next ship:

Yellow freighter

Long rectangular hull

Two circular engine pods sticking out at the back

Bigger cargo space

Could mount equipment

Had limited weapon slots (you think it could fit 1 turret)

Bigger ships:

Larger but still small enough that several could appear on screen

More weapons, shields, turrets, missiles/rockets

More equipment slots

Equipment

Ships were pre-built designs

You did not design ships from scratch

You moved equipment onto new ships

Installed equipment visibly appeared:

Example: adding a turret made the turret appear on the ship

Turrets:

Rotated automatically

Locked onto enemy ships

Gameplay

Single player

Trading

Mining

Missions

Combat

Possible ship capture:

Shoot enemy ship until disabled

Dock with it

Capture it (not 100% certain)

Factions

Two main factions:

Blue faction

Police/security/federation style

More focused on:

Patrol

Protect

Defend

Ships painted fully blue

Red faction

Rebel/pirate style

More focused on:

Destroy

Attack

Ships painted fully red

Faction system

Started neutral as a trader

Later joined a faction

Had to go to that faction’s bases to buy their ships

Factions had their own fixed ship lists

Each ship had a recognisable hull design

Ships had military-style class names

You progressed through ranks and unlocked larger ships

Space combat

Enemy faction ships attacked you if you entered their territory and came into range

Blue and red ships fought each other even without you

You could watch battles between factions

Destroyed ships exploded

Strongest identifying clues

The biggest clues are probably:

Grey shuttle with one yellow laser

Yellow long rectangular freighter with two round rear engine pods

Blue police fleet vs red rebel/pirate fleet

Visible turret upgrades on ship sprites

Military ship classes and rank progression

Top-down Asteroids-style movement

I still don’t have a confirmed title, but this recap should make it easier to compare against screenshots or game lists.

Hi! I have the original CD for "C.I.D. The steppenwolf case" It doesn't work on Windows 11 and I can't find any patch online to make it run. Does anyone know how to fix this or get it to boot? Thanks!

From Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory — Mission 6: Hokkaido.

A silent infiltration deep into hostile territory. No alarms. No unnecessary violence. Just precision, patience, and pure stealth. 🥷

This no commentary walkthrough is played on Hard Mode with a 100% Stealth approach, focusing on remaining undetected while completing every objective as cleanly as possible.

If you enjoy classic stealth gameplay, consider liking the video and subscribing my channel for more Splinter Cell missions and retro gaming content.

As the title says. I've tried so many things and this does not wanna play whatsoever. I downloaded from Abandonware, opened and mounted the .iso, opened the files and ran Setup.exe, but it sits 99% and then after around 2 minutes, it crashes and closes.

I also tried opening the data1.cab file and opening sb2.exe there, and it sits for about 3 seconds on a black screen and then crashes. I even stuck the DGVoodoo files in it, still didn't work. I have the disc owned, but no disc tray for it in my PC. I'm kind of at my wits end here 😭

I'm running on Windows 11, by the way. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I used to love playing this and the Movie point-and-click a lot. Would love getting both of those to work. I heard using a VM is the way to go, but I never touched those before.

I was looking into building a retro machine with retroarch / retropie or lakka if needed. I was looking into raspberry pi 5, but with everything will be around $300. Any suggestions on cheaper? Possibly $100ish?

I just want to run up to dreamcast/ps2 games.

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II is a 1997 first-person shooter video game developed and published by LucasArts for Windows. It is the sequel to 1995's Star Wars: Dark Forces and the second installment in the Star Wars: Jedi Knight series. The story, set in the Star Wars expanded universe one year after the film Return of the Jedi, follows returning protagonist Kyle Katarn, a mercenary working for the New Republic, who discovers his connection to the Force and "The Valley of the Jedi", an ancient source of power. With his father having been murdered years prior by the Dark Jedi Jerec and his followers over the Valley's location, Katarn embarks on a quest to confront his father's killers and find the Valley before they do.

Jedi Knight made some technical and gameplay improvements over its predecessor. It uses a more powerful game engine, the Sith engine, which supports 3D acceleration using Direct3D 5.0. The story features branching paths and cutscenes recorded with live actors as full motion videos.

The game introduces the lightsaber and the Force as prominent gameplay elements in the series, as well as a multiplayer mode that allows players to compete over the internet or a local area network.

My grandfather recently ran into health issues and is trying to find things he enjoyed that would fit what he is currently able to do. One of those things is playing an old computer game he used to have called rocky mountain trophy hunter 2 above the tree line. I bought the hard disc so that we could install it for him but now are running into other problems. Some websites claim there would need to bring the software back to windows 97 or something like that, but he needs to be able to still use the current software of the computer for other things in his life. I would also like to keep things fairly simple after its said and done so that way he can actually play the game independently without needing to call someone on how to switch the software or whatever. Is there any fairly easy options available. I'm open to all possible solutions I just don't know where to begin.

Maybe it's nostalgia, but I still think the Windows XP era was the golden age of PC gaming.

Booting up a beige tower, hearing the Windows XP startup sound, and spending hours playing Half-Life, Quake II, Total Annihilation, Unreal Tournament, StarCraft, or Diablo 1 just felt special. LAN parties with friends, hauling CRT monitors, Ethernet cables everywhere, and staying up until sunrise are some of my favorite gaming memories.

Modern games are incredible, but they don't quite capture the same feeling. There was something about owning your games, tweaking configs, installing mods, and getting everything to run on retro hardware that made the experience memorable.

Anyone else still keep an old XP machine around or revisit these classics? What XP-era game brings back the most memories for you?

Is there anyone that has or knows how to get the full version of this game? Have been trying to find it for a long time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmkdvc3WV5A

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory Mission 5: Displace

Sam Fisher infiltrates Displace International and completes every objective without raising an alarm. This walkthrough showcases a 100% stealth, Hard Mode playthrough with clean infiltration, precise execution, and zero unnecessary combat.

If you enjoyed the video, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more stealth gameplay and full walkthroughs.

Hi, I have this 2014 laptop sitting unused - Asus K46CB. One time it became a dedicated Minecraft server, but that did not last long. It came with Win 8 and as of now it has Win 10. Also definitely needs a few hardware maintenances as both batteries (internal CMOS and external) are dead, and the cooler probably as well (I did change thermal paste a couple of times along the years but that has not solved the overheating problem).

After those changes I'm thinking about downgrading the OS to play old games. It also has a CD reader and I happen to have a few CD games still that do not run on modern machines and I'd like to revisit. It does not need to go online, as other games I can always download on my desktop and transfer via USB drive, so I'm not concerned about security updates, only on compatibility.

What would be recommended: XP, 7, both? I have no experience with dual boot, if possible would like some directions here as well.

Also, if not retro gaming, what else can I use it for? I don't need a server for anything and can't think of other uses.

Core i73537U 2GHz - 2 cores 4 threads

6GB DDR3 800MHz memory - dual channel 2GB and 4GB sticks

GeForce GT 740M 2GB dedicated video memory

1TB HDD

20GB SSD (came with Win 8 pre installed here for fast boot)