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General discussionAny good old Windows 3.1 and 95 games on GOG?(43 posts)(43 posts)
(43 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted 5 days ago
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Cavalary: Those tend to be a huge pain to get to run properly on modern Windows, so that's one reason for their scarcity.
Exactly. That's why it would be great if GOG made available those Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 games that were exclusive to that and never available in DOS.
Post edited 5 days ago by QuebecDragon
Posted 5 days ago
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Ryan333: GOG's catalog has a fair number of games that were released between late-1995 and 1998. A good number of those had native Windows 95 executables.

If you pull up the GOG catalog and sort by release date, as you go further into the late 90's you'll find more and more games that were released for Windows 95. Even after Windows 98, many games only required "Win9x" and weren't exclusive to Windows 98.

However... keep in mind that the GOG installers require at least Windows 7 to execute -- and even that is now depreciated. While GOG does offer games that can run under Win9x, the installers themselves need to be executed on a Win7+ system to extract the files, which can then be transferred to an older system.
Thanks for the small history lesson and interesting information"!

I'm sure GOG has a fair number of games released between 1995 and 98 that had Windows 95 executables back then, but what I'm interested in is being able to easily run those Windows 95 exclusive games that were not available in DOS on modern systems. Any of those Windows 95-exclusive games from 1995 to 1998 available on GOG?

I don't have a problem with the GOG installer working with Windows 7 or later, I have Windows 11.

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QuebecDragon: I have over 600 games on this site, and I don't recall seeing one specially for Windows 3.1 or 95. Some of those games, especially 3.1, were exclusive to their operating system. I still have boxes here and I sure would like an easier way to play them. Thank you for your time.
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TheBigCore: Youtube Video: How to Easily Run 16-bit Apps on 64-bit Modern Windows

Once you have confirmed the program works in WineVDM, create a shortcut to the game's executable by following the instructions as specified below:

https://youtu.be/hEB00rAfLNY?si=H5jPipykMPj2JfRn&t=91

Be aware that if your game installation folder has spaces in its name, you must enclose it with double quotation marks when making the shortcut.

For example:

"C:\Exploring Civilizations\program.exe"
Thank you very much for the info, it should certainly prove useful considering it does seem like Windows 3.1 and 95 exclusive games are few and far between on GOG, especially those with FMV. I'm actually thinking of creating a small list of those by checking out my collection and perhaps posting here.
Post edited 5 days ago by QuebecDragon
Posted 5 days ago
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QuebecDragon: Any of those Windows 95-exclusive games from 1995 to 1998 available on GOG?
Hmm... well, this is a bit tricker than I thought. Apparently, a lot of GOG games that I thought were Windows 95 exclusive also had DOS counterparts. GOG doesn't necessarily sell those DOS versions, but they did exist.

A few GOG games that I did find which are ONLY for Windows 95 without a DOS counterpart include Diablo, Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire, Gex, Close Combat 2, Star Wars: Jedi Knight, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Total Annihilation, Riven, and Quake II. (There's probably a few more.) And the versions available on GOG all run just fine under modern hardware.

As you get into 1998 - 2000, then you start getting into the "Windows 98" territory. Most of the GOG games from that time period still ran just fine under Win95, but they technically weren't "Windows 95 exclusive" -- they were "Win9x".

I'm still coming up empty for anything on GOG that's exclusively for Win3.x.
Post edited 5 days ago by Ryan333
Posted 5 days ago
I used a search engine and found two:

Retro City Rampage DX
"Includes the Windows + Mac + Linux + MS-DOS versions, plus prototypes for Windows 3.1!"

True Love '95
"Four years later, the game was localized for Windows 95 and released in the U.S. and Europe by Otaku Publishing. Despite its popularity, the game has been in licensing limbo and only available to play through unofficial sources... UNTIL NOW!"

Enjoy~
Posted 4 days ago
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QuebecDragon: Any of those Windows 95-exclusive games from 1995 to 1998 available on GOG?
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Ryan333: Hmm... well, this is a bit tricker than I thought. Apparently, a lot of GOG games that I thought were Windows 95 exclusive also had DOS counterparts. GOG doesn't necessarily sell those DOS versions, but they did exist.

A few GOG games that I did find which are ONLY for Windows 95 without a DOS counterpart include Diablo, Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire, Gex, Close Combat 2, Star Wars: Jedi Knight, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Total Annihilation, Riven, and Quake II. (There's probably a few more.) And the versions available on GOG all run just fine under modern hardware.

As you get into 1998 - 2000, then you start getting into the "Windows 98" territory. Most of the GOG games from that time period still ran just fine under Win95, but they technically weren't "Windows 95 exclusive" -- they were "Win9x".

I'm still coming up empty for anything on GOG that's exclusively for Win3.x.
Wow, I'm really surprised about those initial Windows 95 exclusives, especially Diablo, Jedi Knight and Quake II. In my memory and mind, they were all DOS games.Ok, maybe they were Windows 95 initially, but obviously they could work in later versions of Windows so not really a problem. The real problem might be for those Windows 3.1 games.Thanks for the info.
Posted 4 days ago
Doom's pretty good
Posted 4 days ago
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DannDaMANN: Doom's pretty good
Only one of the most iconic PC games of all time...
Posted 4 days ago
Civilization and Lemmings had Win 3.1 versions, GOG should really have them. Oh wait, nevermind :(
Posted 4 days ago
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maxleod: Civilization and Lemmings had Win 3.1 versions, GOG should really have them. Oh wait, nevermind :(
That would actually be the valid use case for winedvm/the current successor state of it.
Posted 4 days ago
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JP4n: True Love '95
AFAIK, the version here is a Ren'Py remake. don't have it myself so could be wrong.
Posted 3 days ago
still surprised that gog doesnt have Stars!
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/stars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars!

it was one of my favorite 4X back in those win95 days, would be a good addition to old win95 game lists

i replayed it a few years ago , it was working good on window 10 with StarsWine (note that you need to have the game serial for it to work)
https://github.com/stars-4x/starswine/releases/latest
Post edited Yesterday by Sanc
Posted 3 days ago
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JP4n: True Love '95
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LynXsh: AFAIK, the version here is a Ren'Py remake. don't have it myself so could be wrong.
I don't have them too. Its a good task for the OP. He asked for them so I think he is ready to test them~
Posted 3 days ago
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Sanc: still surprised that gog doesnt have Stars!
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/stars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars!

it was one of my favorite 4X back in those win95 days, would be a good addition to old win95 game lists

i replayed it a few years ago , it was working good on window 10 with StarsWine (note that you need to have the game serial for it to work)
https://github.com/stars-4x/starswine/releases/latest
Probably because the developer company is a dotted blinking outline. For a lot of the design team, Stars was the final game on record.

The publisher, Empire Interactive Entertainment was part of a bigger firm which was folded into Zoo, becoming indiePub, who then folded themselves. That one is a chalk outline. The only way to dig that one up would be to go disinter records in Ohio.
Posted 3 days ago
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AWG43: Chaos Overlords, the game from 1996. It has never been discounted on GOG though.
It was : https://isthereanydeal.com/game/chaos-overlords/history/
Posted 3 days ago
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LynXsh: AFAIK, the version here is a Ren'Py remake. don't have it myself so could be wrong.
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JP4n: I don't have them too. Its a good task for the OP. He asked for them so I think he is ready to test them~
no matter what engine it works on, True Love '95 is great.
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General discussionAny good old Windows 3.1 and 95 games on GOG?(43 posts)(43 posts)
(43 posts)