I wonder what causes this. The fact that it can run fine under the right circumstances probably means there is some extremely simple tweak to fix it. The problem is i can't find a solution anywhere.

Speaking of old games, what causes the BC Error 435 error message in Operation Body Count (DOS)?

The project is a little dusty, but I think you'll find this quite pleasing.


Creatures: The Albian Years
It's probably due to me running them in Wine rather than a virtual machine; and some missing DLL or library nobody thought to mention. I can open a world, I can get a norn into it via the debugging tools, but I can't actually open any of the modules. (No, the remastered patch didn't do anything.) And the speed of OpenC2E's development is...slow.

Interstate 76
I did have this running for a time, but that was one hard drive ago. Someone should just make a bloody source port already; so everyone has to jump though less hoops to hear Stampede read poems.

Space Quest IV: This game is infamously broken in many places. Even running it on period accurate hardware will still not be perfect because oops, your bus speed is slightly different, here come the time cops.

Mordor: The Depths of Dejnol: One of the very few dungeon crawls I like, it won't run because frankly put, it appears to be doing weird tricks in order to run multiple programs (perhaps even via DOS) that doesn't jive with Modern Ways of Doing Things. You can go to the store, look at guilds, but entering the dungeon or looking in the guild library will cause it to crash.

Good to know. Maybe they applied some fixes since then. I bought it on GOG release (2015?), asked support for help, and they said they would likely not be able to solve the issue, as it was made for old 3dfx architecture. I don't remember what OS I was running back then, but it was either Windows 7 or 10.

If you mean the original retail versions of games, two obstacles:

1. CD copy protections are increasingly incompatible with newer Windows versions.

2. Less and less people have optical CD/DVD drives on their PCs anymore, and I am unsure if USB DVD drives that you can still buy are fully compatible with the aforementioned copy protections.

Naturally you can try to circumvent those issues by using noCD cracks, trying to make working CD/DVD images of your discs etc., but it can be quite a lot of hassle.

Nuclear Strike CD version is a pita, starting with the installer.

Syndicate Wars has a few speed problems. As well as the buttons can stick, while turning the camera. As in they fail workk

None that I can think of.
There are so many third party tools and everything that anything can be run. Obviously there are some glitches and some features may not be available as originally intended. But on the other hand, in many cases there are some new extra features, such as widescreen hacks for 4:3 games and so on.

A game that simply wouldn't run at all, that I haven't personally seen yet.


Space Quest IV is a very annoying game as is, but I don't think the problems are related to compatibility.

In fact, there are so many ways to run that game on modern systems.
DOSbox, ScummVM, fan patches to fix things ("New Rising Sun" and others), etc.

Unless you want absolute perfection, it's actually an example of an old game that is easy to run on modern systems, rather than an example of something that is impossible to run.

Or just buy an external/internal drive. Them not being included in pre-builts these days doesn't mean they ceased to exist. They are also very cheap. If you have a lot of older games on discs, there is absolutely no reason to not have a drive for them other than laziness.

That being said, you should still absolutely use a no-cd patch/crack for any game you can to prolong the disc's lifespan.

Mig Alley
is the one that comes to mind for me... I tried finding some recent repacks around, but even the few times I managed to get to the start screen, game is extremely unstable

I have the opposite problem...trying to run new games on my old system!!!

I mentioned USB DVD drives, as I have one. I guess you can even buy USB floppy drives nowadays, in case you have some old floppy games lying around.

However, I seem to remember reading that they may have issues e.g. with some copy protections and stuff.

Pro Rally 2001.... well most Ubisoft games of that era actually
It works great with dgVoodoo 2, if you have trouble installing old games try the suggestions on this page.

https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=90351 True, I own Incoming on GOG and it has a lot of issues so I dusted off my old cd-rom and I almost got it working flawlessly but still with some annoying graphic anomalies using dgVoodoo 2 (without it it wouldn't work).
I eventually bought the Zoom Platform version, which also has the expansion pack, which works great.
Which proves gog needs to improve their stuff if they want to claim what they preach.

True. That does ring a bell. Luckily, I'm still using my now 10+ years old internal drive and it still works without issues :P

I remember trying to run the Exile games via WINE in a VM under Linux. (Haven't tried recently.)

I believe I got Exile: Escape from the Pit to run nicely, but didn't have any success with Exile 2: Crystal Souls or Exile 3: Ruined World. (Yes, these games have been remade more than once, but some people prefer the originals, particularly since there's many spells that didn't make it into the remakes, and the remakes also ditched the simple tile-based view in exchange for a slanted isometric view.