A sizable portion of video game history is going to be rendered inaccessible to the average user within the next few years:
According to Eweek, Windows Vista will not be able to run 16-bit programs, so Windows 3.1 programs, and many DOS programs (most? all?) will cease to work once you install upgrade to Vista.
Apple’s switch to Intel chips also means the end of OS 9 support, so all your pre-2001 Mac games are not going to work anymore.
We will still be able to play old games in the future by running various emulators and virtual machines, but it will be out of reach for most users.
11 years from the release of Windows’95 to not supporting Windows 3.1 is a very short time in culture, but 5 years from the release of OSX to not supporting OS9 is the blink of an eye.
These are corporate decisions that could be reversed. Somebody should stage a campaign. Any takers?
As a techie, I think it would be better to encourage the growth and proliferation of emulators and VMs. Let’s put them within the reach of most users.
For that matter, the people mostly interested in classic games aren’t the sort to balk at tinkering with emulators and VMs anyway.
The reason I take this stance is that it is important for OSes to mature and grow. Cobbling in support for old applications is one more component to make an operating system slow, buggy, and/or unstable.
But then OS9 support in OSX does seem to be an emulator of sorts, an application running on top of the OS. So why not continue supporting it? It shouldn’t impact on system stability.
I think Win16 in Windows is also a separate program that runs when you launch a 16-bit application.
New nintendo systems also aren’t able to run the old NES games. If you want to play those games you should run them on your ancient machine. Same thing for personal computers, when you want to run old games, you sometimes have to go back to the old hardware. (off course the old computer hardware isn’t as compact as a consule, onless you buy a Macmini ;) )
Another thing is that you don’t have to upgrade. If you want to play DOS games don’t install Vista
DOS games already don’t work in Windows 2000 and XP, so they will continue to not work in Longhorn. DOSBox is the solution to this problem… an x86 emulator specifically geared towards games. It’s very mature and works great. You’ll need a very powerful machine to run the late-era DOS games, though.
How many Mac-exclusive games have there really been in the past 5 years? Seems like most of the older stuff is already well-served by an emulator like Basilisk.
“But then OS9 support in OSX does seem to be an emulator of sorts, an application running on top of the OS. So why not continue supporting it?”
Why? Because they can’t get it to run on the x86 platform, probably.
“It shouldn’t impact on system stability.”
“I think Win16 in Windows is also a separate program that runs when you launch a 16-bit application.”
A separate program designed to fully integrate with the existing OS and not interfere with the end user experience. I can tell you that OS 9 emulation under OS X can cause system instability, given that it’s designed to run continuously in the background, taking up system resources, using old libraries, etc. Trust me, when the emulation us built into the OS, it adds to potential system instability. If every feature added to your OS has to be backwards compatible with an integrated emulator, it doesn’t lend itself to stability or progress.
As pointed out above, DOSBox is a nice DOS emulator that runs under Windows and Linux. If it’s possible, Mac emulators will begin to propagate as well, once the platform switch happens.
DOSBox runs on Mac OSX as well. Also, the latest builds are able to run Windows 3.11, so theoretically all legacy PC stuff is safe for the future.
If you don’t like the decisions MS seems to be making with Vista, the best thing you can do is not buy it. I’m still running Windows 2000 at home because it’s stable, secure and does everything I need it to.
well, time to get out your old atari 2600 again ;)
Oi Jesper. I got a beautiful 386, hardly used, and it’s got your name on it… if you got $!,000,000!!!
I just realized I charged you a million exclaimation-mark bucks. Well. A deal’s a deal. I’ll take it in raw text file format, if you don’t mind :/
“mart?jn wrote: New nintendo systems also aren?t able to run the old NES games”
Yes they are – the revolution will be able to play games from the old Nintendo systems.
I think the latest word on the Revolution is that you will have to pay to play old games … Disappointing.
Honestly, old games should be left in the past and new ones should be bulit upon the “great ones.” ie Monkey Island. Game downloads should still be able to run though.
Think of old games as a library: You don’t have to play all the old games every day, but you don’t want to lose them either.
Jesper, thanks for calling some attention to this problem, which plagues e-lit, digital art, and other sorts of new media studies as well. I doubt a write-in campaign will help, but awareness of it will help scholars and programmers to deal as best we can. I think that will involve writing more and friendlier emulators and identifying how emulation and other approaches can support our study of games, e-lit, art, etc.
Regarding the Classic environment, as Apple explains, “The Classic environment is not an emulator; it is a hardware abstraction layer between an installed Mac OS 9 System Folder and the Mac OS X kernel environment.” Classic still requires a PowerPC to run.
Apple did also develop a 68k emulator to allow pre-PowerPC code to run on PPC chips, but that was a separate system, developed earlier.
i love mac i just installed x86 mac intel on amd 64 flying like g4
Use an emulator. That’s what they’re for. Shapeshifter is a powermac emulator for windows and linux, it emulates a g3 mac and can run os 8.6 through 9.04. It has a nice configuration tool (which I wrote) called sheepgui (windows only though), and I’ll bit that sheepshaver will run great under osx using either darwine or via the linux version running under apple-x.
Soooo, you can still run your old mac games etc as well as or better than you could years ago. I do it all the time, and I run my os9 games on windows using this technique…. you should try it.
And yes, to everyone out there who commented, emulation built into the operating system is dangerous, the only successful built-in emulator is the 68k emulator built into powermacs. you wouldn’t know it was there. but software/os level emulators have a bad history. a stand alone application based emulator is far more reliable, you just have to start the guest os within the application rather than having the ancient program run transparently in your native os.
actually, I have to ammend my comment – it’s not proven in the world yet, but I’m running osx on intel currently (who isn’t these days, it is so VASTLY superior to windows xp), and intel osx contains rosetta, a powerpc emulator. Rosetta is absolutely amazing. It’s the fastest cpu-level software-based emulator I’ve ever used, and it’s transparently integrated into the OS so you don’t even know you’re using it. if you have an sse3 CPU and compatible motherboard, osx for intel will run ppc osx apps very VERY fast. It’s not as fast as native, but it’s like 70% speed for me which is freakin unbelievable when you consider that pearpc, an architechture emulator which also emulated the ppc cpu through software, only got to about 5% to 10% speed of the original cpu.
Once again, the only developers in the world to create transparent, built-in, automagical cpu emulators is: APPLE COMPUTERS INC.
These guys never cease to impress me.
I’m using an intel mac and rosetta is the worst attempt at an emulator i have seen
none of my classic apps work, and that is particularly disappointing as i got my new mac when my old mac was fried. I wouldn’t mind if i could find an emulator to run classic apps, but rosetta only translates osX apps, which it almost never needs to do. I also really wouldn’t mind if a certain software company would make osx versions of three or four of its games, or at least provide a porting tool so i can run my favourite games again.
The most annoying part is when this company brings out an updated version of the first game, that still runs on classic, even though everyone’s on osx by now. Yes, CYAN-RED ORB-Whatever you are, i’m talking about YOU.
Anyway, long story short, we wouldn’t need backwards-compatible operating systems if games could just be future-proofed.
And why would windows give up on such an easy thing as dos? some of those games are the coolest.
As far as I know, there’s no such thing as a “Windows 3.1 game” considering Windows 3.1 was basically an application itself on top of DOS. Games didn’t become “Windows games” until Windows 95, when Windows actually became more of an operating system.
The way I see it, is either a) get DosBox (or some other DOS emulator) so you can play your beloved old games within Windows….or b) simply make a DOS boot CD consisting of DOS and all your DOS games.
Well, I wrote a Windows 3.1 game once – I used the Windows 3.1 APIs for drawing graphics, playing sound and so on.
But I agree, DosBox is the way to go.
Download Virtual PC from Microsoft. Its free.
I prefer Virtual PC 2004 SP1 over VPC 2007 as it can run OS/2. It says it won’t run under Vista but it seems to work fine. Here is the link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6d58729d-dfa8-40bf-afaf-20bcb7f01cd1&DisplayLang=en
Install DOS on it but remark out out smartdrv.exe in autoexec.bat. You don’t need it. Or use Win98SE as it ran DOS games nicely.
This emulates DOS with a soundblaster card, and it gives you more DOS memory than you ever had with real DOS. so its actually easier to set up old DOS games than it was with real DOS.
Quit yer crying and go with the flow. Compatibility Smability. Software changes, hardware changes. Upgrade yer machine and wait for an emulator (it’ll happen)
I got my first home computer in 1999 a mac – now I can’t take my computing history with me with an Intel mac – I bought it and suddenly realised I couldn,t play all my old games Deus Ex Tomg raider Monkey Island etc and I’m pissed off
Before I bought Windows Vista I did a little research to play some of my old dos based games, I found that if I move a file or two from the System32 folder to another it would work…to my amazement it did work, unfortunately I can’t remember what the two files were I just wish things were a little easier with vista. I tried playing Command & Conquer via DOSBox with no luck, and still searching. If there is anyone there that could help I would be much abliged.
They needed to get rid of dos because of the insane clock speeds with the newer computer chips. I still play dos games.