[The Baconator]

Steam and GoG are not options as they do not have the games I want to run, all of which are childhood games.

I tried Virtualbox but I can't change the screen resolution, and according to their site virtualbox is not optimized for Windows 9x OS's. The game also said I need 256 colors, but I can't change it for some reason

I recall trying Microsoft Virtual PC in the past for other games, but I think it did not support hardware acceleration making majority of titles incompatible or something like that, not sure.

Why is it easier to emulate console games that old PC games?

[Lyoko774]

Could try Dosbox but that's hit-or-miss when it comes to Windows games it seems..
Possibly VMWare?
Could also try a Windows XP machine, as believe it or not I've had some pretty good compatibility with Windows XP and DOS and 98 games. (Except some flip the fuck out and run at 100x normal speed )

[bohb]

You are correct that VirtualBox doesn't officially support Windows 98, but it can be run with some tricks. Here's an installation guide for Windows 98 on VB:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=9918

Since many Windows 98 games were still DOS based, or used the WIN16 API instead of WIN32, they won't run properly on XP (especially DOS games that required direct hardware access.)

[The Baconator]

bohb posted:

You are correct that VirtualBox doesn't officially support Windows 98, but it can be run with some tricks. Here's an installation guide for Windows 98 on VB:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=9918

Since many Windows 98 games were still DOS based, or used the WIN16 API instead of WIN32, they won't run properly on XP (especially DOS games that required direct hardware access.)

could not do the audio steps, the results just did not match for me, nor did the drivers work

Edited:

I long for the day when emulating old PC games is possible, ironic how console emulation is so easy compared to this

[tratzzz]

Lyoko774 posted:

Could try Dosbox but that's hit-or-miss when it comes to Windows games it seems..
Possibly VMWare?
Could also try a Windows XP machine, as believe it or not I've had some pretty good compatibility with Windows XP and DOS and 98 games. (Except some flip the fuck out and run at 100x normal speed )

the "flip the fuck out and run at 100x normal speed" can be caused by a multicore CPU.

[alex-is-epic]

The Baconator posted:

I long for the day when emulating old PC games is possible, ironic how console emulation is so easy compared to this

You long for the day that emulation for old things is possible. What you really need to do is look to the past where these things took place. Like, get a retro pc and play your games there.

[The Baconator]

Well I got it to work in VMWare, much higher quality than VirtualBox