I'm curious. At one point in time, it wasn't too uncommon for it to be very tricky to get old games running well or at all. But now that decades of effort has gone into emulation, community patches, etcetra., do you still find games that are impossible to run? Which games?

I'm especially curious about anything from the 90s (DOS to Win98 era or so).

Outright impossible? No but -

Lure of the Temptress

I mean yes, it works on a basic level - but 2 things:
- the sound: I can't get it to be good as it can be (I verified this with a Youtube playthrough that got it right)
- the Virtual Theatre engine: I do plan on playing Beneath a Steel Sky and the original Broken Sword games so I hope there won't be problems there, but they very likely use a more advanced version of the engine and their popularity seems to ensure there will always be solutions for playing them under perfect conditions, however for Lure of the Temptress, it seems the engine's integration into ScummVM is less than ideal leading to worse gameplay conditions (NPCs interrupting flow more egregiously than on original hardware).

To be fair, I didn't try getting it to work perfectly for hours like with some other (better) games. I only got it because it was free and therefore not much of a risk... I ended up watching that aforementioned playthrough, indeed seems like a pretty average puzzle-adventure game.

One thing worth noting if you're interested in DOS-era games: it's worth going the extra mile to get the sound right, an often forgotten factor. ScummVM has improved to make this easier and I really benefited from this with Sam and Max: Hit the Road for example, also I only realised after finishing Ultima VII: The Black Gate that the sound could be better, and will have that fixed for Ultima VII: Serpent Isle.

I've found they often fall into a few groups:-

- Hard-coded for speed. There are some games that were hard-coded to a certain speed. Eg, read the negative review of the Castles 1-2 games named "Great Game But Bad Port" and I've experienced the same thing on a few titles. Basically some games were hard-coded to run on 16-40MHz CPU's. Run then on a 300MHz CPU and they'll run 10x faster. The "workaround" (at the time) for +100MHz 486's was to press the "Turbo" button on the case (that actually slowed a CPU down for compatibility reasons). The problem with that today is that emulator mechanisms that do the same thing (eg, adjustable CTRL F11/F12 DOSBox cycles) is that some games even for their day had some parts of the game that ran faster than others, making it difficult to pick say a single DOSBox figure without having parts of the game run too fast at the same setting that will run other 'heavier' parts of the game too slowly. Such games are "runnable" but it's often awkward / frustrating enough that it's not worth it.

- No ALT-TAB. There are some games including here on GOG which can only run by essentially "breaking" Windows ability to ALT-TAB because it completely borks Windows. Eg, force reenable ALT-TABbing in The Longest Journey and the Windows desktop resolution will be stuck at 640x480, low colour depth, giant fonts, etc, until you reboot (or the game gets stuck in being unable to ALT-TAB back) which is why GOG disable it. Now some such games (like The Longest Journey) can now be run in ScummVM which solves that problem, but others (eg, Dark Fall: The Journal) still have ALT-TABbing issues with no source-port solution. If you need to ALT-TAB when playing, any game which can only run by disabling ALT-TAB can be a deal breaker.

- 16-bit Windows (not DOS). When 64-bit CPU's & OS's were released, native 16-bit compatibility was dropped. This means 16-bit Windows games no longer ran natively (nor did DOS games under the Windows Command Line). DOSBox & ScummVM solved that problem for DOS games but there are a few thousand Windows 3.1 16-bit games that don't run. Now it is possible to get them to run like (64-bit Windows -> DOSBox -> Windows 3.1 under DOSBox -> game), example, but there's no way GOG or any store can legally distribute them like that, so it's very much a convoluted method that's beyond many people's tolerance level.

- Early DirectX / Flash game clunkiness. The mid to late 90s era (typically 1995-1998) is one awkward era where games were written for early DirectX 2-6 versions often have more compatibility issues than DirectX7 and newer games, even when using wrappers like dgVoodo2. Some Flash / Adobe AIR based games from the early 2000's seem to have similar 'flakiness' issues vs W10-11.

- DRM. Windows 10 deprecated several types like StarForce, etc, to the extent of blocking required dll's on an OS level. Only those who kept their "NoCD's" can get them to work.

Personally there are very few games I haven't been able to get running. Certainly everything I want to keep I have running. For me the two biggest frustrations are games that only run by locking out ALT-TAB and "hard-coded for old CPU's but at variable speed" thing are runnable but often 'finicky' enough I'm less likely to play them vs something else.

Incoming and Incoming Forces are two games I had a lot of problems with.

Its subforum here on GOG is pretty much filled with threads about various technical issues. Managed to get Incoming working manageably with some workarounds, but I couldn't get the music in Incoming Forces to not stutter, so I refrained from playing it. The same issue was in the first game, but you could fix the stuttering by saving the game and loading the save. Because you can no longer save freely in IF, I can't even try the same workaround.

But games actually impossible to run? Can't really think of any. But I remember having no success trying to run Worms 1 or 2 when I tried many years ago.

I still have (Captain) Claw on CD-ROM but can't run it because I think the installer is 32-bit or incompatible with my current Win 64-bit system in some other way. The same might apply to Heart of Darkness.

Some games I bought from GOG or other stores wouldn't run well for me (anymore) when I switched to Win 8 and I couldn't find a solution, but admittedly I probably didn't look super hard and gave up on them after a short while (Sacred, Ultima Underworld curiously - maybe I could have fixed it tinkering with DOS Box - and that one RPG that I can't remember the title of that was called after the antagonist I think and had a JRPG/anime style but was Western and real-time, IIRC). And some games didn't run in Win 8 at all (Soulbringer, that other game I can't remember the name* of which is a third-person shooter/puzzle adventure in which you can switch between four team members with different strengths) but they seem to work again in Win 10 now.

(* Geez, either I have way to many games or my memory isn't what it used to be ...)

https://dosbox-staging.github.io/

https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/wiki

Dosbox-Staging - Discord Chat Channel

There's also PCem, which also emulates the bios as well.

Linus Tech Tips episode covered this. A few more years and hopefully we can emulate perfectly (or at least good enough) all the systems that are otherwise long gone.

I've kept an old hardware PC that runs Windows XP, but I didn't come across many games I could only get to run there. After I build that retro-rig, I only played two games on it, with the Windows XP-systemdrive plugged in (and internet unplugged of course):

History Channel Civil War would only run on Windows XP

Industrial Giant 2 (before it got released on GOG and I only had the Gamersgate version) would not display a proper startup menu for the game on my modern rig, nor on my old rig in WIndows 10, so I ran it on Windows XP.


Furthermore I had problems running Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on my modern Ryzen rig, so I did run it on my retro rig (old AMD Athlon X2 processor and old AMD videocard) with the Windows 10-systemdrive plugged in (with internet plugged). But I remember later on I WAS able to run it on modern hardware as well, namely a Ryzen laptop. But since my Ryzen desktop can run the Remastered version that looks much better, I didn't bother trying out if the old version of CoD:MW2 would run well after all.

I remember a friend telling me about how Elder Scrolls: Redguard was basically impossible to play on any hardware he had. I tried playing it myself when the GOG version released, and I couldn't. One of very few tech-related refunds I've done here.

WWF Raw from 2002. It runs fine fresh after install but at the second or third start the game suddenly runs brutally choppy and the only fix is uninstall and re-install. This has happened on all 3 of my Windows 10 systems eventually and the issue seems so obscure that i cannot find a fix.

From my personal experience, I can say that it was harder to make old games run in the past than it is nowadays.

Running old 32-bit games on Windows 11 generally works well. However, some games, particularly if they are protected by Starforce or other copy protection software, take an emulator in order for them to run. In such cases, or when it's a 16-bit title, I use PCEM with Win95/98/XP as the operating system. For DOS games I use DOSbox-X run in SDL2 64-bit mode. Occasionally, adjusting settings in DOSbox is necessary to optimize performance, but overall, I haven't come across any games that refuse to work with it.

Overall, I can say that most games will run, provided the settings are correct and the files are not corrupted. This can be the case when dealing with versions downloaded from abandonware sites or contained in torrent collections.

This got me curious.
Installed, started.
Credits, background story with voice over, talk in the tavern.
Everything runs fine.
Cut to ship, two pirates attack which I have to fight back.
Could be played without flaws.
Took me just a little time to figure out how to sword fight.
(a time which could have been avoided, had I read the manual first)
Arrival in the port, reading the letter, talking to the captain.
All fine. No problems.
I play on a PC with Win10.

for these games I would say to just get the Amiga versions and run them trough an emulator. the Amiga versions are better than the DOS versions anyway

I have this in sven mach's noch einmal or sven 7 i think on windows 10.
The game likes to slow down and become choppy unless i restart the pc then it suddenly works clean.
It only lags if i haven't restarted my pc in a while and i do turn off my pc every day and then turn it on the next day.
The issue is almost similar.

Ah it's one of those games! Thanks for the tip, I've used Amiga emulation successfully multiple times, maybe next time I'll try emulating this game