running ancient windows games on mac OS?

August 20, 2020 12:57 PM

Which product and set-up should I use to enable me to use my current Macbook to play Windows 95 era games?

I would like to learn how to run virtual Windows computers to play a very old game. The game runs in a limited fashion on Windows 10, but I would also like to try to play in a Windows XP environment to see if I can get all the features to work (it's a BBS text-based RPG).

The problem is, I only have a Macbook to play on. So what programs should I look at that will let me either run a Windows program on my Macbook, or access a Windows machine while on my Macbook? (I have a Windows 10 media-server I could use to run the program, but it's not convenient to play on at all).

posted by skewed to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Best answer: The last time I did any VM-type stuff, I used winebottler and it worked great. This was years ago, however, and I don't know if there's something better out there now. Or you can just try and install wine directly yourself, which is pretty painless these days.
posted by curious nu at 1:09 PM on August 20, 2020

Best answer: Assuming that you have a Windows XP installation disk, I'd use a virtual machine, either VMWare Fusion (if you want a commercial product) or VirtualBox (if you want open source).
posted by chbrooks at 1:29 PM on August 20, 2020

Best answer: If it's just a text-based game, it might run in DOSBox.

If it actually requires Windows, you can easily install Windows 95 or 98 on VirtualBox.
If you get access to installation media, there was an allegedly official Win98SE product key released by Microsoft that you can use in your virtual machine for that. (I won't paste it here in case it is not actually official, but it's easy to google).
Once you have Win98 installed in your VM, you can run your games inside that box, typically with good success. Especially if it's just a text-based game, you don't need to worry about wonky graphics or sound drivers.

Edit: Additional thought: If you actually can give the name of the game, there is a chance someone else loves it and has ported it to run better on modern systems already...
posted by jozxyqk at 1:30 PM on August 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

Consider looking at classicreload.com and myabandonware.com
posted by PaulVario at 1:38 PM on August 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Best answer: access a Windows machine while on my Macbook

Windows Remote Desktop (Mac App Store)

You'll need to make sure that the two computers can communicate, either by running "ping <Windows computer name or IP address>" from the Mac, and then allowing Windows Remote Desktop connections on the Windows computer. Possibly more steps if your network or Windows computer configurations are complicated. Make sure that the Windows system has a strong password for all accounts.
posted by meowzilla at 1:44 PM on August 20, 2020

Response by poster: It's called major mud, and to my knowledge nobody's ported it yet, it's a pretty niche product. However, there is a community of people playing it on old computers and virtual computers. At this point, a big part of my interest is in learning about setting up virtual machines/emulators/etc.
posted by skewed at 1:52 PM on August 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you for these suggestions, I will check them out! I have previously tried Wine but I couldn't get it to work at all, and Parallels, which worked okay, but it was $70 to use after a trial period and didn't seem worth it for what I was trying to do.
posted by skewed at 2:07 PM on August 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

DOSbox will probably work. I still play SC2K on my Mac thanks to DOSbox.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:12 PM on August 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

I like Boxer, which I think can be used to play some Windows games.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 6:15 PM on August 20, 2020

Note that if you're running macOS 10.15 Catalina which no longer supports 32 bit applications, you'll need a special build of Boxer. But Boxer is fantastic for this use case and super simple to use.
posted by majick at 6:28 PM on August 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

this is probably a rather silly way to do it (given the real suggestions above - and seconding DOSbox for that, it ought to do what you want just fine if you don't go the VMware/Parallels/VirtualBox route with an XP CD) but there is the Windows95.js thing that popped up on the Blue not long ago. You can install other things into it - once you've downloaded and started it up, there's a "Modify C: Drive" button you can use to copy things onto it, or read through the FAQ for more info. It may not run.. great if you're on an especially old system, but if you're just trying to use a DOS-based app, it'll probably be OK. (Plus, very little setup.) As a lark, I ran it on my old 2010 MacBook - one of the very last plastic models - and it was usable but only just. That is, however, a machine that's 10 years old and isn't supported by recent versions of macOS, though.)
posted by mrg at 7:18 PM on August 21, 2020