Playing 95/98 games on Vista?

[nintendodork]

Hey everyone,

I was digging through all of our old CDs in this cabinet, and I came across this game that I loved to play when Windows 95/98 were new.  We got rid of that computer since then, and now, sitting here on this computer that has Vista, I was wondering if there's any way to play this game.  I tried just a regular installation, which means I just popped the CD in, and the menu came up that had the option to install, view the manual PDF, and a few other things.  I clicked install, the screen went away, my computer thought for a second, and then nothing happened.


What (if anything) can I do?

[Paul-FC]

Use a program called DOSBox

[Medisinyl]

Or do what I did and get a Windows '98 computer.  They're practically free nowadays (got mine for free =P [then maxed the RAM and CPU since all that is dirt cheap now too]).  

[nintendodork]

I have DOSBox, I didn't think that would do anything.  Looking at the intro though, it talks about CD ROM emulation, but I can't understand any of it. >_>

I did however get past the first installation screen, and the game actually started to install, but it said it had trouble moving the music file named "TRACK10.xa"

What the hell is an .XA file?

[133MHz]

XA is some kind of compressed audio used mainly by the Sony PlayStation console (well it's actually a whole CD-ROM standard but in your case it's pretty clear that it's a compressed audio track).

Try enabling Windows 95/98 compatibility mode for the Setup program. Don't ask me how to do it because I loathe Vista.

BTW DOSBox won't work for Windows games.

[xyzzy32]

133MHz beat me to it, but I think these are the direct steps...
Assuming it's the same from XP to Vista, find the installation application on the CD and go to properties -> compatibility (tab). From there you can check "run this program in compatibility mode for Windows 95" and some other things which may improve performance. I've found it to work well for ATF Gold, but there's little hope that your program will run flawlessly.

[nintendodork]

Tried compatibility mode for Win95, and I got the same problem.

[xyzzy32]

Fiddle with the other settings and see if that does anything (including '98 compatibility). Also, search the web to see if any compatibility patches exist for the game. Unfortunately, given the plethora of issues plaguing Vista, you may never get it to work and might need to set up dual-booting with '98 or XP. Or you could purchase a '98 machine for $5.

[nintendodork]

Still got the same error with Win98, but now I found a new solution.  This game was also released for the PSX!

[cubelmariomadness]

Maybe right click it and run it as admin? That's what I do.