Windows 98 Emulation

DjQuick2008

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This 1 might be a bit out there but id be interested to go back and play old PC games and download
encarta 98 to browse. I saw ISO files for encarta so it is possible. Id be running on windows 11.
Thanks for any help in advance.
 
I use Retroarch Dosbox Pure. Basically just load the ISO of win 98 installation disc with the Dosbox pure core, install it on C (which will be a virtual drive contained in a zip file with the name of your ISO in the retroarch saves folder).

Encarta will be fine with the default settings, but in the core options you can emulate early 3D graphics card.
 
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There are options on ebay of actual PCs with Win 98 pre installed specifically for gaming which i also wouldnt mind but ill see if my brain will let me have a go at what has been suggested above. Thank you.
 
Well windows 98 games fell in to 3 categories
DOS Games: You can just use DOSBox to run.
32Bit: Windows 10/11 has built in compatibility for a lot of them.
For the stuff that Windows, and DOSBox does not cover there is usually a patch somewhere, you can check the "My Abandonware" site for games that are abandoned, and will tell you how to make them run on current computers.

But if you really want to emulate Windows 98: https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/
 
I've been using 86Box for a while now. Virtual Machines are alright but they tend to have compatibility issues, especially with anything that requires hardware 3D acceleration. Dosbox forks are alright but they are primarily focused on DOS so Win9x is a bit of an afterthought. As such they tend to be slow, at least in my experience.

86Box and PCEm mentioned earlier are straight up emulators. They mimic the hardware of the day just like console emulators we know and love. Unfortunately they require a beefy PC if you want to get into, say, very late 90s/early 2000s gaming. As a point of reference, my 6th gen i5 clocked at 3.31GHz can emulate a 120MHz Pentium MMX. Anything more powerful than that and it starts choking. This should still be enough for most games released up to 1997 or so. Quite a few games and applications released later should still work, so long as they're not some cutting edge stuff.
 
Ackshually you reminded me to install it here on this laptop OP. Gonna play me some Phantasmagoria next. With savestates and a glorious CRT shader.

System is ArchLinux but it will be the same for any Retroarch out there, so I made some pretty pictures all along for youses.

Load Content > Load your ISO.
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Use DOSBox Pure as opening core.
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Use Retroarch "game focus" (default hotkey = SCROLL LOCK) so you can use the keyboard to input theproduct key)
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Accept all by default and click OK and Yes and allow Microsoft to use your kidneys untill it reboot in Win98.
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Early 3D games will require tweaking with core options like this one.
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Nest time you use Retroarch : Load DOSBox Pure core and start it
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I was able to do a virtual machine of Win98 to play some Win98 software and games. I would suggest that you do that. DOSBox is an okay option, but you won't get everything out of it. However, it does require more work, as you need to "legally acquire" a Windows 98 CD, and hunt down a "legally acquired" key.
 
Will look into it im pretty versed in installing console emulators now so a crack at windows would be good.
I agree with the virtual machine route. I purposely keep an install of Windows 98 just for old games and software. VMware and originally Microsoft Virtual PC. PCem looks even more impressive.
 
Thanks for posting the process for getting that running in retroarch/dosbox!

I actually still have my old Win98 PC simply because some of my fav games do not run on newer OS's. I know some of them have been re-released on GOG, like Warlords 3, but that is the newer version than the original game that I have, which is what I really want.
 
if you wanna play 3D games in Windows 98, then they might not run very smoothly in Dosbox because there in no 3D hardware-acceleration by the GPU in Dosbox, its all done on the CPU (with exceptions).

If you wanna achieve maximum 3D accelerated performance on old games that don't run on modern windows/GPUs out-of-the-box, you could first try to get them to run using a 'wrapper', which just translates old DirectX/Glide API calls to newer API calls that your modern GPU does support.
However if the game relies heavily on Windows98 itself, then a wrapper will not work. If you still want to get the most performance then you could try QEMU-3DFX, its the QEMU emulator with GPU passthrough, it runs a wrapper inside the VM that converts the API calls to OpenGL, that gets send to the hypervisor and processed there. But its hard to setup and the dev is toxic.
But QEMU-3DFX can be very instable because it doesn't try to mimic a real Win98 era CPU, so you might run into issues due to the CPU being too fast or CPU instructionset differences, so you would do the next step towards accuracy without sacrificing performance, and that is SoftGPU, which is a driver for Type-2 hypervisors like Virtualbox/Vmware that gives you a properly hardware accelerated vGPU. Its slower then QEMU-3DFX, but its more stable.
If that doesn't work, you will have to look into more low-level emulation like x86box, PCEm or Dosbox-X, which will do graphics card emulation on the CPU so its slow, but very accurate and stable.

So for 3D games I always try it in this order Wrapper>QEMU-3DFX>SoftGPU>x86box/PCem/Dosbox-X>Buying a real retro PC.
 
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I use virtualbox to run old versions of windows. I've never really found a decent x86 emulator to run windows old games. It's easier just to virtualize the whole system and run them that way.
 
Well it turns out Phantasmagoria was still DOS compatible and it's easier on DOS-Box to have Midi music with MT32 sound with the DOS version, as on Win98 you'd get the standard MIDI font and have to tweak to get better sounds.

So I'm gonna play through it in DOS but still wanted to stress test my fresh win98 Retroarch install with something cool. With 32 bit depth colors and a little bit of 3D, why not?

So I installed 1997 Kalisto's Dark Earth, a postapocalyptic "alone in the dark-esque" game. I got gamepad support out of the box, which will be fitting for those tank controls. And I kinda got some really tiny scanlines with CRT-Guest shader to smooth things out and make the 3D models blend a bit better.

Here's the raw pixel version:
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And here goes the shader.
1.jpg

I think I'm gonna play through this one like that. Only got a vague memory from that game I never even finished back then.
 

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