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[Krathoon]

I was playing around with the PC versions of Assassin's Creed 3 and 1 and it reminded me of the bullcrap that happens with old PC games.

For some reason, AC3 will not run at all anymore in Win11. The solution for this is just to buy the AC3 Remaster for $10.

Also, I ran into a problem with AC1 periodically freezing. It turns out that the game is trying to access a server as you are playing and freezing the game.

The solution to this is to edit a hosts file to block the connection.

So, what kind of bullcrap you have ran into with old PC games?

 

[LordOfChaos]

Could you not do this?

I think I did this for at least some games, I think Halo 2 that would only launch under Vista or something

 

[BennyBlanco]

Trying to play Rayman Legends on steam deck was a whole ordeal but I eventually got it working. Ubisoft are dickheads.

 

[Krappadizzle]

More often than not, you can just go on PCGamingWiki and almost always; most common problems are already addressed.

It can be annoying, but if you've been on PC a while, the structures and architectures have change/shifted so drastically over the years, it's not very reasonable to expect old titles to run flawlessly out the box on newer hardware/software. With a modicum of effort you can almost always find the solution to your problems.

That said, hex editing games that should support Ultrawide resolutions that bafflingly don't is more common than I'd like to see.

 

[RagnarokIV]

That’s nothing compared to the hellish nightmare of getting weird old games to run like Ripper, Blood Omen or random FMV games.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Time Shift had some issue that was eventually corrected. Can’t remember what the heck it was.

 

[Dancer_BV]

Resolution and fullscreen inconsistencies remain as my main issue for running old games on PC. They are fond of shrinking all of my other open windows to a quarter of their size.

 

[Krappadizzle]

I haven't played it in a while but I remember for Prey(2006) on Steam, you had a certain number of activations per account/pc that you would need to update and change if you changed hardware. Was so annoying. I should boot up Prey again, it's been a long time since I played that.

 

[Krathoon]

Oh, I know. The older you go with PC games, the worse it can get.

That is why it is great that eXoDOS and GoG exist.

 

[Krathoon]

Could you not do this?

I think I did this for at least some games, maybe Halo CE

For some reason, that is not working for AC3. It acts like it is going to launch, but hangs.

 

[Caffeine]

when it changes my resolution and moves all my shit to monitor 2.

 

[Krathoon]

When dealing with AC3, it is better just to buy the AC3 Remaster. It includes Liberation and the DLC for AC3.

Right now, it is only $10 on Ubisoft Connect.

 

[Skifi28]

Getting older games to run well, or even run at all can really be an exercise in frustration. Even some not-so-old games have serious issues, but what can ya do.

 

[Drew1440]

A lot of issues can be fixed by Installing the DirectX 9 runtimes. You might also have to manually install PhysX and OpenAL for games that used them. DRM like Safedisc and SecuROM will also cause issues, only solution is to Download a cracked exe if the publisher hasn't removed the DRM themselves.

But yeah, nothing worse than a game running in 640x480 by default, and fails to return to your normal resolution when exiting.

 

[Krathoon]

Yeah. I have had to download numerous cracks for old games to get them to work. Then, Windows and Chrome starts flipping out when you download them because they think they are viruses.

I have ran some cracks in a WinXP VM just in case.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Things like this are why the whole "PC has infinite backwards compatibility" notion is nonsense. There's a lot of annoyances, both major and minor, in getting many old games working, and plenty just straight up won't work on modern machines or hardware.

Anyway, I think the most annoying would be anything involving Games for Windows Live. Some games refused to save after a certain point in time, and others are flat-out broken. An absolute drain on PC gaming, courtesy of Microsoft trying to "support" PC gaming.

 

[Alexios]

Idk, I never ran into anything that would qualify as 'bullcrap' that doesn't have to do with specific companies being assholes, ie requiring online servers that are down (for all systems). Generally, simple work arounds, whether that's editing/replacing a file or using an easy to use wrapper like dgVoodoo2 for the REALLY old stuff simply works and is a definite win for the benefit of a decades long library being as readily available as anything on any new machine without having to wait for a new port/remaster/remake that may never come or end up worse than the original game.

 

[Krathoon]

Yeah. dgVoodoo2 fixes a lot of graphics problems with old games.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Idk, I never ran into anything that would qualify as 'bullcrap' that doesn't have to do with specific companies being assholes, ie requiring online servers that are down (for all systems). Generally, simple work arounds, whether that's editing/replacing a file or using an easy to use wrapper like dgVoodoo2 for the REALLY old stuff simply works and is a definite win for the benefit of a decades long library being as readily available as anything on any new machine without having to wait for a new port/remaster/remake that may never come or end up worse than the original game.

Yeah, pretty much my experience. The main causes of an old game having trouble to run are always:
-Legacy DRM fucking up things.
-Game was already broken on release.

Otherwise, its usually very simple to set them up.

The cases i remember were trying to run Test Drive Unlimited and Driver, which i had the original disks for.
TDU run pretty much flawlessly, EXCEPT the game would 'freeze' after the tutorial race which i later found out was an anti-piracy measure that kept triggering for some reason .
Same for Driver. Game wouldn't run at all and, again, Disk protection making use of legacy windows files that had long been removed from newer versions.

Solution for both? Crack'em.

 

[joeygreco1985]

I wasn't able to play FEAR for a long time because there were issues with that game that caused it to run at like 10fps if you had newer Logitech device drivers on your machine, amongst other compatibility issues.


Anyway, a trip to PCGamingWiki will always point you in the right direction

 

[Krathoon]

Oh yeah. PCGamingWiki will have a solution for a lot of the problems.

The thing is, it gets really annoying that a problem seems to crop up with each old game.

Also, it is annoying when you find out that the PC port of a game is a crappy port. Soul Reaver is a good example.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Things like this are why the whole "PC has infinite backwards compatibility" notion is nonsense. There's a lot of annoyances, both major and minor, in getting many old games working, and plenty just straight up won't work on modern machines or hardware.

Anyway, I think the most annoying would be anything involving Games for Windows Live. Some games refused to save after a certain point in time, and others are flat-out broken. An absolute drain on PC gaming, courtesy of Microsoft trying to "support" PC gaming.

It still can work so how is it non sense? Non sense would be having no way for it working.

 

[simpatico]

Vsync not working was a big one. D3Doverrider was the knight in shining armor. Rest up king, you served us all so well. NVCP vsync tanked FPS until pretty recently. It was basically D3Doverrider or nothing.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Oh yeah. PCGamingWiki will have a solution for a lot of the problems.

The thing is, it gets really annoying that a problem seems to crop up with each old game.

Also, it is annoying when you find out that the PC port of a game is a crappy port. Soul Reaver is a good example.

It infinitely less annoying than not having solutions or being stuck with lame limitations.

 

[simpatico]

Idk, I never ran into anything that would qualify as 'bullcrap' that doesn't have to do with specific companies being assholes, ie requiring online servers that are down (for all systems). Generally, simple work arounds, whether that's editing/replacing a file or using an easy to use wrapper like dgVoodoo2 for the REALLY old stuff simply works and is a definite win for the benefit of a decades long library being as readily available as anything on any new machine without having to wait for a new port/remaster/remake that may never come or end up worse than the original game.

If I wanted to play my Resistance 2 disc in my PS5, what settings do I have to change in the system menu to get it running?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

It never affected me or my bro but one of those Ultima games. Maybe U6 or U7 had a bug in the final game and supposedly you couldn’t get far since the bug was a missing key. There was no downloadable patches back then so I guess you had to get a disc patch in the mail.

If you didn’t know about this fatal bug, you probably didn’t even know and just quit the game assuming you got stuck. But it was a missing key.

 

[Krathoon]

Of course the PC version of AC1 does not use the controller right. I found a fan patch for XInput controller support.

 

[EDMIX]

That’s nothing compared to the hellish nightmare of getting weird old games to run like Ripper, Blood Omen or random FMV games.

Agreed.

I find it funny that many PC gamers ignore and try to disregard this. I got note pads with all sorts of workarounds lol Be like "turn off V-Sync, disable windows security, don't play in 1080p, turn off AA"

 

[Buggy Loop]

Things like this are why the whole "PC has infinite backwards compatibility" notion is nonsense.

If I wanted to play my Resistance 2 disc in my PS5, what settings do I have to change in the system menu to get it running?

 

[rodrigolfp]

Of course the PC version of AC1 does not use the controller right. I found a fan patch for XInput controller support.

Sux not having the option "officially" but it plays infinitely better with mouse+kb anyway.

 

[Wildebeest]

There are real compatibility problems with games that ran on old versions of windows, but later stuff is mixed. DRM and online services are a problem, which is why they are not allowed on gog games. Then there is other stuff like abandoned API's. Like some games with physx are crashing on some AMD CPUs just because it is no longer really properly supported. Oddly enough, support for MSDOS software is amazing because of the work of dosbox developers. Free and open source doing what needs to be done.

 

[RagnarokIV]

Agreed.

I find it funny that many PC gamers ignore and try to disregard this. I got note pads with all sorts of workarounds lol Be like "turn off V-Sync, disable windows security, don't play in 1080p, turn off AA"

Thank allah for iOS so my txt files have been modernized as notes on all my devices haha.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Agreed.

I find it funny that many PC gamers ignore and try to disregard this. I got note pads with all sorts of workarounds lol Be like "turn off V-Sync, disable windows security, don't play in 1080p, turn off AA"

The only that ignore this are those that don't play those games.

 

[Krathoon]

Does PC AC1 have rumble? Not certain if I felt it yet.

 

[Krathoon]

What is good about the PC version of AC1 is that it is the Director's Cut version. They replaced some crappy missions with better ones.

So, it is the final version of the game. I am not certain if they put the Director's Cut on consoles.

 

[Krathoon]

Of course, I find out that AC1 is on gog after I bought the Steam version. Poop.

Also, it is $5 on Ubisoft. So, double poop.

 

[ArtHands]

Assassin's Creed 3 remaster exist for a reason: they are build with better compatibility with modern hardware.

Wait till you try to play Assassin's Creed 1 on the PS5 or Series X.

 

[GnomeChimpsky]

A pet peeve of mine is AC2. Most problems can be fixed with fan patches and whatnot but it is hardlocked at 60 fps and this causes stutter issues. The only solution I've seen is playing at 50 fps which is a bit lame.

 

[Team Andromeda]

But we are told by Digital Foundry and the like that the PC is the BC king.

 

[Guilty_AI]

But we are told by Digital Foundry and the like that the PC is the BC king.

I mean, good luck trying to play Deus Ex Human Revolution or LoK Soul Reaver on your PS5

 

[Soodanim]

Oh yeah. PCGamingWiki will have a solution for a lot of the problems.

The thing is, it gets really annoying that a problem seems to crop up with each old game.

Also, it is annoying when you find out that the PC port of a game is a crappy port. Soul Reaver is a good example.

There is a decomp of SR1 in progress, I'm looking forward to that being finished. Speaking of that franchise, people may be interested to know about Gemini's patches for SR2 and BO2:

For the people complaining because not all PC games run perfectly on modern systems and therefore that invalidates the entire back catalogue, I've yet to see what your preferred alternative with a greater backcompat rate is.

 

[Hudo]

Just recompile your kernel with the newest modules before you compile the source, bro. What's the problem?

 

[GametimeUK]

I hate having to do workarounds to get my older PC games up and running, but it is nice that the option is there to fix the game a majority of the time.

There's no playing Bloodborne at 60fps on my PS5 at the moment since my PS5 is too high a firmware to mod.

There's no tweaking ini files to up the resolution on older games when playing on console.

I have to resort to streaming old PS3 games like Heavenly Sword if I want to play it on PS5. Ironically I can play that game on PC regardless.

I dunno. I wish it all just worked, but PC at least gives the flexibility to fix a majority of issues.

 

[Team Andromeda]

I mean, good luck trying to play Deus Ex Human Revolution or LoK Soul Reaver on your PS5

I can play Deus Ex happily on my Series X, not that's the point.

I still have the likes of these and all won't play on my modern PC (without work around) so its wrong IMO for DF to make out the PC is the BC King

 

[Guilty_AI]

I can play Deus Ex happily on my Series X, not that's the point.

I still have the likes of these and all won't play on my modern PC (without work around) so its wrong IMO for DF to make out the PC is the BC King

Yeah, and i got all of these and they won't play on a my ps4, workaround or not. Unless i'm willing to pay for some overpriced remaster of course.

As others have said, if PC isn't the BC king, whats above it?

 

[Hudo]

I found it legitimately easier to get old-ass games to run on Linux via Bottles/Wine and/or Proton via Steam (just add the game) than on Windows 11. YMMV, tho.

 

[Krappadizzle]

I can play Deus Ex happily on my Series X, not that's the point.

I still have the likes of these and all won't play on my modern PC (without work around) so its wrong IMO for DF to make out the PC is the BC King

This is such a disingenuous post.

-------

The amount of mental gymnastics some of you will go to denigrate the PC as THE best option for playing all your games with a little work via emulation/bc/mods/etc. is hilarious.

NO SHIT your games from 20+ years ago won't just work putting a disk in a disk drive. That's not how anything works these days. I'd wager most people don't even have disk drives in there PC, I certainly haven't in 15 years.

Even that aside, it's like saying, "My cassette's don't work flawlessly on my iPhone. My iPhone is brand new and could easily handle playing my music, it should just work, iPhone is no longer a media juggernaut"

 

[Guilty_AI]

I found it legitimately easier to get old-ass games to run on Linux via Bottles/Wine and/or Proton via Steam (just add the game) than on Windows 11. YMMV, tho.

Actually had a similar experience trying to run some old Evangelion VN.

 

[Topher]

I've had some older games that were somehow ported to PC without controller support. Mass Effect and Beyond Good and Evil, for example.

 

[Kenpachii]

Beyond time, was a massive pain in the ass to get running