mid/late '90s PC Games that require the CD-ROM

[sdrob14]

I'm sure this topic has been covered by someone, but I couldn't find anything with a search, so at the risk of covering old ground, here goes...

What are folks doing to enable PC games that fall between the early DOS games and new-ish games that can be installed on 64-bit systems?  I have a handful of games my son played when he was growing up...Pajama Sam, Toy Story, Curious George, etc. and so far have not seen how those games (which often require simultaneous use of the CD-ROM and are not part of eXoDOS) can be accommodated with the various tools out there.  I can't do a direct game install in Windows as the bit version is incompatible with modern Windows variants.  Is a partitioned drive with a dedicated early Windows OS installation (Win95/98/XP) the best way to go?  I'm sure there are some clever workarounds that have been implemented...would love to hear what people are doing.  Thank you.

[Spawk]

A dual boot system with an older windows will surely make them playable for you son. But it wont integrate to HS that way.

DosBox may be able to handle some of them despite not being included in the exodos set. I think it emulates right up to an early version of windows 95??? Some games may actually run 32bit but the installer is only 16bit! In this case you can just use dosbox to install and then run from deaktop.

Another option for more stubborn games would be to use "VM ware" to emulate older architechture. You may need a pretty beastly pc for this one though.


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[Bungles]

You can download an install-shield replacement for those stubborn 16Bit installers. 

Most of the time you can emulate CD's if needed via ISO Images, or find an old Crackola to remove the need for a disc.

You can even dig deep and modify exe's to work with older settings still available. 

Yet to find a game I couldn't really get to work in Windows 10. Some just need a bit more love than others.

[wesfranks]

There used to be decent "no-cd" sites, but you will probably have to be extremely careful nowadays. 

[sdrob14]

Thanks, everyone - I'll see what I can achieve with the tips and advice you've given.  Ideally, these games will be managed and presented from within HyperSpin, so therein lies the challenge. 

[Bungles]

As long as your exe is setup to not need a disc you should be fine.
You will find most of the games from that era have a no-cd crack somewhere still around. Or even just a warez copy.. oh how I missed that word.. warez.

I used to do a bit of "Delivery Driving" for these lads back in the day..

Apologies if this sort of discussion is a bit risque on here.

[dougan78]

I would also recommend pcem or 86box as a option. Friend of mine uses that to play Tony hawk 2 and it plays great after you get Windows 98 setup. Good luck