Windows 95/98 Games on Retropie / RPi3

HPK-de

Hello,

i want to share the results of my tests with the people here.
After getting all of my old Dos-Games up and running,
my goal is now to play old Windows Games on RetroPie.
Regarding Windows 3.1 Games it can easily be done with Dosbox, where
Windows 3.11 can be installed. It works fine with my old CIV-II Game.

But the more challlenging goal is to play games which were made for Windows 95/98.
Installing Windows in Dosbox or with QEMU is quite difficult and VERY slow.
But there is a possibility which i´m testing right now...WINE.

Normally using Wine in an Arm-Architecture is impossible.
There is a (commercial) software which claims, to make that possible.
This software is called Exagear Desktop.

https://eltechs.com/product/exagear-desktop/

I´m in no way linked to this russian company, i just want to share my results with you,
so you can decide to give it a go or not
I decided to take the test, so i bought the software fr the RPi3 (25€).
I installed LXDE via the Retropie-Setup-Script, startet it and the following happens:

After installing the Exagear software you can switch between "Arm" and "i686" architecture simply by typing "exagear" in the console window (or by clicking an icon on Lxde Desktop).
You can check it by typing the "arch" command in the console.
After that Wine can be installed as normal in linux operating systems.

I afterwards installed old games i want to play with the wine (simplay by "wine setup.exe" e.g.).
The results were very different. I use an RPi3 and an LED-TV (1920x1080).

Anno 1602:
This game works nearlly in original speed, in an window. You can only set the in-game resolution
between 640 x 480, 800 x 600 or 1024x768. All resolutions work at good playable speed.
I bought the game from GOG.com, because my CD-Version need the CD to play.
The only thing which doesn´t work is the sound. It sounds choppy and very bad, so i switched it of.

Europa Universalis 2:
This game works fine, with sound. I needed to do the full-installation, to get rid of the CD.
This game works only in a window too, no fullscreen.

Unreal Tournament ("99"):
This game works, but if you set the in-game resolution too high, it becomes very slow....

Rollercoaster Tycoon 1:
This game doesn´t work, the installation does. But the game starts with an filling status bar,
but crashes shortly afterwards. The error which comes up is known in RCT forums, and it is
linked to the display resolution somehow. It is said you should try to set the display to 800x600 or 1024 x 768, but that is not possible with my testing equipment (TV-Set).

Conclusion:
Yes, it is possible to do strange things with the RPI3 and windows 95/98 games, but there
are some downsides:

You have to pay the software without a testing possibility (which is really bad....)
The games will be displayd most likely in a (small) window.
I think this will only work well with games that does not have extensive 3D graphics.
I wasn´t able to start games which needed a CD (ISO File mounted in Wine)
It is a lot of testing, trial and error before things run.

After all, you can expect an emulation of an PC at ~166-200 MHz. This was an standard PC in Windows95 times, and an rather slow one in Windows 98 times.
So you should check the following:

The original system requirements of the game (no 3D card like "Voodoo" and stuff)
the possibility of runnig this game in a wine enviroment (check at: https://appdb.winehq.org/)

If anyone has questions about it, feel free to ask.

HPK-de

Floob

I tried that out here:

Its not bad, but a bit fiddly.

PetroRie

I wondered the same a couple days ago. I played Rollercoaster tycoon A LOT! That game was (and still is) awesome. You could try and see if it runs a clone of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2:

https://openrct2.website/

wmcclelion

I wonder if it would work to install a Linux distro in DosBox then install Wine in that. Though as I'm typing I realize that would be introducing a lot of extra overhead and would likely crawl.