Author: Nafcom

It may surprise, but actually, the game runs in Windows 10 and 11 but as I still have a PCI Sound card (because the onboard sound of my 2010 Asus motherboard has a buzzing interference sound (common for those cheap on-board sound chips back in that era and before), once you have the game practically running, you will be created by a blue screen “Driver IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL”.

Here is what I have done using the original CD release: (In my case from France as it was the only one available but the game still can be switched to English)

1. Install Patch 1.2
2. Took care of the copy protection issue
3. wrote a batch file with a warning to first switch the main audio device and communications device to anything else than the X-Fi Xtreme Gamer to avoid the bluescreening happening because I forgot to switch that before starting the game!
4. I reported the bug in the Windows 11 Feedback hub, perhaps it will somehow being care of in the future just like Driver: San Francisco somehow suddenly works in Windows 11 🙂
   
   I am aware that the latest patch version has the copy protection removed (yes, they did that officially!) however I wanted to use a version reported to work in Windows 10 before.

The game by default doesn’t give you an option for 3DFX om the first menu and hence will only run in software emulation mode and this still brutally slow in DOSBOX! So what is the workaround?

None of the ones I found on Steam boards helped. (It would just end in the option window closed)

So, here is how to do it:

1) Run nglide_config.exe, then selecting my native screen resolution and pick aspect ratio as 4:3.

2) Run the Game normally.
3) Select option 2 – Client
3) Want to change IP address? – No
4) Select option 1 – 3DFX

And voilla, you are in 3DFX mode without modifying any files of the game! 🙂

When I recently updated to Microsoft Office 2021 Professional, I wondered myself whether the “Microsoft Office Word Add-in For MediaWiki” published by Microsoft in 2010 still works.

Indeed it does, but the setup routine doesn’t detect Office 2013 and up.

I found instructions how to modify the registry so Mediawiki.txt filetype shows up in the “Save as” dialog window of Word 2013.

For Office 2021 (I am using its 64bit version), the following differences to above’s manual apply:

* path modifications mentioned have to be performed for the 32bit and the 64bit (Wow6432Node) section of the registry.
* The Office version’s path equals 16.0

It arrived today and I spent hours with it already and as you all know I am using Windows 11. (But all I mention in this blog post is also valid for Windows 10 as well)

It is a good limited release, but it isn’t very good or even outstanding. Here is what I shared with their support department today:

May I be honest about it? From the physical standpoint, the product is awesome, from the software release side I am on the fence about it. On one hand I was pleasantly surprised to see 3.5″ and 5.25″ disk images of the PC releases and Mac and Amiga and even stream dumps of the data so people can re-create the original media. However if that was thought of, why not an ISO image of the PC releases containing CD Audio? It could have been either multi-data-type ISO images or even enclosing AND inlcuding them as physical versions in the DVD/CD box. What about Atari, Mega CD and FM Towns releases?

and Monkey Island 4 (AKA Escape From Monkey Island”) is an awful buggy release. Monkey Island 3 was at least packaged with ScummVM, but not even using the last version but the Runtime Environment from 2017!
Upon research I understood you just put the GOG releases on them, but Monkey Island 4’s GOG Release has a few major flaws:
No support of 16:9 widescreen and only at 640×480, and any secondary monitors have to be disabled
Also the game easily crashes in the middle a couple of times.
Why not bundling it yourself with the latest ScummVM? It supports the game as seen here: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Escape_from_Monkey_Island

I would fix it myself as I could but as the releases you put there are Install Shield bundles, I don’t have have hand on the original game data to put into ScummVM to play it in correct aspect ratios without the crashes and overlapping music in the game credit menu.

There as potential and good intent but lacking of execution at some places. Which is very unfortunate. Especially for an Anthology. I guess it is too late for that now, the only possible way to fix the problems would be offering downloads containing the following:

-Providing the game versions of missing computer and console platforms
-Offering ISO Images of the PC CD versions containig CD Audio
-Offering ISO Images of Monkey Island 4 AND/OR bundling them with ScummVM

While I perhaps can excuse some of that for missing licenses, it boggles my mind you just re-released the GOG version of Monkey Island 4 instead of using original game data and bundle them with ScummVM for a more stable, visually correct and more bug free experience as a release.

You surely had enough time to iron out those road blockers.

It is probably too late and doubt Limit Run Games will provide an Update as a download for missing conent/releases and fixed to work on current PC systems better, but I anyway didn’t want to hold back that you had the chance to make this Anthology outstanding and you missed it unfortunately.
And all those things I mentioned do not require any code bug fixing or anything, just re-bundling and using the original release data,

More details on Monkey Island 4 running in ScumVM can be found here:
https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Escape_from_Monkey_Island

Thanks and sorry for the rant.

recent builds of Windows 10 broke compatibility with Driver: San Francisco. However latest app compatibility updates to Windows 11 and the Nvidia Game Ready drivers finally make it compatible! It also will work with latest Ubisoft Connect, however online function is broken and it will be put to your face right on startup, as I just wanted it to play in Story mode, I am fine with that!

There is a recent manual how to make it work using an old version when it was still named “UPlay”, however I personally wouldn’t risk to break it completely:

There is also a petition to bring the game back to the stores!

More about its story in this youtube video:

So I have head the problem that despite I have tried multiple DVDs, none of them would be fully readable to install the Original Crysis von 2007!

Also it was not available on Steam and the trick using dedicated CPU core commands was not working either. there is a patch but you don’t need that either. Just rename the bin32 folder to bin64 as described here and it will work 🙂

The good thing about the Origin version compared to the original DVD version is, that the Origin version automatically installs the last version of the game containing the 64bit version of the game, it is just not used by default if you don’t rename the folder!

Playing this 2008 hit on modern environment nowadays is not that hard, despite SecureRom can’t be verified anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98ursO6atog

The 2nd problem is, that the Game crashes on machines with AMD CPUs, because It should make the game use SSE/MMX code paths instead of now deprecated “3D Now!” instruction paths.

Those 2 things should make the game run for you on Windows 11 with AMD CPUs! 🙂

I recently bought a package of retro PC games from a friend. I found this the ideal challenge to find out how to get them to run in Windows 11.

So here is what needs to be done:

1. Install Anno1602 (It doesn’t show it but if you go to window overview you can see that the Windows internal copy feature is used to copy aka install the game, there is no progress bar during Setup installing the game whatsoever!
2. Download and install the Anno1602 Win2000/XP Patch:
3. Change Settings in the Settings App of the game to the following:

Activate:

• high video quality
• show hardware mouse cursor
• enable music
• enable sfx
• Screen resolution: 1024 x 768
  
  4. Set compatibility mode of the 1602.exe to Win98/WinME

Enjoy the game! 🙂