Old games that just work, no hassle.

So I was feeling a bit nostalgic and pulled out my old Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic disc, figuring I'd need to jump through a few hoops to get it running. And sonofabitch, I installed it, and it worked straight off the disc. Just took a few minutes to find a resolution that didn't squeeze the image, and that was it. I was playing AoW again.

So I was just curious how common this is. I know compatibility issues abound on old PC games, but now I'm eyeing my old stack of CDs and DVDs with a little more confidence. What has your experience been like?

I typically just go to can u run it and then compare them with my laptop to see if I can play them. Ofcourse I use GOG, mostly, but I do have steam too.

But kudos to you for being proactive about your old cds/dvds. It’s always cool when stuff works and functionally playable.

I don’t know what to tell you except enjoy your collection. 🤷🏻

Most people who'd like to play older games use gog.com they offer a good collection of older games with no DRM.

They already made the games compatible with Windows 7 and above so you won't have to work hard to get the game working on your system.

I can't remember having the use of CDs since 2012 was already a year where my PC didn't have CD drive.

@gerygo: I was actually going to buy Age of Wonders from Gog, but decided to dig up the disk just to see what would happen. Was not expecting it to work right out of the box.

The fact it had a disc drive is one of the reasons I bought my current PC :)

Most games I've made .iso copies of from my physical collection requires some kind of extra step. Be it from finding a proper update/patch that allows the game to function on 64bit or going out of my way to hop through other hoops.

I need more storage space for my nearly 100 physical games I still own. Right now I've probably made .iso for 2 dozen of them. Doom 3 was a pain to get going on Win 10. FarCry was a bit of a pain, Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay was a pain, and then older games such as Doom II require the use of DosBox (been a long while since I had to navigate through DOS, had a hard time remembering what commands do what at first).

Darkstone - this is an old one that I can get working, but requires a lot of work. I'd be better off getting a copy off GoG.

Talking about cds that I do have and still use (not literally: i download if i need pure unaltered cd-roms cause some of my originals are completely unusable), I never had any compatibility issues with any game. Under win vista, and 7, and 8, and 10, i've played war 1, war 2, rct1 (a workaround was needed for this one), rct2, heroes 2 and 3, worms armageddon, command and conquer, red alert 1 and 2, quake, diablo 1 and 2, commandos 1 and 2, gta 1 and 2, starcraft bw, age of darkness, and then lots of pre winxp era using dosbox no issues whatsoever (heroes 2 and worms 2 here among others), all pre vista era using scummvm for the games that are there or nothing at all, it depends on the game (full throttle and bs1 and 2). Never had any issues, or workarounds were super easy to execute.

Today GoG is great, but most of good old games, like heroes 3 or rollercoaster tycoon, do have fan projects that are a lot better than playing straightforward from the bought product.