Very old games

[Speednut357]

Something I like to do in my spare time is play old sim racing titles on my sim setup. It's partly for nostalgia and partly curiosity.
If anyone else here is interested in this maybe this would be a good place to share information.
Some titles I have working are:

Nascar legends 2004

Indy Car Series

GP4

F1 Challenge 99-02

Rally Trophy

NeedforSpeed Porsche Challenge

What old games do you play, or remember.

Do you have any questions about how to acquire or get running any of these games.

 

[Speednut357]

A few old systems are required to play some of the more obscure games. One option would be to create a dual boot for win98, but I am trying to avoid it. A virtual machine, it seems, would have problems connecting to the wheel.
So, I have to go through each of the required systems and see if it is possible to work around them. One common one is direct input, an old system used to connect to game controllers. There is a workaround provided here on Race Department to allow the changing of buttons on the controller, but unfortunately, it disconnects the FFB.
I have also used another app that allows the mapping of controller buttons to keyboard keys as defined in the game. This could work, and I have used it before to activate the paddle shifters when a game would not recognize them.
Another issue is secdrv.sys, something that existed in old versions of Windows, Win 95 and 98, I think.
It seems that this file can be activated in Windows 10 but will leave the computer vulnerable to certain attacks. So temporary activation is probably the go. I have downloaded the Win10 SDK which apparently contains the file for use in software development. No idea if this will work yet.
The TOCA games all have some strange DRM feature which I haven't worked out yet. If you get it wrong It literally locks your PC out and the only way back is to use a Windows restore point. I have already done this a couple of times and its not fun.

 

[jgf]

The oldest game I still have is "Fungal Man", on a 5" floppy. The oldest I still play occasionally is SWOTL.

And I enjoy many old FPS games - No One Lives Forever 1 & 2, Half Life 1 & 2, System Shock, Thief 1 2 & 3, Deus Ex, etc.

The only one that gave me any trouble on newer systems was Thief 3. You must set the affinity of the launcher and main exe to single core or it gets stuck in a loop of the intro video; and you must create a Save folder and edit the registry to point to it or it will CTD when you try to save. And I must remember to unplug my steering wheel or Thief will activate the FFB when in lockpick mode (have yet to find any other solution for this)

The race sims I enjoy are old by computer standards - GPL, Rally Trophy, GTL, GTR2, NR2003, RBR, rfactor.

 

[Speednut357]

Wow, there are some pretty old games on your list. I remember No One Lives Forever.

The free software I use to reassign controller buttons is AntiMicroX. It allows me to make controller buttons act as a key on the keyboard, which I can then set in the game. It is handy if a game won't detect specific controller inputs.

As you can see, I have assigned the paddle shift buttons to the J and K keys. I am using this for the game IndyCar Series, which does not have a controller setup page in Game. This also helped with my Moza R5, which has a different kind of output on the paddle shift buttons and was not detected in some older titles.

 

[Speednut357]

Is it possible to play the entire DiRT series of games? So far I have Colin McRae 2005, DiRT 2, DiRT 5, DiRT Rally and DiRT Rally 2.

 

[jgf]

I have Colin McRae 4 running on my Win7 system with no problems

 

[Speednut357]

Found Colin McRae 4 Will give it a play later.

Got Colin McRae DiRT, it plays surprisingly well. Had to turn the FFB way down, it over saturates with any amount of strength.

DiRT 2 is a very good and fun game. Similar to Forza Horizon. Great music too. Very Arcade.

DiRT 3 is even better and probably the peak of DiRT arcade games.

 

[Speednut357]

I am still on a mission to play all the Dirt Games and doing well. Dirt Showdown is terrible. WRC 6 Is a surprisingly good rally game, and I wonder why it has been forgotten so quickly.

During the process of searching out the games, I discovered there is also an exciting list of WRC-licensed games spanning three developers. If I include Sebastian Loeb Rally, V-Rally, Richard Burns, WRC, and Dirt Rally, it makes for a staggering list of Rally Games.

I think I will create a spreadsheet of all the games and briefly describe each to give an idea of whether they are worth playing.

 

[Speednut357]

"I was able to get Colin McRae Rally 2 up and running. The game is quite close to what I would consider a good rally simulator. However, the gear and clutch mechanics leave something to be desired and the engine noises don't match the revs. Additionally, there is no engine braking. Despite these issues, though, the game is surprisingly good."

I found a patched version of the game Colin McRae Rally 3 that's quite enjoyable. Even though it's one of the oldest rally simulations that I've played, it's still playable. Although the force feedback is not very strong, the physics are predictable and provide a fun experience as you get the hang of sliding into the corners. The track surface is also properly rendered in 3D, which is not the case for most older rally games, where the roads are usually flat and wide. The graphics, however, are quite old and dated.

 

[Speednut357]

 

[Speednut357]

During the time when Ian Bell was involved in making good video games, Need for Speed Shift stood out as a decent arcade racer. Some mods are available that can enhance the physics and AI of the game. The graphics of this game are particularly impressive. What's surprising is that it also features a pretty good version of Nordschleife.

 

[RhettDean]

Need for Speed: Underground

 

[Speednut357]

Just received this in the mail, it even has the book inside.
Minimum specs required to run this game: 486 (66 MHz) 8 Mb of ram and MS-DOS 5.0.
Strangely that is very similar specs to my first PC.

 

[jgf]

I was in an offline league on CompuServe running F1GP2.

Ran it shelled to DOS on my first W95 system - P133, 32meg RAM, Canopus Total 3D vid card, 4.2gig HD. (Built that for running ICR2.)

 

[Speednut357]

Finally got Colin McRae 2005 working. A no cd patch from game copy world fixed my CTD problem. And I finally realized at certain times you need to use the wheel to cycle through the menu ( some weird Xbox thing I guess). Also found a triple screen setting which angles the side screens correctly, much like Rfactor.

 

[anhd389]

Oh, this is an interesting games list

 

[Cappuccinapr]

WoW its old game?) If you are an alpha player, and play WoW on weekends) then I can advise you this site where you can buy a "skip" of boring things for you, such as farming dungeons or raids

 

[Lesley Buurlage]

As a child Grand Prix 4 may be one of the vey first racing games i ever played, A copy of Nascar racing 2003 from the local library made me familiar with racing across the pond. Used my first set of wheel and pedals for F1 06 on the Playstation 2 and learned about rallying with the Collin Mcrae games on the Gameboy. Dang those were the days..

 

[Grechatias]

Something I like to do in my spare time is play old sim racing titles on my setup it's partly nostalgia, partly curiosity. Some of the games I have working are Nascar Legends 2004, Indy Car Series, GP4, F1 Challenge 99-02, Rally Trophy, and Need for Speed Porsche Challenge.

What old games do you play or remember? If you have questions about running these, feel free to ask! Also, if you're into educational games, math playground has some great options too!

 

[Speednut357]

This week, I got Nascar Racing 4 working. It won't play in high resolution and has no mods available because of the popularity of Nascar Racing 2003. But something is interesting about the game. The AI races in a more realistic pack and seems to prioritize slipstreaming each other. Any bumping into cars easily results in a crash, which also seems more realistic.
The AI in these old Papyrus games is better than many modern titles. It's interesting that the developer who created this AI went on to create iRacing. I wonder what might have happened if NASCAR hadn't given EA exclusive rights all those years ago. There have been so many terrible Nascar games since then; unfortunately, I have tried them.
I am also continuing with my aim to play every WRC game. Unfortunately, most of them are poor ports of PlayStation games with the worst FFB you could imagine. It's no wonder most of them are forgotten.
Trying out a Playstation 2 emulator and some Playstation-exclusive games has also been interesting. Dirt to Daytona is surprisingly fun, and Nascar Thunder 2003 and 2004 are different games from their PC versions.