WatchfulVery impressive spread! And it all looks very clean, well done. Someday I’d like to do cable hiding or at least make them more organized.
Have you had the chance to enjoy LAN multi-player using that setup?
WatchfulAlright, I’ll aim to get something out in October or November. Will likely depend on how much feedback folks can provide 🙏.
WatchfulFor the record, I found this Discord on Interstate76.com which has some diehard members playing weekly. They were quite friendly, and can hook a brother up with their “LightFoot” zip that has all the community maps and none of the cinematics, for maximum multi-player fun.
WatchfulAlright, I opened this forum for an XP Anniversary episode where folks can start some more focused discussions.
WatchfulWhat about a roundtable where each person shares what most interests them about the XP experience? It could be certain game(s), features XP unlocked, hardware changes in that era, first experiences, and even modern experiences working with it.
WatchfulSounds right up my alley! Q4 game has already been chosen, but fear not, there’s plenty of winter in Q1 too.
WatchfulSince this is the vote winner let’s do it for 2026-Q4!
WatchfulWindows 98 can use USB. I’ve found that older and lower density USB drives work best. My partner got a bag of cheap ones long ago, and I’ve been putting them to good use.
I recall getting networking going on Windows 95 and 98 back the day, for file sharing. Though it’s challenging getting modern Windows to share with such old versions as the original protocols and password algorithms are quite insecure. Another idea is to setup a Samba serve on a NAS, if you don’t mind tinkering. Linux builds of Samba should support the old sharing pretty well.
WatchfulNice! I’d like to take advantage of more surround sound from XP era games. If I recall correctly it was harder to get working than modern games over HDMI, which is how I usually do it now. Apparently DirectSound3D isn’t quite as good as the older audio accelerators.
WatchfulWow replacing a laptop LCD. I’ve broken enough stuff that I’d be afraid of doing damage.
WatchfulConsidering how busy I am lately, I think I’ll stick with “Windows Game Club” for now. We can revisit after the community has grown a bit more. If folks can’t wait they can reply here or even vote up replies, and I’ll try to keep an eye for any surge in demand.
After all, what’s in a name anyway? Lazy Game Reviews (LGR) isn’t really that lazy anymore, nor really about game reviews, whilst the name renames unchanged. That’s OK too.
WatchfulHaving played plenty of Dune II (1992) and a fan of FMV (and John Rhys-Davies!) means this game has been in my backlog a really long time. Arguably Red Alert should probably go first, unless we want to leave games with DOS-and-Windows releases to DGC.
Curious what others think.
WatchfulMy preference is to start with the earliest of a series as a focus and supplement with some mention of sequels. That’s similar to how DGC has handled most series, “Pandora Directive” being one exception. Standout sequels could be worth visiting on their own. That said, WGC will be slower to cover games than DGC as there are only four per year.
Perhaps we could start with GTA3 and those more interested in sequels during the 95-XP era can join to detail those games on the call? Quarters are quite long, so it should be enough time for folks to try both GTA3 and Vice City.
WatchfulSay more @poweruppete! I’d love a wheel but this game is so finicky about joysticks. Also hate the old wheels I used to have with only like 90 degrees of movement. Do any older wheels rotate full 360? Ideally hoping to find one that’s compatible back to Windows 95, or a modern one with drivers that can work that far back.
WatchfulI love the idea of a PCIe-PCI bridge and passthrough to OG hardware. I’ll have to read up on how that’d work for Win9x era. My VM experiments with VMWare and VirtualBox make that seem impractical since they dropped support for Win9x guests long ago.
SoftGPU has been working for me as a middleground. It’s just tricky getting Win98 installed without it always asking for the install CD, getting a version of VMWare that works (like WS17), getting SoftGPU working there, and working around sound crackling.
WatchfulDo you get physics bugs? Or have you limited frame rate somehow? Is the music working?
WatchfulRace in mission 5 is tricky, but I managed it on ‘Champ’ difficulty. (By accident when I was trying to cheat before I realized cheats block progression.)
Main thing for me was slowing ahead of the turns, joystick controls, and repeating until other cars messed up which let me pass them easily. Some guides said to use nitro or lighten car by under weighting load out. Yet you’ll still need weapons for the fight after the race.
Oh, and if front weapons get destroyed you can use the handgun or drive in reverse with the backwards facing 3rd person view (F3 or F4 I think).
WatchfulInteresting that you suggest FS2, as I recall FS1 being quite good as well. After playing the whole first game, I pretty quickly tired of the genre before getting very far into FS2. Still, either one is worth a look in my book.
WatchfulThanks for the suggestion! Let’s do it for 2026-Q3 since it’s the top-voted non-FPS on the forum at this point.
WatchfulIf you don’t have much time you can skip the cutscenes (press SPACE) and watch them afterwards on Let’s Plays instead. You can view objectives in game (press O).
WatchfulYou must have been reading my mind. For episode zero we did talk about the evolution from DOS to Windows. I probably should’ve mentioned that in the trailer and asked for voicemails too.
If there is enough interest I’m down to having a few, smaller special episodes to discuss each major Windows release.
WatchfulI was pretty disappointed XvT went MP only, and was glad to see this. Unfortunately I got too busy with Star Wars modding to actually play it! I think I was also a bit burned out by space shooters after WC3, 4, 5.
WatchfulMost excellent suggestion!
Spouse and I got all the way through this one before we had so many exhausting responsibilities. It’s such a fun, western take on the JRPG formula. Amazing they did it with such a small team. Would love to see a sequel.
WatchfulLove the banner!
Yeah the W95 joystick was some nice pixel art. I’d rather not use it as is because I want to respect the artist. Perhaps I can whip up something inspired by that at some point.
WatchfulRSS is already supported, in fact that’s how podcasts are published:
https://windowsgameclub.com/feed/podcast/
I think my vibe-coded theme may have obscured that fact.
I’ll try to make it more obvious in the next update.
WatchfulStarting at 95 was because the DOS Game Club has already talked about covering Win 3x, and I hadn’t encountered any big-budget games for that platform.
That said, I’m glad to hear at least one Civ game was published there.
If there is enough interest, and DGC hasn’t already covered the same game, then I could be convinced.
WatchfulSorry, I only have a spam filter plugin. Maybe it’s too aggressive. Will have to take a look.
EDIT: Looks like it was the default discussion settings. I’ve made them a bit more relaxed. Still need to find out why it’s not emailing me alerts when stuff needs moderation.
WatchfulGood topic!
Most of the Windows 9x and newer games, I’ve been able to get working on newer Windows, albeit sometimes with fan patches or ports. IME, DOSBox-X (DBX) can run both Windows 3.x and Windows 9x, with some effort. I’ve been meaning to try DOSBox-Pure with RetroArch for its rewind capability. DBX only has save states, and they don’t work well with complex games.
I recommend casual players try Windows 3 games directly on Archive.org.
Steam and GOG have pretty solid coverage of the Win 9x and XP eras, with only some Win 3.x games. For a comprehensive collection, ExoWin3x facilitates a proper game install, if you want saving and loading, as well as more performance. Just take care if you insist on combining with ExoDOS proper as I’ve found ExoWin3x works best as a standalone install.
WatchfulYeah, sorry I need to promote the IRC more on the website.
Though considering the era perhaps something like an AOL IM or even XMPP would be more fitting or as a compliment.
WatchfulIt is a lot of splash screens and logos, for the era at least. One would think that registering for copyright could serve as a kind of chain of ownership. Though in this era of global copyrights and matrix of laws, the complexity explodes.
Ultimately it’s probably destroying as much culture as copyright is encouraging to be created.
