The really great thing about xp WAS that everyone loved it.. It was still getting icon pack hack apps released even after vista died so if you put in the effort and you get a really nice AND really cheap laptop.. Its a FANTASTIC machine for strategy games and
XP is not retro. I classify windows into CLASSIC and Modern. CLASSIC includes Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, NT 3.1x/NT 3.5x, 95, NT 4.0, NT 5.0, 98, 2000 and ME. Modern ones include Windows XP , Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 11.
@@shahulhameed5476 it’s retro but 8.1 and 8 and 10 and 11 are modern even the other 8 devs. You think XP is not retro because it’s not that pixelated, and vista is retro and 7 even windows 9 exists it’s windows 8.1 with 7 theme so your dumb
I remember Snes9x, Kega fusion and NullDC the most. They were my introduction to emulation as a wee lad. Absolutely loved being able to revisit games I played as a kid on my mums old PC. XP was just a great time.
@@belstar1128 Oh I definitely don't remember it running amazingly but at that age I was just happy to be playing SA2 without having to shell out for a GameCube I no longer had
@@belstar1128 If your computer was good enough and you optimized the emulator, then even a late 90's computer could run Dreamcast and Game Boy Advance. My '99 computer played GBA perfectly, and Dreamcast...well, it was free and running on old hardware, so it got a pass. I wasn't too picky as a kid lol.
@@Vulpas emulation is so weird. when i try it it is bad but when other try it it works perfectly. I tried to get into browser based emulation recently but its too laggy. but when other people with much weaker computers than me try to use it. it magically runs perfectly. i think there is some sentient ai that hates me. and tries to ruin my computing experience.
Buy yourself a cheap little 14" 600-800 TVL PVM, this will give you high enough resolution for PC games in XP and also be great for using as a CRT TV, a nice PVM is a Monitor/T.V hybrid pretty much, you can then play 240p games via emualtion or real hardware and VGA (480p) PC games on the same setup/screen, RetroArch for XP has fantastic emulation (far better than the standalone emulators presented in this vedeo) which will give you perfect emulation up to PS2/OGXB/GC/DC/etc, plus classic computers like Amiga/X68000/FM-Towns/etc, and then there is also Arcade emualtion being available. Also eMacs are either free or well under 50 pounds if money is tight, these have very nice 1000 TVL CRT tubes inside, and you can install XP on them just fine, they have decent graghics, the lower end models have GeForce 2 or ATi 7500 32mb cards or the higher-end ones have ATi 9200 32mb or ATi 9600 64mb GPU's, so great for classic PC games via XP and running RetroArch (which will be good for up to N64/DC/PS1/etc era systems), they also have pretty nice built in audio and speakers and a DVD drive, so you can watch classic TV shows in full frame 4:3 like Buffy or 4:3 Anime and so on, you can use the eMac as a do-it-all CRT and it wont take up much space at all, you could even strip out the old MAC components and replace them with a RaspberryPi and run RGB-Pi, either way an eMac is a sweet cheap way for someone to get themselves a nice CRT setup with a small footprint.
I remember discovering so many games on a shitty Windows XP laptop. I would hide it in my room and play it all night, I loved the thing. Didn't matter how bad the battery was, or how the E key was broken. I have so many wonderful memories of the thing. I remember going to a hockey game and spending like an hour holding doors for everyone at 11 o'clock, then coming home and playing Mega Man 2 until like 4am. I had never stayed up that late! Honestly, I think the games I played on emulators and such with that thing might have been more impactful on my life than any console.
And if your PC is good enough, you can eliminate lag down to the frame with a good amount of cores which is amazing. No longer need a CRT for that experience which are generally a headache these days
I was even able to run Project64 on my old Pentium 4 WinXP machine way back in 2008 just fine. WinXP may be old but in the grand scheme of things it's not THAT old.
My old family home's 2011-ish PC (2nd gen i5 with some low-end Nvidia card) actually did run Dolphin and PCSX2 fairly well. At the time I was a early teenager and only got into emulation of cartridge-based systems and had no idea about disk image stuff, so I had to look in the dark in order to get an appropriate virtual disc drive and get certain Saturn and PS1 emulators to work.
I recommend a fork of NO$GBA called NO$Zoomer, and also if you want to look into it, there are retroarch forks for older machines. SSF may also give good results for saturn.
I still use Windows 7 on my laptop. It works great aside from stuff like Dolphin and PCSX2 that no longer support it (seriously, how the hell can an emulator that runs on Android devices not work on an OS that's still supported by the majority of modern PC releases?!)
it's because those emulators switched from Qt 5 to Qt 6 which doesn't support Windows 8.1 or lower. It's not just Qt, other libraries and API too. Not to mention that windows 7 only comprised of less than 2% of their userbase.
@@HoangNguyen-ej4wb That doesn't explain anything. If a program has low enough complexity to work on a smartphone, it should be able to work on Windows 7, which many people still use.
An amazing Windows XP n64 experience would to be to use the Glide64 final or GlideN64 plugins for compatible emulators! Works a charm for the most part :) Even works for the ancient Nemu64
That's so funny that you come out with a video for XP gaming around now. I actually just dug out my old XP rig from 2009 not too long ago and I plan on rebuilding it for XP gaming. The original motherboard I used for it is shot so I had to rebuild it from the ground up, but it's been a lot of fun researching all the components I need and getting everything together.
If you want to use XP, better to dual boot with a Linux OS if you can. That way you can use the Linux for internet, because even with MyPal, XP is still vulnerable, and if we use it offline, most of the threats are not there. So Linux can be peace of mind. This setup has served me well for a long time; even when the OS support hadn't expired, I did browsing on Linux including downloading stuff for Windows, then access them from a common partition. LAN cable was unplugged when on Windows. If you go this way, I'd suggest MX Linux for its light resource consumption (around 700MB RAM by itself) and out of the box support for old hardware, while being on a stable modern base.
5:27 I'd like to point something out. With these kinds of projects, while yes, you can't run their release packages natively on XP, you are completely free to recompile it with XP compatibility. I did this with Sonic 1 and 2 RSDK and it worked flawlessly on a Pentium 3 machine. This does require a bit of knowledge on how to work with libraries, code, compilers, etc., it's actually not as hard as it may seem.
This brings me back to always having a roms collection disk for computer class back when most people seeing you play Mario on a computer thought it was magic or expert level hacking. Started with a few NES games on a floppy, but soon moved to a CD where I could carry a ton of 8 and 16bit games with me everywhere and keep save states in my school user folder so they'd be there no matter which PC I used. I remember beating Shinobi 3 in Gens on a keyboard and that was probably my proudest moment that semester.
Reminds me of how I best Mega Man X and Mega Man 7 on keyboard. Only so many buttons could be pressed at once on mine, so it was impossible to cling to a wall, charge, and dash off the wall while still holding the charge. I ended up mainly using the peashooter and being forced to take hits lmao
XP is still my favorite OS, so many good memories. I spent thousands of hours playing old pc games like Sim City and Age of Empires and emulators like ZSNES, Project64 and VBA. Also talking about DOS, it's kinda sad that GOG doesn't offer a dosbox-less version of games like Rayman Forever. There are a few games that would run better natively on old hardware or even on other VMs, but the games are stuck in dosbox.
When I was a kid, my first system was Windows 98, and I had a folder filled with DOS games on it. Then after I graduated to XP, I kinda stopped playing DOS games, but I kept noticing Dosbox packed on almost every computer magazine disc. I kept thinking to myself: "why does anybody need this program, when you can easily run DOS games on your Windows." Only now I'm finding out that XP couldn't.
It's crazy to see my first laptop in this video - or at least, the same chassis, since I had an NV54 with a Pentium T4400. That laptop has an incredible keyboard, despite the lack of gaps between keys. Lots of travel and a nice, solid rubber dome bump.
if you want to play late dos games up to windows 98, you might want to give 86box or pcem a try, that will emulate a pc from the time, even using the BIOSes from the time to emulate the experience. it's not super easy, but it's very accurate.
thanks for this informative video!, i currently have a overkill windows xp machine with a i5-2600k and a GTX 760 2GB and 4GB of DDR3 1600mhz of ram. basically destroys any game from the 2000s and obliterates most compatible late 90s games. absolutely love it!
There's an old steam version that runs on XP, it has the friends list disabled but you can download and play steam games, I also had no problems installing GOG games using the offline installers. I wish I could still use XP as my main OS :(
Hello, Really? That's very good! How do we install the older version of Steam on Windows Xp? Could you please help me with the download link for the old version of steam platform? Is it possible to use the old version of Steam with the latest account? or do I have to create a new account on the older version of Steam? Thanks buddy :)
I want more of this, I grew up playing on my moms PC (which had Windows XP) in the 2000s I didn't have internet, we couldn't afford it. So, I just had to rely on the games it already comes with and cd games that I got from a thrift store
I might make another, was thinking of a video about Windows XP era software. There's an old animation program called Pivot that I'd love to try out again.
The Z67 and Z77 motherboards supporting the ivy or sandy bridge CPUs were some of the last to support XP and have it setup on a dual boot with an i7 3770K which is probably one of the strongest configurations possible while being technically supported. I don’t use it online for anything, even basic web browser as it’s easy to get compromised on XP but keeping it offline to run some old games and for emulation purposes is fine. I actually had no issues with the old versions of Dolphin 4.0 on this hardware configuration. Of course not as good as current versions but playable.
About Saturn, if i remember correctly SSF can run Saturn games faster than Yabause on XP but it requires an old version of daemon tools as winCDEmu doesn't play the redbook audio to most saturn games. and for PS1 there was a long forgotten emulator for PS1 called pSX V1.13 that i used to use alot on XP that ran perfectly on single core systems of the mid 2000s like the Pentium 4 for example (which i had in my old 2004 toshiba satellite laptop), XP was very fun for me when it came to gaming i used to put HOURS into GTA Vice City.
From what I have heard, it is still possible to get Steam running on XP but you do have to go through some hurdles. I believe the solution is to download an older version of Steak although I am not 100% certain.
Not alot of games from the 2010's can run on XP as mentioned..... Then why the piss is A Hat In Time's minimum specs saying that it can run on Windows XP? No joke, the game's minimum specs said that XP is supported, specifically XP Service Pack 3. Just because it runs under the much older Unreal Engine 3, doesn't automatically mean it can run on XP. The game is very detailed, and even with 8 GB of ram for systems like Windows 7, it tanks everything to a crawl, hence why the game is mainly ideal for systems with more than 8 gigs of ram and a operating system like Windows 10.
Hat in Time being XP compatible is kind of crazy, especially since the game came out in 2017 and it requires a 64 bit OS. The video said that XP started losing support for games around 2010 but I think it was closer to around 2013-2015 for most games.
Fun fact: you can actually run DOS and 16-bit applications on a 32-bit installation of Windows 10, they run using the same VM XP used. There's a project called NTVDMx64 which ports this to 64 bit editions of Windows. I use this at work to run old business applications on supported operating systems but I'm sure it'd work great for old games too.
Yep, there's also another project that uses Wine code to accomplish the same thing. NTVDMx64 is essentially a cracked version of what Microsoft initially wanted to implement in 64-bit Windows but ultimately dropped it. There are so many ways to run legacy software under Windows 10/11 that with enough determination and perseverance you'll run any old software under modern Windows. If wrappers like NTVDMx64, dgVoodoo, DXVK, DxWrapper and others won't do the job to run things natively, next up you have DOSBox, or even DOSBox-X that can run Windows 98 with Voodoo graphics, then you have VMware Player that can hypervise Windows XP with 3D graphics acceleration, and if you're really determined and you have the proper hardware, there's PCem/86Box to emulate a full Pentium machine.
Word of advice: Turns out the absolute BEST retro gaming setup comes in a surprisingly modern package: Linux. Seriously, Grab any distro and install Wine, Dosbox and Retroarch, and that puppy will run ANYTHING way better than Windows can. It’ll only struggle on games made on DirectX 10 and above, but then again those are hardly retro…
I've just reinstalled XP on my old PC a few weeks ago, and installed some of my old classic games from disk again, great playing those games all over again, Max Payne 2, Street Fighter 4, Medal of Honor etc 😊 Great content dude 👌🏻
If we want to keep awesome Windows 95/98 and xp games alive then we must suggest them on GOG. For those who don't already know GOG has many older games that Steam does not due to the licensing agreement that good old games have. He has a cold fact GOG is owned by Cd project red.
certain emulators like the dolphin emulator take a significant amount of single-threaded (cpu) performance so a random old laptop cpu certianly won't cut it. I'd recommend ryzen 1000 or faster to make sure all your games are smooth.
I remember playing MD/SNES games on emulators on Windows XP, and everything worked mostly fine, although ZSNES refused to play some ROMs and some old Sega emulators (like Gens) had not so perfect sound emulation, like GEMS cymbal sound sounded like a really nasty off-key note on some games (Scooby-Doo Mystery is most infamous example, also Comix Zone and Taz-mania). Can't say much about N64 emulation though, I think I spent more time changing plugins and stuff trying to make it run as fast as possible and without missing textures than actually playing games lol.
Retroarch works pretty good on windows xp. Best psx emulation for xp is epsxe or psx. I know SSF older versions work well for saturn emulation on windows xp. It just needs a system with a core duo or core 2 duo to run fullspeed. Athlon series cpus at 3ghz works also.
Glad I stumbled upon this. Just a few things to note, or tips really. I own a rig with a Celeron 420, 512MB of DDR2 RAM, no dedicated GPU and just 80GB for storage. For PS1, you're better off with ePSXe, even with my specs it can run some games in 2x resolutions. Another thing you missed because it's a niche inside another niche are arcade emulators, especially those based on PCs that ran XP Embedded, and for those you can either grab, say, a Sega Model 2 emulator since it's based around PS1 hardware and even supports the same plugins ePSXe does, also runs full speed for me, or try an older version of Teknoparrot. Also, you CAN still install Steam, but many games have been patched with 64-bit executables or now rely on something that requires at least Windows 7, sadly. One game I can confirm that works is the original Devil May Cry 3 release, but an example that no longer works, or I did something wrong, is Half-Life 2, a shame really.
If you want to try this on an even beefier system for the shits and giggles, try the 64 bit version. I had it installed on my main rig at one point on a SATA SSD, and boy did it zoom around. The boot screen barely even had time to show. (Although it also dropped 16 bit support as well I think)
@@FrameRater Not in my experience. For reference, my specs are this: Intel Core i7 3770k 16GB DDR3-1600 GTX 970 (using an edited INF file for the 950 release of the last available driver; the driver is compatible with the entire generation, but the INF file was never officially written to include the 970) I used it mainly for playing old point and click adventures like you did, and I never had any issues as far as I remember. I got rid of it after a while when I got bored, but the OS itself never let me down.
Not overkill in my book! I'm the type to want dedicated DOS and Windows 95/98 machines and the mixture of a Windows XP laptop with emulators on it really takes me back! There is also something called Legacy Update for those who want to keep a Windows XP machine with internet updated long after its expiration. Heck, I have a machine designed for 7 running 10 which is soon to expire next year so either backwards with limited internet use or Linux are the solution going forward for that machine.
for running 16-bit software on modern systems, I recommend giving WineVDM a try. it's my go-to method for running games like Chip's Challenge. otherwise pretty alright video here.
You forgot to mention RetroArch. RetroArch has windows xp builds, and most system run fine with it, i bet that intelvision core would also work so you dont have to use pcsx2 to play intelvision games ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I tried looking everywhere online for awhile, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to run retroarch on Windows XP, the build on the main website is missing a file, and even when I found that file, things still wouldn't work, so if you ever find a working method, I would much appreciate hearing about it
I kept my 2008 XP Netbook for this and storing scans of comics. I'm a collector but I don't want to sort thru the boxes to find an issue of Adventures In The DC Universe or Nintendo Comics System so I keep scans from archives that have been uploaded. Beyond that it's mostly emulation and older PC games. I run freeware games on it too. There's some good freeware if you know where to get it. They're legit releases, the developers just re-issued them as freeware games. I can also use it for MS-Paint projects. It's really still quite useful. Plus it does get wifi and I can use it to get online so SD and USB aren't the only ways to load software. I can get almost all of what I need from websites that still host those files
I just want to play all the Air Strike 3D games without issues. Fortunately I managed to get them to work on modern device for the most part. Air Strike 3D 2 is a bit buggy tho.
There is 64 bit versions of Windows XP and last I checked I had good luck with them with 64 bit programs and there is working browsers for XP if you want to check them out
WinCDEmu really reminds me of the old 2003 Daemon Tools when it comes to simplicity. They jumped the gun adding all the stuff that PowerISO did better back then.
Wow, this video is incredible-nothing else even comes close! I’m amazed at how well some of the emulators run; they’re even better than I remember. However, since I was testing on older hardware, I didn't have any luck with nullDC and SEGA CD compatibility was hit or miss. I wish there were more videos like this-none I’ve found delve as deeply with such attention to detail.
If you're using Linux, you can play many 32-bit games on it with no problem, even those on Steam. Some games that didn't work on Windows 10 for me (e.g. Blood 2, Omerta: City of Gangsters) ran perfectly on Linux.
So, I actually have been looking all over for someplace to ask this question. I have an old high-end XP machine running emulators. Tons of old systems, and they work amazingly. It even runs N64 and PSX flawlessly. It contains outdated emulators from when I first set things up years ago. It is actually pretty snappy and runs like its new out of the box; in some ways it seems to run smoother than modern systems. But I digress. I want to set up a front end like Emulatinon Station or Launchbox to run a self contained game station. Right now each system has its own shortcut and has to be loaded independently. I can not find ANY GUI or Front End program that is not requiring a newer OS or missing dlls or other various functions that I do not have. I know that there was software back in the day to do all of this. Can anyone point me in the right direction for how to set up properly, or where to get out-dated programs, or which programs may actually support this, or anything?
My XP PC has a corrupted DVD driver, so I can only play digital games!!! If I want to play my physical older Windows games, I have to dump them on my external hard drive and even that didn’t let me play Sid Meier’s Pirates! At least LEGO Island works fine.
I’m using windows xp sp3 32bit .5gb ram 420 graphics card 80gb hdr 2.33ghz I’m playing Medieval total war Myth The fallen lords Torn’s passage Sid mirers Gettysburg ❤❤❤❤ And NES 580 games Snes 720 games N64 250 games All work great ❤with emulator Movies as well 🍿
Very interesting. Are there any games that work better specifically on XP in comparison to Windows 7 or Vista? Or, working backwards, any games that work better on XP in comparison to Win98 or 2000?
The XP defined a generation, for sure, though I find it really hard to find a game that won't work on modern Windows versions with a patch, source port, emulator, etc.
I even remember a game that could be played outside the application, a soccer game where the desktop screen was completely blank. Look for the game I meant above
one guy online built the true ultimate windows xp machine. with a core it 4790k and a 980 GTX (modified inf file) and it runs like an absolute champ. I hope one day to build it
Y’know i actually have a question if it’s okay. Is there a way to play windows 95 games on windowsXP since I was kinda hoping to play a deemed copy of Die Hard Trilogy for PC
I love xp but Sigh...running a more modern os would fix compat on emulation...and can't you just run you're retro pc games in xp compat in the exe properties? Excellent vid though. Its a give and take...as with everything
I’ve had the MSN notification sound as my text notification sound on my phone for a few years now (because everyone has the same default text sound on IPhone) and at the beginning of the video where it played with the specs, I seriously thought I got a text and frantically searched my phone like “where the hell did it go?”
Well i also have a windows xp laptop but i upgrade to windows 7 and now i want to go back . What do you think there are so many iso files available in internet but obviously we don't know that these iso files are genuine or not Can you suggest me that from which website i want to download windows xp iso file.
Have you considered Linux and Proton for your 90's PC gaming compatibility needs? Many games like those featured here now work that do not on modern Windows.
Here's a fun DOS gaming tidbit...Silpheed, from GameArts (released in the US by Sierra in 1986, I believe), runs on all Windows up to Win7, 32bit, at the correct speed. The VDM picks it up flawlessly and the game's internal timing isn't synced to the system clock/cpu frequency, so it runs flawlessly. Sadly, when I went to 64-bit Win7 (many, many, *many* years ago) it necessarily broke. I'll miss you, Silpheed.
For PS1 games you could try the Connectix Virtual Game Station. While not strictly compatible with XP it can be made to run by dropping the .exe onto the CVGSrun.exe file. You'll need a virtual CD drive to play the games but the emulator still runs fairly well to this day.
Had that for Mac back in the day. Considering it let you play PSX games while they were still alive and kicking on store shelves was nuts. It's like if you could get a PS5 emulator on Steam for PC and play it on a medium-high spec PC. Compatibility was surprisingly good and very few games had significant bugs/issues.
@@jendorei Nintendo hasn't had current-gen graphics since the Gamecube. A Switch is barely above mobile games in graphics. PS1 was still a contender when Virtual Game Station came out.
Honestly, my favorite configuration for 90s PC gaming is a Pentium MMX at around 166-233mhz with Windows 95. That kind of setup really is much better for that stuff than an XP machine imo. I'd look into at least a laptop of that era.
Wine can be surprisingly decent at some older 16 bit software on a modern and 64 bit system. I think it just uses some kind of emulation but the syscall interface passes through to the host OS so it's a bit nicer than having to run an emulator, and no concerns about legality. I know there's stuff like winevdm but I don't follow those projects so i dunno how up to date or maintained they are.
I gotta say I'm very surprised at the poor performance for some emulators near the end as I used to used XP lot myself up until just a few years a go I've never had issues like that before so I'm assuming you're using weaker hardware than I was at the time.
My primary Windows XP machine (this one running Professional, the variant most would use i'd say), is a Dell Precision M90 that i got for a pretty good price ($120AUD) a few years ago. Has the best GPU you could get with it, a Quadra FX3500M with 512MB VRAM. 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, a nice 1920x1200 screen, 2GB RAM & a 500GB SSD i had put into it. Has some emulators of course, with various older games, that go up to a few from the late 2000's (whenever i do some games on it, i do connect an external mouse though). For example, whenever i play oblivion, i always do it on that since it acts odd with my main system. Do like playing it on the M90 & it runs rather well on it too. Playing videos with VLC, even do some virtual machines on it just for fun with VM software that works on it still, and have Daemon Tools installed for any ISO's i'd be using with it. Have installed an old version of steam from a few years ago, a few years ago that works somewhat still (can only install games i have purchased already, buying games doesn't work) which is still something. Whenever i use the internet on it with a few different browsers (Emails, RU-vid & even internet banking at times), it runs fine. But i go nowhere near that social media garbage, so that is a total non-issue for me. And contrary to what some might say the universe has not yet imploded by doing such internet based things on Windows XP, in this day & age. While nowadays, it'd be mostly just hobbyists & whatnot that would use XP, with a few real-world applications in places still, it is still a good OS to use. Always have liked it, and always will.
So happy that this popped up in my feed. Just brought up my old XP machine from storage a couple months ago so I could have some retro emulation in the living room. Unfortunately, mine's not as powerful as yours (Pentium 4, 512 mb ram, MX 420), so I'm limited on what I can run. Gonna check out that PS1 emulator, haven't had any luck with ePSXe, or PCSX. One refuses to boot, the other does not let me map the dual shock 4, and fails to register any keyboard inputs in game.
Fortunately we got all kinds of ports of DOOM 1993. But when it comes to a lot of this other stuff maybe an old OS like this is worth getting into. Great video. Anyway
