Why Don't Old Games Work on New Computers? 

1998: Our computers aren't powerful enough! 2020: Our computers are too powerful god dammit

Why don’t new games work on old computers?

"Try buying it on Steam!" How do you think I got into this mess in the first place?

"You finally built your gaming pc." Uses a laptop

“You wouldn’t download a car” I would if I was able to lol

Ironically, GTA 3 worked fine on my 64 bit Windows 10 laptop.

Also for someone wants to know , older versions of GTA 4 no longer worked in Windows 10 , but when GTA 4 was re released in 2020 after the end of GFWL , it's extremely compatible with new Windows 10 , it even solved the infamous GPU VRAM issue on the game , the only thing bad about the game is that it doesn't support mods anymore..

2:55 is it even legal to own a nuclear reactor like that ..

"built the gaming PC of your dreams" - playing on a laptop

"You wouldn't download a car, would you?" I would download a house if I could.

Its 3:00 am I dont need sleep, i need answers

0:10 "Spent the last 2 months locked inside your room" *Laughs in 2020*

The VM solution is my favorite one. Its really easy and flexible. If a game doesn't run on my Win10, I just boot the Win7 VM. The performance hit caused by the virtualization is no problem, if you play older games on a new machine.

Why can't I just download more graphics?

Me : Why Don't Old Games Work on New Computers Emulators : Am i a Joke to You

One thing I've noticed is a lot of REALLY old games (like mid to late 90's) will run fine on Windows 10 without having to do anything, but then once you hit the early 2000's (specifically 2000 to about 2004), that's when you start having issues (at least in my experience). I dunno what's up with that.

"Nostalgia is a helluva drug." you got that right, man. Edit: Seriously, i did not think my comment would get so many thumbs up.. thank you!

sometimes they do , you just miss the old C and DirectX Runtime Libraries.

"you wouldn't download a car, right?" well, I would if I could

fun fact: Sometimes you can activate your old games via steam using the CD key, so you dont even have to buy it a second time!

3:05 "Linus, how many ethernet connections do you need?" "YES"

Windows: sometimes doesn't run old 32 bit software correctly. Everyone cries iOS: Deactivates 32 bit support via an update. Everyone cheers.

In the early days 16-bit architecture game delays were written in processor ticks which could result in faster pace. Dosbox for example has command to "Clock" your processor faster/slower to overcome this problem

I'm using my phone to play Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep in PPSSPP, and it's handling the game without any lag!

So will it play Crysis will take on a new meaning.

This is why I have an old 98 and XP computer stashed away, for those times when I want to go retro-gaming. ...yes... F***ing Windows 98!

I remember a long time ago trying to get my PC CD Rom of Williams Classics (Defender, Joust, Robotron2084, etc...) running on a modern PC. At the time, I thought no tech issue could stop me, but I was wrong. I tried to brute force my system to make it work, but ended with a hot mess of registry issues. Had to reimage... So glad we have DOSBOX!

Been trying to get The Sims 2 to work on Windows 10 and it works.

Actually, a 64-bit OS can run all 32-bit things without any issues. It's the 16-bit applications that cannot be run. All DOS games are 16-bit... though Windows hasn't had proper DOS support for nearly 20 years now, so the bits aren't really the biggest of your problems. The biggest compatibility issue with older games is actually being written for older graphics cards and older versions of DirectX. Some games rely upon obsolete technologies like DirectDraw or 3dfx Glide, both of which normally require some sort of wrapper nowadays.

Who wouldn't download a car?

I always wondered about this since I have many old CD with games, and whenever I try to run them, they are so so so incredibly laggy. Seems like I am lucky enough to even run them.

Some antique games also have engine reimplementations made by the community. Or you might need to install Linux and play your old game via WINE. The video really should have mentioned those options.

I feel sad Sometimes in future San Andres won't be available in pc Edit: My stupidest comment is my highest liked comment. *SMH*

Just use a virtual machine running Windows XP or Windows 98

I stuck a previously unopened cereal box cd of Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 I got in 2004 in the new PC I built last week, and I was amazed when it ran perfectly

Now I'm glad I can run NFS most wanted (2005 edition), on my windows 10 laptop

Let me tell you a secret Windows 7

goodbye tunnelbear, we will not miss you.

1:30 so if i was to get a 16gb kit of ram with regular windows home, i could only use 8? Will it be the same for gaming? Do i need home premium to use 16gb?

I ran into the same trouble trying to run a trusty old desktop publishing software micrografx draw. It was a 16 bit program. I ended up dual booting and adding an installation of xp to do it for several old programs. Along with being able to read a very old hard drive from the late 80s connected to an adapter that let it plug into the USB port. After much effort I was finally able to run some old basic programs we had written as kids. Most people nowadays would say a vm is the way to go.

32/64 but compatability is a non issue. Modern CPUs support both word lengths. If that was the issue then nothing would've worked after the first Athlon 64 in 2004(-ish) and Windows XP 64-bit edition. The reason older games don't work is because the software frameworks they run on are now deprecated. Games for Windows 9x often use the COM framework that was completely removed from Windows, or they'll use a version of DirectX or OpenGL that is so old it is no longer supported via backwards compatability with newer versions of those frameworks. Device drivers are also a non issue. Games don't interface directly with drivers. They communicate with an API. Communicating with the drivers directly would be a laughably stupid way to program a game. It makes me wonder if this entire video wasn't researched via the one Wikipedia article on WoW64. Windows games use APIs. Always have done. It's all software. Not hardware. For example, take the original Roller Coaster Tycoon from 1999. That runs on a Pentium 90MHz. It will also run flawlessly on my Ryzen 7 1700. Why? Because apart from some old C++ bindings that can be easily patched out (and we're in the mid 2000s) the entire game is written in X86 assembler (it speaks directly to the CPU). Runs perfectly fine. When you install it on modern windows systems it also install an old deprecated API called DirectSound. Job done. With regard to multi-core CPUs, that is also incorrect in this video. You write software to take advantage of the extra cores. The extra cores don't automatically break the threading apart (and the threading argument completely falls down dead when you consider semaphores and mutex, regardless of how many cores a program is spread over, the timing will remain intact). Most modern games are programmed to use only 2-cores for game logic, too. Multi CPU systems and multi threading systems have existed since the 90s. They aren't anything new. An old game on a new system will just use one core. Windows 98 games had zero issues on the first Pentium 4 HT CPUs. This video is very poor. If you had said all this BS in my old Software Engineering lectures from University, the lecturerer would've shot you a damn funny look.

My favorite one of these is trying to play Warcraft II on anything post-Win95: the game speed is tied to the clock speed so everything goes so fast its impossible to keep up!

I love how Linus pulls out not one, but two phones out of his pockets

Reminds me. LEGO Racers, which came out in 1998, runs like a dream on almost ANY modern system I throw at it, and even seems to work with XInput controllers like the Xbox 360 and Xbox One controllers OUT OF THE BOX.

Microsoft. We put the backwards in backwards-compatible!

I just like hearing your voice Linus

Ready for Part 2, 3, 4, etc

Really i didn't found yet a old game that doesn't work on mine "new" pc with windows 10.

That magikarp image could use some more jpg

Does this mean one day Crysis won't run?

0:50 I am in Linus tech tips channel ?! Wait..wtf He has 2nd channel !!!

Not all old games are supported for new PCs.

Super Secret Ancient Gamer Code: Treat your old systems well and don't throw them out when you replace them. I still have my Athlon XP machine.

This is why I have a few retro pcs from 95 to vista, it's quite easy to get into building retro machines for those old games.

One of the GTAs (bought on Steam in Win10 times) didn't work until I applied a crack from TPB on it. The DRM got borked by time and Cuatomer Support had no ability to go beyond "uninstall and reinstall". That was it. It had no other problems.

Tip: use the PCGamingWiki website to determine if an older game has any DRM like StarForce. It will save you a lot of headaches in case you install one and then get stuck in a Windows reboot loop due to the OS not being able to load the dll file.

I've got a cracked version of MechWarrior IV. It's the best one in the series. Especially Vengeance. It works perfect on Windows 10 for me. I play through it every couple years.

It's actually amazing how many really old Windows games still work out of the box

This hits different after quarantine

I went old-school and using Og Compaq evo D500 with a built-in speaker and it works pretty good, came with Winxp on it and I can swap in the HDD with another from an eMachine that i installed Win98se and thankfully I found the drivers and they were compatible with 98!

G.O.G (Good Old Games) is awesome! When they have sales, you can find games that are 80% or even 90% off. You can get your favorite old games for, quite literally, just a couple of dollars. I've used them a bunch for my most favorite old games. I've only ever had great experiences with them. Highly recommended.

Pls explain why my pc won't go in the kitchen and make me a sandwich

I remember the headache that came from trying to run mass effect 1 on a fx-8150 black in 2011

Nostalgia hell of a drug , me haven't played any game that released after 2010

ok the VERY FIRST thing to try in windows 7/10 is this TURN ON LEGACY COMPONENTS!!!!!! (in windows control panel/programs and features/turn windows features on or off) this has fixed MANY issues ive had and i also use dxwnd (has many profiles already to go and make your own) to avoid mucking my monitor setup works perfectly with Total Annihilation/imperium galactica 2/star trek bridge commander (just to name 3 i play regularly on my windows 10 machine WITHOUT virtual machines/dual boots crap)

I have XP 32-bit installed on my second hard drive. I just boot it up when I want to go old school.

Do you have any idea how much time it took to run the old version of doom on my modern pc and even when I got it to run it zoomed my entire desktop

I'm frikkin astonished how many videos I watched on this topic before one of em gave me this information. Thankyou Linus.

I've used GOG to avoid this most of the time.

Also, you could find patches made by fans. I couldn't run Thief Gold properly (cutscenes didn't show up),which I had bought on Steam. I found a fan-made patch, and not only did the cutscenes star playing, but they also improved the enemies' AI and increase the resolution of the environments. Gaming communities are a resourceful bunch indeed.

0:44 I love this Reference

I still have multiple old desktops I use for older stuff. It's still fun to play around with them to this day.

5:42 Challenge accepted

32 bit programs run just fine on 64 bit windows. The issue your descibing only applies to 16bit executables on 64 bit systems. Some very old games have 16bit installers even when the program itself may be 32bit. 16 bit executables only work on 32 bit windows.

1:04 Um, excuse me?, did he just pronounce N-E-S as NES?

At my 2017 PC everything Works just Fine

Of course I'll download a car 4 of them

I miss my PS2, didn't have to do chores in those games

3:53 sorry nostalgia man this is not available right now

When i tried to play star wars kotor i had to do a lot of modifications in the game files and disable different graffic settings

This reminds me when i try to play steam version of Fallout 3. There was warning game not compatible with Windows 10. The only issue was you have to install good oldie games for windows live, because for unknown reason to me, bethesda decided to let games for windows manage all settings and dependencies of their game.

Pay again for the games you own, bc the anti-piracy stuff is incompatible now. Srsly?

I updated my direct X and all the oldie games started working : )

Actually most old games won't run because of obsolete DRM or 16-bit code. For the first fix, either get the No-CD crack or buy it from GOG. For the second fix there is otvdm, an amazing 16bit conpatibility layer for 64bit windows. nGlide is used to bring 3dfx glide support for old games and Creative Alchemy brings back eax sound. PCGamingWiki is the comunity Linus talks about.

Just use an emulator.

Unreal Tournament 2004... man i wish i could play that again

Also some games have cracks that make them run, a while ago I installed simcity 4 off a disc and just swapped in a cracked exe with no drm and it ran fine as opposed to refusing to even start before

Every time he mentions bits I can’t help but think about the meme, someone use this video to make Linus say it please 😂

So if i have a 32 bit Windows and i install it 2 times it would be 64 bit?

I was recently playing the original Deus Ex again and I came across those fixes to make it work perfectly

CPU affinity actually helped me avoid an old game from crashing constantly. I had to only enable the second CPU core for that process tough, first core caused issues.

3:41 Should have named the ship the “SSx86”

Nothing wrong with keeping a old beige box around for the old games, especially if it has a CRT , old games just look better on a CRT as designers made them with thin scanlines in mind. PS PCemu is also a great a solution , it will flawlessly emulate a old Pentuim 1 133-200mhz with a Voodoo 1 if you have a fast enough CPU.

this guy looks a lot like Linus from Linus tech tips, anyone else see this??

One of the things I still have problems with is getting games to work that used live

Thanks for telling that

Also, how is it that RU-vid can play 4K videos on my browser without a hitch but when I try to play 4K videos using VLC, which has access to all of my hardware, it stutters and sometimes refuses to play the file?

Whenever I hear Linus, he sounds like Garth, (Dana Carvey), from Waynes World

I want go tryout old school jump start games.

I actually have a lot of games from multiple generations and while some of them work just fine, others I need to ether get some special patches, programs like OTVDM and NTVDM64, the required dlls, using a disc or any combination of those just to play them