[kgm]

There's a whole generation of games from the mid to late 90s (and perhaps into the early 00s) that's remarkably annoying to play these days because of this issue. The game I've personally tried to get running, every once in a while, is Mechwarrior 3, but it's a complete disaster. The last time I tried to run it, I actually managed to load into the first mission, but the in-game physics were remarkably broken, with the amusing result where the first enemies you face in the game (a couple of little tanks) drove up towards me, hit a little bump, and then immediately rocketed into the sky.

At least part of the issue is that the game uses multiple threads, but was designed for systems with a single CPU, with a clock speed that's considerably slower than is present in modern systems. Something about this difference in timing breaks the whole thing in ways which are diverse and inexplicable.

Now, this comment thread contains plenty of possible solutions I could attempt, but if it's really a matter of the game relying on something like the CPU speeds of contemporary hardware (not to mention contemporary graphics hardware) then I start to think that I'd need to track down some kind of Pentium 3-era gaming PC to really make it work.

[vorpalhex]

There are ways to ask a cpu to emulate a given clockspeed.

https://github.com/tomysshadow/OldCPUSimulator as a random result on the topic

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Mechwarrior 2 (ATI 3D Rage Edition) is my white whale. I cannot for the life of me get that working.

[kgm]

Part of the issue there is that the 3D-acceleration-enabled versions of Mechwarrior 2 (and Mercenaries) were buggy as heck even at the time. (Mercenaries was even pretty buggy before they did the 3D card patch, and it only got moreso.) It really doesn't help this kind of games preservation that the games themselves could be kind of junk, from a technical standpoint.

[deeesstoronto]

I played a ton of Mechwarrior 2 (ATI 3D Rage Edition) - the Aptiva bundle version - and didn't notice it being buggy.... Maybe this is a later version and earlier versions were more buggy?

[kgm]

My own experience was with the 3D-enhanced version of Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries, specifically. It is possible that the equivalent version for Mechwarrior 2 was more stable. It's also possible my 3D drivers of the time were the cause of the issues I had, but Mercenaries was sufficiently buggy in all sorts of other ways (even the DOS version loved to crash) that I always just blamed the game.

[deeesstoronto]

Although I do remember the ATi drivers on the later Rage Pro could get pretty buggy. I remember the most problems with OpenGL games....

[CoastalCoder]

Does anyone still have the source code for those games?