I'm using VMware Player 16 (it's free for personal use) to run Windows XP, with the emulated accelerated graphics (without PCI passthrough or the like) some Direct X based games run fine, I tried Age of Empires 1 & The Rise of Rome, Age of Empires 2 & The Conquerors, Commandos Behind the Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty, Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 & Yuri's Revenge. Maybe in 10 years if we're all still alive. Sure one could likely just copy/paste the P2 code and make go up to '1ghz' but it won't be a Pentium III in any regards - and likely struggle to idle at 100% speed much less run anything at all. While you can get some games working - you'll often find quirks here and there that just doesn't manifest on real hardware.Īnyways, on topic for the OP - it's very unlikely that Pentium III support will ever be fully added. VMware, while very good software, it's main focus isn't retro computing. Hell, your local recyclers may even have a P4/early Core2-era computer already that they haven't torn up yet. Throw in a cheap $10 Geforce 6200, visit a computer recyclers for a cheap/free HD + case + PSU and you've got something that's usable for a good chunk of early XP games that just don't have Vista+ support. I've seen them as low as $20 CAD for a board, CPU, and RAM on ebay. Truthfully, for P4 level 'xp emulation' - you're better off getting yourself an actual Pentium 4 S478/LGA775 rig for dirt cheap.
There are real alternatives for running P3 and P4 games on modern hardware, namely VMware, virtualbox or even Steam. Specifically, the in-game music mod I wrote for my CD version of RTW does not work through Steam, yet it ran just fine on my old XP and 7 PCs using my trusty old CD-ROM drive. I recommend Steam for that game, although I have yet to be able to use my old MOD files with the game through Steam. One game that does not work well in VMware, let alone Virtualbox, is Rome Total War. I did try NHL 2000 on such a configuration and it did not work. I have yet to try games like Dominion Wars on XP through PCem. If you still have your game CDs, then you should be able to get your games working using these methods. I have at least 3 games working that way, namely the early Star Wars Battlefront games and Empire at War. If your game does not work on XP in VMware, then you can try Win7. It is almost like having an XP PC on your desk. Both run XP without much fuss and can work with many of the games from that era. Video cutscenes and in-game menus are a different story, but the gameplay is impressive given the all core turbo speed of my i7 9750h is only 4 Ghz.įor games that need a Pentium 3 or Pentium 4 I recommend either VMware or Virtualbox. I am not yet able to run all of my programs on the P2 450, but Jedi Knight and Episode 1 Racer run just fine in-game. PCem v17 is really good so if your game can run on a Pentium II I recommend it without hesitation.
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