Published on April 19, 2010 By kona0197 In Personal Computing

Well I had an urge to play Final Fantasy 7. I have the PC version. It played just fine when I was running Windows XP. So I try to play it a few days ago. Even with all the compatibility items checked and employed the pogram will not play. So I google it and find out many people have this same issue. That's to be understood as it's a game made for Windows 95.

So I install Virtualbox and Windows XP within a virtual PC. I install FF7 yet it will still not play.

Anyone know how to get old games to run over a virtual PC?


Comments
on Apr 19, 2010

well since you have virtual box at the ready get your self a linux disc . i recomend either unbuntu or mint  .. readup on wine  and install the proper packages  and that might be a way to get you up and running. also there is a couple commercial alternatives to wine that might give you better chances .

on Apr 19, 2010

also this forum has some more info that may get you started in the right direction as far as playing  the game in windows

http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/8568-final-fantasy-vii-2.html

 

http://www.qhimm.com/#ff7

hopefully these will help

on Apr 19, 2010

I tried those sites with no luck.

on Apr 19, 2010

It's still possible, hoever I ended up buying the game for the Playstation after the PC Version simply ceased to function on Vista in anything resembling a playable game without fairly involved steps.  The simplest way to get the game running is either a Virtual machine of a Windows 95 system or a dual boot for the same.  It won't be problem free, however.  If your Video card is anything close to a recent release the game will fail to detect it properly and will refuse to run at all in anything other than software mode.  Even still, hardware mode requries the emulation of a older cards to enable, which requires driver downgrades and the like to actually get functional which in turn can create problems for running more recent games.  Both hardware and software mode suffer the game running at insane speeds which can be addressed with further use of third party software, and then you'll need to contend with the random crashes that the modifications brings.  I hope you can succeed where I failed.  Best of luck.

on Apr 20, 2010

Do you have the PSX rom as well?  I ripped mine with alcohol 120 and I play it on an emulator

on Apr 20, 2010

No I do not have the PSX rom. It is not needed as I have the PC version of the game.

on Apr 20, 2010

i would try the linux distro with wine then  as this may be your best option

on Apr 20, 2010

why not make a virtual with windows 95 and see what it does?

on Apr 20, 2010

Have you stumbled upon the following webpages?

Running the game (vanilla):

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=9590.0

"Remix patcher", includes the patch, compatibility fixes plus various mods in one package:

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8915.0

Said mods can also be found here for instance, if you wish to install them separately:

http://fem1.uniag.sk/Miroslav.Jezik/ff7ncopam.html

on Apr 23, 2010

Phoon
why not make a virtual with windows 95 and see what it does?

 

It's likely that wont help, as the "hardware" being used by the virtual machine when running an older OS often isn't up to the task of running games, even older ones. One of my old games, Warlords III (1998), can't run on XP or later, so I tried using a virtual machine of windows 95 and 98 to run Warlords III, and it ran into a whole NEW slew of issues due to the VM's imaginary hardware.

on Apr 24, 2010

You'll have better luck running the PSX version of FF7 in an emulator than running the PC version on today's computers.

on Apr 24, 2010

XP has it's own backward compatibility mode to run older games as tho you were using 95,98 etc,right click on the .exe select properties,navigate to compatibility,choose win 95,98 or whatever ?

on Apr 24, 2010

Did you turn on 2D and 3D acceleration in VirtualBox?

on Apr 25, 2010

You'll have better luck running the PSX version of FF7 in an emulator than running the PC version on today's computers.

Actually I got it running just fine with a couple of patches.