Dinosaur Files

Is it REALLY dangerous to play old games on a computer with a newer OS.?

I've been hanging onto some old, old games like The 7th Guest and Phantasmagoria wanting to play them again someday. A friend recently told me that unless I want to play them on my old dinosaur computer I might as well throw them out because they won't work if I try to install them on my current computer that has XP and if I try I could very likely it up. Is that true? And if so, is there any workaround? That makes me so sad 'cause I love those games!

Public Comments

1. Thats false. You can play the older games that exist on your new computer, as long as you have the correct emulator software (a program that "translates" the old code or programming language to a series of instructions that your new OS can understand and execute). Lots of emulators are available on the net.
2. They won't hurt anything. The worst thing that could happen is you might get a message saying "This program is not compatible with this version of Windows." But you can try it anyway. Windows XP is backward compatible with many older programs.
3. It won't hurt to install them and see if they'll work. If they don't run, you can always look into buying a copy of something like Virtual PC. You can use that to set up a Windows 98 Virtual PC on your XP PC and install the game there.