Judging by the traffic and feedback that I got from the earlier Games for Windows 2000 article (where I collected together workarounds that had been found to allow various supposed “Windows XP only” games to run on Windows 2000) it would seem that there’s still a small but dedicated userbase for this venerable OS among PC gamers.
In the intervening months, two industrious Windows 2000 stalwarts going by the handles of OldBoy2k and OldCigarette have taken up the gauntlet to fix every artificially incompatible game. The results of their efforts so far are catalogued on their Windows 2000 Gaming forum.
Most intriguingly, OldCigarette has developed a collection of API wrappers which goes some way to providing a general purpose solution for current and future games afflicted with these problems. In theory, the Windows 2000-using gamer need no longer rely on the good grace of the community to develop a workaround for a specific game – with this toolkit all they have to do is note the error messages produced when they try to run the game and simply drop relevant DLLs into the game’s working directory.
(There’s slightly more mucking about than that required initially – copying some files, a registry tweak and a reboot – but once it’s set up once configuration for subsequent games is minimal.)
I’ve so far successfully employed this box of tricks to play Stranglehold. Next on the list is Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, assuming I can circumvent the utterly deranged battery of booby traps that Relic are passing off as an installer program. But rare exceptions aside, I certainly have more confidence in buying Games for Windows (XP/Vista only) branded games now that I know that I can run them. Take that, inevitably rising tide of progress!
Tags: commentary, company of heroes, stranglehold, windows 2000, windows xp, wrapper
