emulator for old games?

[mbucari1]

Well, a few weeks ago I was feeling a bit nostalgic. So, I went to amazon and bought a game that I loved as a child. It's called the lost mind of doctor brain. Well anyway, I tried to install this on windows vista (I know, but I was hopeful ) and that didn't work, then I tried on xp and it installed w/o crashing at least. But then I try to run it and can't cuz it needs 256 colors. So, I right click the exe and set compatibility to 256 colors. I run it and it actually loads, but when I start playing it gets really screwy and then crashes. Then I tried installing windows 3.1 on vmware (the os i played it on as a child) but I can only get 16 colors cuz i can't find any vmware drivers for that OS. I'm starting to get fed up.

Does anyone have a solution (however patchwork it may be)?
I was thinking about installing windows 2000 on vmware which i think has a native 256 color setting. What do you think?

[raspberry1331]

How old is this game exactly? If it's a DOS game, try DOSBOX. If it runs on Win95, try installing that on Virtual PC, it's made by Microsoft (and it's free), so it should be compatible.

[mbucari1]

How old is this game exactly? If it's a DOS game, try DOSBOX. If it runs on Win95, try installing that on Virtual PC, it's made by Microsoft (and it's free), so it should be compatible.thanks a lot. I think the game can be played on do. It has an instalation option through dos. I will try dosbox first then win95. Thanks for the reply :)

[Cheese]

If it runs on Win95, try installing that on Virtual PC, it's made by Microsoft (and it's free), so it should be compatible.

Good advice. I run a virtual machine on my PC just for those old games that don't play well with XP.