Windows NT 3.51 Gaming

[Nano]

Yesterday, I was in the mood for some oldschool gaming on oldschool OSs. I was thinking to myself: "Should I use DOS? No, too common. Windows 95? Not hardcore enough. Windows 3.1? Nah, I need to take it further."

And thus I decided on Windows NT 3.51. After fiddling with settings for a while, I've got the system running with SoundBlaster16 audio and a 32-bit color 1152x864 display. Unfortunately, there weren't many games developed for this platform (and the probable sub-5 total of them were of course all published by Microsoft), but that's not gonna stop me from having some retro fun.

First stop: Minesweeper. Almost won this game! Exciting stuff.

Next: Solitaire. I still have no idea what to do in this game, but it sure is nostalgic.

Now we're moving on to Microsoft Golf. By this point my adrenaline is really pumping, guys. It really makes you hold your breath when you wait to see where the ball ends up.

Last stop: Edutainment game The Magic School Bus Explores the Rainforest. I'm pretty sure this is the only 'proper' game with native support for NT 3.51.

Look, character creation, just like in RPGs.

Anyways, this all sure was fun, wasn't it? Thank you for joining me in this adventure.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Windows NT 3.51 (Build 1057, Service Pack 5), now THAT was a good system for gaming!

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Yet someone was able to run Unreal/UT on it (I was doing similar research recently and even planned to start similar thread):



The key is to try OpenGL games, NT had limited DirectX support.

 

[Nano]

Yet someone was able to run Unreal/UT on it

I've restricted the games to the ones that officially support NT 3.51. I've heard WinQuake can run on it too with some settings tweaking, maybe I'll give these games a try tomorrow.

The key is to try OpenGL games, NT had limited DirectX support.

NT 4.0 was the one with DirectX support actually, 3.51 has none at all. It also only shipped with the basic 1.0 version of OpenGL.