So, will any of these games...
 

Ok, there are a few "classic" adventure games I haven't played yet (how dare I!) that I'm considering trying to get my hands on. They are:

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
Grim Fandango
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist

What I'd like to know is will any (or all) of these work on XP? Or does anyone know of a way to get them to work on XP?

I'm not confident.

But thank you in advance for your replies.

well, grim fandango will work on xp. i played gf on my xp. it works rather nicely, actually....

I'm currently playing Grim Fandango on my XP. It works well after I disabled the hyper threading.

I'm playing Gabriel Knight 1 right now on Windows XP, but I'm running it in DOSBox. There's a patch that you can use that is supposed to get the game running in Windows XP; it didn't work for me, but you could give it a try. I don't have the link right now, but could find it if you want.

Grim Fandango is compatible with Windows XP. However, if your computer supports hyperthreading, you will have to turn hyperthreading off (there are instructions on how to do that on the Gameboomers website.

As far as I know, Freddy Pharkas is a DOS game (I could be wrong about this, so someone please correct me if I am). But I believe it will run in DOSBox.

So, yes, they are all doable.

Grim Fandango! Grim Fandango!

Amazing game. Haven’t played the others either but I know for sure that it works on XP and that you don’t need to do anything special to make it run...I think... :)


I’m sure it’s still quite easy to get hold of as well since it’s the most recent of all the games you’ve posted.

Thank you all for speedy replies. Good to know they all can (potentially) work. And one definant (GF).

What's DOSBox? Are you just referring to the the DOS box with the command prompt or a particular program? If it's a program, is it easy to use (in reference to playing these games)?

Thanks again.

This can explain it better than I can:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosbox

Grim Fandango works on XP. I played it myself. Get it while you still can, it's one of the best (if not THE best) adventure game i ever played. :)

Ta.

If you use DOSBox, grab the D-Fend front end, which makes it far, far easier to use :).

Here's the XP installer for Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.

http://vogons.zetafleet.com/gkpatches/

I would strongly recommend staying away from the Gabriel Knight XP Installer. While it is amazing work, it runs the Windows version of the game, which in my opinion, is not nearly as good as the DOS version. The graphics in the Windows version are supposedly "hi-res" (640 x 400), yet only some of the graphics have been redrawn at this resolution. This causes things like hi-res objects to stick out like a sore thumb against a lo-res background. For example, the magnifying glass on the table on the first screen (Gabriel's book store). :r

It didn't bother me. I tried getting GK1 to run in DosBox (even using dFend) and I couldn't get it to work and I really didn't feel like putting a lot of effort into getting it to run. So the XP installer was a godsend for me. If that kind of stuff is important to someone, use the DosBox but otherwise for an easy install, the installer works great.

The only one of these that I've tried on XP was Freddy Pharkas and it more or less worked. I think I ran it in DosBox, although it might have just worked with VDMsound.

Incidentally, you may also need to apply the Grim Fandango patch to straighten out a few problems encountered on fast computers...

http://www.lucasarts.com/products/grim/grim_files.htm

I wish I'd known about this when I played for the first time. Would you believe I actually managed to beat the

Spoiler:

too-fast elevator

segment WITHOUT applying the slowdown patch? I went through my entire repertoire of swear-words and very nearly ended up throwing my computer through the front window. :D

Some will, but not all. Your biggest problem with the "really" old classics, e.g., FPFP, is that many of them shipped on 3.5 disks, and many PCs, including mine don't have a 3.5 drive. There have been reporte problems with some games that were subsequently made available on CD. Those problems mostly dealt with buyer verification. E.g., the first CD versions of FPFP didn't ship with a manual. Unfortunately, the only way to advance past the first screen or two required a manual.

Most of these "problems" have been solved with the availability of online walkthroughs.

How to get the vintage games onto your PC if you don't have the appropriate drive available might be your main problem.

I noticed the high res objects too. But it did work well, and made it extrenely easy to install and play, and i havent run into any issues yet. (only about a quarter through the game). As far as the game goes, it has been intriguing and enjoyable so far, i would reccomend it.

I played and finished Gabriel Knight 1 with the XP installed with zero problems. Playing Gabriel Knight 2 using its XP installer now without any problems either. Grim Fandango also worked fine for me in XP with no outside help. Freddy Pharkas does need DOSBox though.

I didn't even need to use DosBox to run Freddy Pharkas. It worked fine for me without it.