By Home Fries While this wiki primarily covers Total Air War, we would be remiss in not addressing EF2000, the predecessor of F-22 ADF/TAW. This article will briefly touch on some of the different versions of EF2000, then discuss how to get EF2000 to run on a current Windows system.

I was wondering if someone could tell me the best software to create a Windows 98 virtual machine. I want to use it to play old games that won’t work in Windows 7, or Windows XP. The games include Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, Mechwarrior 2, Mechwarrior 3, ect. DirectX is required for some of them, so the virtual graphics driver has to be able to at least handle that.

So, how about it? Is there a virtual machine program out there that can run Windows 98 and is good with games?

1. I am gonna try directx support on my win98se guest. Or will install xp guest in ms vpc on win7 host. One reason i retest vpc2007 was also dx support issue after i migrated to win7. I wannted to run brutus2d game development basic language which runs on win xp. But no more on win 7. Same for visual basic 6. Xp guest on virtualbox. Vmware player i failed the above issues althogh xp runs great on vbox vwp.

2. Sorry i am using my cell to reply. A lot of typo.... if u visit vbox site u will find that vbox is not optinized for win 98 or older. vmwAre player 3. I dont know. At least u must have bootable win98 cd to install. Performance (speed) of win98se guest. Vpc much faster than vbox. (don know vmware player but i dont expect much. ). On xp host (pentium core duo 2ghz) i could enjoy starcraft on win98se guest. Hope this answer help u with your decision.

3. Keith,

   did you try the virtualization software recommended by ha14 or FIDELIS? Did it work and is your question solved? Please let us know. Thank you!

4. Hello, on my experience, the best virtualization software that you can use with windows 98 is vmware player. Here is the link:

   • I am testing several virt softwares and concluded that ms virtual pc 2007 sp1 may work for me. I mainly use win98se guest not for gaming. But at least sound should be supported. I failed getting sound with virtualbox. I failed install on vmware player 3.0 because my win98se cd cannot be bootable by itself(tried win98se booting cd and partition the virtual hdd. No more step forward because i cannot format the disk ) i am using win7. I also had experience on win xp host. For win98 i got the best match with ms vpc 2007. If xp or later os including ubuntu. I recommend virtualbox. U have trouble with vm addition for vpc2007 if the guest is w98. Try searching the vm addition for w98 or ask me. Jhlee679@gmail.com. I just finish install. No test the directx yet. But i hope it will work. One more tip. U have to unonstall vpc for xp mode in win7 first if u already use it.

5. Hi

   A quick and easy way to do this is to download virtualisation software (Innotek Virtualbox (http://www.virtualbox.org/), QEMU or Microsoft Virtual PC 2007(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx))

The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get the short end of the stick compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows ... or do you?

There are a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away vast amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here are a few other options for playing Windows games on your Mac without the hassle or expense of having to install Windows.

GeForce Now

PC gaming on Mac? Yes you can, thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now. The service allows users to play PC games from Steam or Battle.net on macOS devices. Better still, the graphic power of these games resides on Nvidia's servers. The biggest drawback: the service remains in beta, and there's been no announcement when the first full release is coming or what a monthly subscription will cost.

For now, at least, the service is free to try and enjoy. All supported GeForce NOW titles work on Macs, and yes, there are plenty of them already available!

The Wine Project

The Mac isn't the only computer whose users have wanted to run software designed for Windows. More than 20 years ago, a project was started to enable Windows software to work on POSIX-compliant operating systems like Linux. It's called The Wine Project, and the effort continues to this day. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after all), so Wine will run on the Mac also.

Wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's been around the Unix world for a very long time, and because OS X is a Unix-based operating system, it works on the Mac too.

As the name suggests, Wine isn't an emulator. The easiest way to think about it is as a compatibility layer that translates Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls into something that the Mac can understand. So when a game says 'draw a square on the screen,' the Mac does what it's told.

You can use straight-up Wine if you're technically minded. It isn't for the faint of heart, although there are instructions online, and some kind souls have set up tutorials, which you can find using Google. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start searching for which games you'd like to play and whether anyone has instructions to get it working on the Mac using Wine.

Note: At the time of this writing, The Wine Project does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina.

CrossOver Mac

CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making a Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.

CodeWeavers has modified the source code to Wine, made some improvements to configuration to make it easier, and provided support for their product, so you shouldn't be out in the cold if you have trouble getting things to run.

My experience with CrossOver — like Wine — is somewhat hit or miss. Its list of actual supported games is pretty small. Many other unsupported games do, in fact work — the CrossOver community has many notes about what to do or how to get them to work, which are referenced by the installation program. Still, if you're more comfortable with an app that's supported by a company, CrossOver may be worth a try. What's more, a free trial is available for download, so you won't be on the hook to pay anything to give it a shot.

Windows 98 Pc Games List

Boxer

If you're an old-school gamer and have a hankering to play DOS-based PC games on your Mac, you may have good luck with Boxer. Boxer is a straight-up emulator designed especially for the Mac, which makes it possible to run DOS games without having to do any configuring, installing extra software, or messing around in the Mac Terminal app.

Run Windows 98 Games On Mac Laptop

With Boxer, you can drag and drop CD-ROMs (or disk images) from the DOS games you'd like to play. It also wraps them into self-contained 'game boxes' to make them easy to play in the future and gives you a clean interface to find the games you have installed.

Boxer is built using DOSBox, a DOS emulation project that gets a lot of use over at GOG.com, a commercial game download service that houses hundreds of older PC games that work with the Mac. So if you've ever downloaded a GOG.com game that works using DOSBox, you'll have a basic idea of what to expect.

Some final thoughts

In the end, programs like the ones listed above aren't the most reliable way to play Windows games on your Mac, but they do give you an option.

Of course, another option is to run Windows on your Mac, via BootCamp or a virtual machine, which takes a little know-how and a lot of memory space on your Mac's hard drive.

How do you play your Windows games on Mac?

Let us know in the comment below!

Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.

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C.J.'s next Fishing Tourney will be in July

Microsoft Windows 98 Installed Games

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