I have two old Sierra games,"Minigolf" and "Kings Quest-Mask of Eternity" and I am wondering if either one will work on a new laptop computer with Windows 8 (or maybe 8.1) I'n not sure which. I don't want to try them without some encouragement.
Razzle

Hi Razzle, I'll move this thread across to our tech forum for advice.

If you get a new laptop, it will have Windows 8.1 on it. Or you should upgrade from 8 to 8.1 immediately.

There is no way to know if they will work or not until you try them. We have a Windows 8 and Games stickied at the top of the Glitches forum and you can see we've had pretty good luck with our old games and Windows 8. However, if either of these games is 16-bit, then they will not work.

You can always try using the compatibility mode in Windows 8 to see if they will work if they won't install or play normally. That's worked for me several times.

EDIT: I see that GOG has all the King's Quest games and it says they will work on Windows 7, so they should also work on Windows 8. So if your old disks won't work, you can always get the games there. They have the games in bundles of 3 for $9.99.

Thanks, I'll try them and see what happens.
razzle

Let us know!

I installed the Kings Quest one and it seemed to go in OK, but it didn't put up an icon. I guess I'll have to figure out how to find it to play it.
Any suggestions? I haven't tried the Minigolf, yet. I'll let you know what happens.
Razzle

That's great news! Many of the old games don't install an icon. Go to the King's Quest folder and find the game play file, right click it and select Sent to Desktop.

From you Start page, you should be able to just type in King's Quest and open up the file.

It went in OK as I said, but it just won't play at all, so I uninstalled it. The Minigolf wouldn't even install at all.
Razzle

Did you try right clicking the game play icon and running it through compatibility? Just select Properties after you right click and then click on the Compatibility tab.

Couldn't even get the game play icon, as I said. Oh well, I tried.
Razzle

The game play icon doesn't matter. All it does is point at the game's exe, which is in the game folder. You can create your own icon from the game exe if the game's installer doesn't create it for you.

However if GOG doesn't list Windows 8 as compatible with their version of KQ8, there was probably some problem getting it to run in Windows 8. Unlike the other KQ's, it's not a DOS game and can't be run inside DOSBox, which is probably what GOG uses for compatibility.