http://www.dosgamers.com/ - get your old PC games running on your current PC hardware/OS

I thought I would recommend this useful site I've been using to get the original Unread running at its best on my current Windows 7 based PC.

http://www.dosgamers.com/

The site details a number of games originally coded for DOS, Windows 98 or Windows XP and gives details, along with download links, on how to get them running at their best on a current PC/OS.

Common problems encountered with older PC games on newer systems, which are covered include:

Widescreen and resolution support - many games written up to just a few years ago still didn't have support for widescreen monitors or higher resolutions. Many older game's fans have now written patches to address this and add the support.

Getting a game to install under a 64bit OS. A good example is Dune 2000, which installs fine under 32bit OS versions, but won't install under 64bit versions because it's installer is a 16 bot program. The solution is to download a preinstalled copy of the game.. it then runs fine! This is true for a few different games.

Textures. In older games screen resolutions were much lower. Take Quake 2 or Unreal. These were commonly running at 640x480 for most PC gamers at the time, or if you were rich enough to afford a Voodoo II card you could run at 1024x768. These days anything that low looks very blocky and bad on today's larger displays.. So fan communities have made high resolution texture packs which you drop in to replace the originals. Making the game look much nicer.

This site only focuses on a handful of games, but it is a good start and does well for those featured. It also gives a good head start before looking at other sites and communities to get other games running at their best.

This is another reason to be a PC gamer, rather than playing the same games on consoles. The console versions are fixed in both hardware and software and date. The PC version can be improved, patched and assets updated to give them a new lease of life on newer hardware.