Back around 2020 or so I wanted to play old games because I only had an underpowered laptop that could barely play modern games.
One I downloaded off MyAbandonWare was this shooter from 2003 called Devastation. It’s alright, but more I played it when I was younger and always wondered what happened to it.
On my old laptop it always crashed on startup and I just couldn’t get it working. I could open the level editor and that was about it.
Recently I downloaded it again onto a new laptop I put Linux on and tried a few different configurations. I heard how WINE can be better than Windows for old software so I decided to give it a shot.
Eventually I used Bottles with a gaming configuration set to Windows Xp.
I tried Devastation with that setup and it worked. I still have an issue with the game being in the top left corner and not taking up the full screen, but it’s playable.
I have a top spec gaming PC now running Windows 10, but there are things this Thinkpad can do that my big PC can’t.
I’m super frustrated that for some reason, Sid Meyer’s SimGolf doesn’t run on any emulation or modern hardware. It was just a friggin windows 95 game!! I have no idea what’s so special about it.
Have you tried a virtual machine? It should work.
Not really a solution for the game specifically, but there’s a spiritual-successor of sorts for it, “Golftopia”. It is a bit scifi/neon themed, but does a similar thing.