The Xbox Series X is Microsoft's powerful current-gen gaming console. It's a beefy, refrigerator-looking machine that can run games at 4K resolutions and 60fps. The Series S is a sleeker, disc drive-less, budget version that has slightly lower performance but still packs a punch. Well, now you can use these cutting-edge machines to run Windows 98 and games that came out more than 20 years ago. The future is here, folks.

Digital Foundry posted a video to its YouTube channel (shared on ResetEra) showing how you can install a virtual Windows 98 operating system, plus emulated support for 3dfx Voodoo Graphics. Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia explained that the DOSBox Pure recently got Windows 98 support which is what allows your Xbox Series console to run old-school games like Quake, Half-Life, Unreal, and Turok.

I know, you didn't wake up today expecting to install Windows 98 on anything in this, the year of our Lord 2022. You can use the virtual Windows OS to install other windows programs, such as Word. I don't know why you'd want Word on your Xbox Series, but I'm not here to judge, just to inform.



If you want to know how to install this yourself, watch the video above, as it breaks everything down for you. Battaglia played Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun with a keyboard and an emulated mouse. His own wasn't working due to a limitation in the software - something he hopes gets fixed in the future. He says this set up provided a smoother RTS experience than any console ports he's played and he didn't run into any issues when emulating the game.

Playing Turok with a controller with two analog sticks felt "overpowered," Battaglia said. It made the first-person platforming a breeze. However, he notes that due to the nature of the emulator, the Xbox's own GPU isn't used to process the graphics, and instead, the CPU is doing all the hard work, so this may strain it quite a bit.

Posted: Jul 12, 2022 12:02 pm
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: https://www.thegamer.com/windows-98-on-xbox-series-x-s-quake-half-life/