Reviving Caesar III
If you have no idea what game I'm talking about, you should definitely refer to my Caesar III - Review article.
How did I do it?
I remember playing the game in 2003 on a Windows XP SP1 platform. Things worked well. Then, SP2 came and so endeth
my days of Caesar. I was rather disappointed. Trying all of the Windows in-built options to start the game did not
work. Running the game in older compatibility modes did not help. Using new dlls that were supposed to fix the
problem did not help, either. The easiest solution was to commit one of my computers to running Windows XP SP1, but
I did not like that idea. I was stuck without Caesar.
Then, one day, I discovered the beauty of virtualization. I stumbled across VMware Player, a virtualization product that can simulate almost any
PC-based environment and allow you to run other operating systems, like older Windows releases or Linux
distributions as guest operating systems on your host platform. This sounded fabulous. I could test and try a
variety of operating systems without touching my hardware or the installed operating system; it sounded no
different than opening a document in a word processor. If you liked it, you could keep it; if you didn't, you just
deleted it.
If you want to know more about VMware Player, you might want to read my article VMware Player - a great friend.
Enbolded by this magnificent luxury of virtualization, I proceeded to install Windows XP Home SP1. It went
smoothly, without a glitch. If you have no idea where to start, reading yet another of my articles, Installing Windows XP, could help you.
And so I did it in four easy steps:
- I installed Vmware Player (and later VMware Server).
- I installed Windows XP Home SP1 as a guest operating system.
- I installed Caesar III in it as I would do as if I were booted natively in Windows XP SP1.
- I started to play the game and enjoy myself.
For those of ye of little faith, here's a little gallery of screenshots documenting this monumental event:
This is Windows XP Home SP1 desktop inside the virtual machine. You may notice that I have VMware Tools installed
and running in the System Tray, as well as Sygate firewall and Screenshot Captor, which I used to take the game
screenshots while playing (in full screen mode).
The game CD is inserted in the tray.
I open the folder where the game is installed on the hard disk and click on the game icon.
The game starts; smoothly, quickly, no delay. Old buddy, long time no see! Would you believe it? Yes, you
would.
And I'm back in the business, building magnificent Roman cities. Just look at those uber-cool Luxury Palaces!
And while writing this article, I got distracted and neglected my municipal duties. My city is on fire. Houses are
burning, and my prefects are late to the scene. Ah, I so much love this game.
Well, I hope you like it. Now, it's your turn to try this. Enjoy!
