The Xbox Series X is Microsoft’s powerful current generation gaming console, capable of running games at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second. The Series S is a sleeker budget non-disk version that has slightly less performance, but still packs a punch. Now you can use these advanced machines to run Windows 98 and games that were released over 20 years ago. The future is already here, friends.
Digital Foundry has posted a video on its YouTube channel showing how you can install a Windows 98 virtual operating system plus emulated 3dfx Voodoo Graphics support. Alex Battaglia of Digital Foundry explained that DOSBox Pure recently received support for Windows 98, allowing your Xbox Series console to run older games like Quake, Half-Life, Unreal, and Turok.
I know you probably didn’t wake up today thinking you’re going to have to install Windows 98 on anything this year. You can use the virtual Windows OS to install other windows programs such as Word. I don’t know why you need Word on Xbox Series, but I’m not here to judge, but to inform.
If you want to know how to install this yourself, check out the video above as it explains everything in detail. Battaglia played Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun with a keyboard and an emulated mouse. His own mouse was not working due to a software limitation, which he hopes will be fixed in the future. According to him, this setup provides a smoother RTS experience than any console ports he’s played, and he didn’t run into any problems emulating the game.
Playing Turok on a controller with two analog sticks, Battaglia says he feels “too powerful”. This made first-person platforming a breeze. However, he notes that due to the nature of the emulator, the Xbox’s own GPU is not used for graphics processing, instead, the CPU does all the hard work, so this can cause a significant load on it.
