Enlarge / Microsoft wanted radical to person zero reasons not to upgrade to Windows 95. That meant making definite SimCity Classic worked, with immoderate memory-reading workarounds.

It's inactive imaginable to larn a batch of absorbing things astir aged operating systems. Sometimes, those things are already documented (on a blog post) that miraculously inactive exist. One specified quirk showed up precocious erstwhile idiosyncratic noticed how Microsoft made definite that SimCity and different fashionable apps worked connected Windows 95.

A recent tweet by @Kalyoshika highlights an excerpt from a blog station by Fog Creek Software co-founder, Stack Overflow co-creator, and longtime bundle blogger Joel Spolsky. The larger station is astir chicken-and-egg OS/software entreaty and demand. The portion that caught the oculus of a Hardcore Gaming 101 podcast co-host is however the Windows 3.1 mentation of SimCity worked connected the Windows 95 system. Windows 95 merged MS-DOS and Windows apps, upgraded APIs from 16 to 32-bit, and was hyper-marketed. A fashionable app like SimCity, which sold much than 5 cardinal copies, needed to enactment without a hitch.

Spolsky's station summarizes how SimCity became Windows 95-ready, arsenic helium heard it, without input from Maxis oregon idiosyncratic workarounds.

Jon Ross, who wrote the archetypal mentation of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told maine that helium accidentally near a bug successful SimCity wherever helium work representation that helium had conscionable freed. Yep. It worked good connected Windows 3.x, due to the fact that the representation ne'er went anywhere. Here’s the astonishing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn’t moving successful testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added circumstantial codification to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the representation allocator successful a peculiar mode that doesn’t escaped representation close away. That’s the benignant of obsession with backward compatibility that made radical consenting to upgrade to Windows 95.

Spolsky (in 2000) considers this a recognition to Microsoft and an illustration of however to interruption the chicken-and-egg problem: "provide a backwards compatibility mode which either delivers a truckload of chickens, oregon a truckload of eggs, depending connected however you look astatine it, and beryllium backmost and rake successful the bucks.'

Windows developers whitethorn person deserved immoderate sit-back time, seeing the grade of the tweaks they often person to marque for idiosyncratic games and apps successful Windows 95. Further successful @Kalyoshika's replies, you tin find different example, pulled from the Compatibility Administrator successful Windows' Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK). A screenshot from @code_and_beer shows however Windows NT, upon detecting files typically installed with Final Fantasy VII, volition instrumentality a fittingly titled compatibility fix: "Win95VersionLie." Simply telling the crippled that it's connected Windows 95 seems to hole a large contented with its operation, on with a fewer different emulation and virtualization tweaks.

Install the Windows ADK and unfastened up the Compatibility Administrator, and you tin spy connected immoderate of the things Windows does for peculiar apps to marque them enactment successful the System Database section. If it detects files named "Horny.tif" and "bullfrog.sbk", it updates wherever Windows 95/98 versions of Dungeon Keeper should enactment those files successful Windows XP and later. Windows has to stop Tom Clancy's Rainbox Six from accessing the CD thrust portion it's already playing a movie oregon different media, arsenic good arsenic disable Alt+Tab switching portion the crippled is unfastened due to the fact that the crippled can't grip losing focus. And it's not conscionable older titles; Street Fighter V gets a small tweak to its DirectX implementation to tally connected immoderate systems.

In 2005, longtime Microsoft staffer and The Old New happening blogger Raymond Chen documented Microsoft's Windows 95 compatibility obsession. Chen writes that Windows 95's improvement manager "took his pick-up truck, drove down to the section Egghead Software store (back erstwhile Egghead inactive existed), and bought one transcript of each azygous PC programme successful the store." Everybody was liable for up to 2 programs, which they would install, run, and papers for bugs. If a staffer finished two, they could travel backmost to drawback up to 2 more. And testers could support immoderate they finished.

Mike Perry, erstwhile originative manager at Sim empire Maxis (and aboriginal EA), noted later that determination was, technically, a 32-bit Windows 95 mentation of Sim City available, arsenic shown by the "Deluxe Edition" bundle of the game. He besides states that Ross worked for Microsoft aft leaving Maxis, which would further explicate wherefore Microsoft was truthful keen to guarantee radical could support gathering parks successful the cleanable grid presumption to amended nonmigratory happiness.