After some searching tonight I found at least one of my copies of Civilization II. It was hiding in a generic white disc sleeve on a shelf with some music CDs.
Civilization - 16-bit Era Disc
Unfortunately, this disk is from the stone age. Look at it. “IBM/Compatibles” is printed on it. How long has it been since it was IBM and Compatibles?
Sure, Windows 95 was out when this game launched… barely… so this disc had to install on Windows 3.1.
All of the executables on it are 16-bit.
And, as I found out after an hour or so of screwing around and trying to fool it into believing it was installed, the 64-bit version of Windows 7 is not at all down with 16-bit. I couldn’t find anything official on the Microsoft support site that definitively said, “No 16-bit,” but I found plenty of unofficial things that said it wasn’t going to happen.
Not that I am totally surprised. I was doing WinLogo certification for the company I was working for in 1997, and even then you had to get a special exemption to have 16-bit executables… including the installer… on your disc. That was a long time ago.
Anyway, no Civ II for me right now. I’ll have to go find a more recently rolled version of it.
In the mean time, since there was some discussion over the best version of Civilization, I will put up a poll.
Justify your pick in the comments, if you feel the need.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 