Using VMware Fusion to fire up old games. Or not.

Network World - OK, I know we're all big boys and girls here and what we do in IT is really serious stuff, but occasionally we have to take some time off to play games.

Now, I am not a big computer games player. True, I've been known to play a few hands of Texas Hold'em, but only to hone my skills for a tournament. Then there are, admittedly, a few times when I've invested my precious time in a few dozen rounds of Reversi or a very rare game of Solitaire. Angry Birds? Not my kind of entertainment. First-person shooters? Not my kind of thing either.

But amongst all of the computer games I've played there was one from a long time ago that I really enjoyed. I bought it for my son when he was around 7 and both he and I loved it. The game was "Star Wars Episode I: Racer," published by Lucas Arts.

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This race consisted of a number of bizarre vehicles that skimmed the ground of a huge course crossing a forbidding desert at insane speeds. In other words, the race was the high point of an otherwise leaden movie, iconic though it may be.

So, some time ago I decided to spring clean and hauled out a box of DVDs to throw away the cruft. Lo and behold, there was my original disk for "Star Wars Episode I: Racer"!

But wait! Before I could enjoy the thrill of pod racing once again I needed to install the game ... and that's when the fun began. I tried to install it on Windows Vista but, alas, the requirements for Racer are stringent: Windows 95 or 98 with DirectX 6.1 and nothing else. Hummm ...

Now, not wanting to dedicate a whole machine to running Windows 98, I thought, why not run Windows 98 in a virtual machine? That should work. Oh, how wrong can you be?

I'd just purchased a new iMac (27-inch with an i7 processor ... yes, you may envy me, go right ahead) and had already installed VMware Fusion 3.1, so I was ready to roll, baby.

I loaded up my Windows 98 disk and went through the VM creation process and, lo and behold, I had a brand new Windows 98 Second Edition running as a "guest" operating system in a virtual machine. Easy, simple and painless.

Before I continue my saga let me note that VMware Fusion is excellent! It is fast; in fact, it is way faster than you might have hoped (though running on a 2.93GHz four core beast like the i7, you might reasonably expect such a thing).