Here in our PC gaming wonderland, “backwards compatibility” isn’t really something we think about often. Or ever. It’s more an expectation—we just install ten-year-old games and play. And that’s one of the greatest things about the platform!
But we’re not necessarily right to be so complacent. The entire existence of GOG.com (and DOSBox, et cetera) is predicated on the fact that eventually our computers outgrew—for a number of reasons—some of our most beloved games, from SimCity 2000 to Dungeon Keeper to Syndicate.
Which should make today’s news from GOG.com a relief: “Windows 10 is coming on July 29th and we are as ready as can be!”
From the blog post:
“Currently, we are very optimistic about July 29th and hope you will make a near-seamless transition to gaming on the newest version of your Windows operating system…
“So far, things are looking great. We’re encountering very few problems and most of those are either resolvable on our end, or likely to get fixed as Windows 10 nears release. In fact, many games that had issues on operating systems newer than Windows XP once again won’t suffer any hiccups on Windows 10. The OS is still a work in progress, so while anything can happen until the release date we’re confident for the future. This is the smoothest transition to a brand new system that we’ve ever worked on.”
Some games will apparently require a patch, so if you’re having issues be sure to check GOG.com or make sure the game is up-to-date in GOG Galaxy.
But on the whole this sounds like it’ll be a smooth and simple transition. That shouldn’t be too surprising because there aren’t any fundamental shifts in the way Windows 10 functions—this isn’t like when Windows ditched 256-bit color support. Still, it’s good to know that if/when you upgrade to Windows 10, all your old favorites will be there. Three decades of backwards compatibility and counting!