WineVDM - Run 16-bit applications in 64-bit Windows

[Andrew]

While we already have various compatibility options and workarounds for running the old games, I just thought that I'd note WineVDM is something else we should probably look into for retro basketball gaming. It's a fork of Wine, and can be used to run 16-bit applications under 64-bit Windows. It's available to download here: https://github.com/otya128/winevdm/releases

At least one use for it - as I discovered thanks to a comment on one of our YouTube videos - is that it can be used to open the old Windows editor for NBA Live 95, which is a 16-bit program (the editors for NBA Live 96 and NBA Live 97 have 32-bit versions and still run fine). This is handy for retro modding, since you don't have to use a Virtual Machine to run an older version of Windows, make the edits there, and then copy the edited files back across.

Setting it up is quite straightforward with the following steps:

1. Download WineVDM from GitHub.
2. Extract all the files to your C drive, so that they're located at C:\otvdm-master-1056.
3. Right click and Edit the install.reg file in Notepad.
4. Change both instances of "MappedExeName"="C:\\PATH\\TO\\otvdm.exe" to "MappedExeName"="C:\\otvdm-master-1056\\otvdm.exe", then save and close the file.
5. Run install.reg to add the data to the registry.

After that, 16-bit applications should open automatically. There aren't any guarantees of compatibility, but it's a start. For the WiNBA-Ed, make sure all of its files are in the same folder as the NBA Live 95 executable that you're editing, otherwise the text strings won't be displayed properly.