Help getting an old game to run

I don't know if this is the right subforum for this, or if this maybe belongs in another thread, so if I'm in error here, please move this to the appropriate location. Thanks.

Anyways, I've been trying to get an old game to run for a while. Not a terribly old one, but one that's still old enough and not popular enough to have much documentation. I figured since Ross is so good at getting older games to work, maybe someone here is knowledgeable as well and can help me out.

It's Spider-Man: The Movie. That is, the game based off the first Spider-Man movie, obviously.

As soon as I open the game, I get the message "steel_debug has stopped working" not once, but twice before the program actually closes. No compatibility settings fix it, and I can't find a single solution for it online. It's too old and not popular enough to warrant the attention, I guess. But I'm trying to work on a series where I go over a bunch of different Spider-Man games, and am hoping to get this one to work. I have a copy of the game on Xbox that I could always fall back on, but I'd rather have the PC version that I can get to look nicer.

Any help is appreciated.

For reference, my specs are:

Windows 10 64-bit

Intel Core i7-4820K CPU @ 3.70GHz

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Classified

Well, the surest way how to make an old game work is to run it on an OS it was supposed to run on. Looking on the release date I guess it targets Windows XP.

You can run a virtual machine with windows xp installed on it and install the game there. You can find what you need on microsoft's website. However virtual machine doesn't handle 3d games very well, although if you have strong enough hardware you should run old games well enough.

Of course you can always dual boot and install windows xp for real just to play the game. Without license you should have 30 days to play.

I must say though that I never done this, so all this information is from what I found around the net.

Anyway, a lot of games run fine even on modern OS, they just sometimes need some dll or emulation of DirectDraw. But some games will run properly or at all only on the system they were targeted for. If all you get is just generic "X stopped working" error, it's hard to judge what the problem is.

Edit: You could also try to find the game's exe file's dependecies using a tool like Dependency Walker and download any missing libraries.

Windows 10 is notorious for its lack of compatability with older software. Running ANYTHING that wasn't designed for Windows Vista and up is pretty much gonna fail in my experience...

One thing that has worked for me, with other games, is downloading a 'No CD Patch' for the game. I'd say give that a shot.

Well, the surest way how to make an old game work is to run it on an OS it was supposed to run on. Looking on the release date I guess it targets Windows XP.

You can run a virtual machine with windows xp installed on it and install the game there. You can find what you need on microsoft's website. However virtual machine doesn't handle 3d games very well, although if you have strong enough hardware you should run old games well enough.

Of course you can always dual boot and install windows xp for real just to play the game. Without license you should have 30 days to play.

I must say though that I never done this, so all this information is from what I found around the net.

 

Anyway, a lot of games run fine even on modern OS, they just sometimes need some dll or emulation of DirectDraw. But some games will run properly or at all only on the system they were targeted for. If all you get is just generic "X stopped working" error, it's hard to judge what the problem is.

 

Edit: You could also try to find the game's exe file's dependecies using a tool like Dependency Walker and download any missing libraries.

I've considered the idea of emulating Windows XP or something, since I recalled Ross bringing that up to get some games running in the past. Problem is that I don't own a copy of Windows XP or the necessary software to emulate it. I also only have a little less than 60 GB on my C: drive, of which only 6-12 GB of that is free at any given time, so I don't know if that'd be an issue as well.

I can say that I did use Dependency Walker as you suggested, and there's a very large number of messages saying "Error opening file. The system cannot find the file specified (2)." I'm guessing that'd be a good cause for why the game would crash at startup? But for good measure I checked out another game from the year prior, and it also has a bunch of errors. I also did it with a game from 2015 that I played yesterday, and it was much the same.

Windows 10 is notorious for its lack of compatability with older software. Running ANYTHING that wasn't designed for Windows Vista and up is pretty much gonna fail in my experience...

Well, the odd thing about this is that I also bought the Spider-Man game that came out the year prior, and I installed it, started it up, and it worked flawlessly. Absolutely no problems from beginning to end, no extra tweaking required. I also have the game based off of Spider-Man 2, which came out two years after the one I'm having trouble with, and that one worked as well. It's just this one game that's being extremely difficult, and there's no documentation of the problem because it's from 2002 and not many people care about this game compared to some of the others.

I figured Ross and maybe some other people here know how that feels, hence why I decided to ask here.

One thing that has worked for me, with other games, is downloading a 'No CD Patch' for the game. I'd say give that a shot.

Tried that as well, same problem, unfortunately.

Problem is that I don't own a copy of Windows XP or the necessary software to emulate it. I also only have a little less than 60 GB on my C: drive, of which only 6-12 GB of that is free at any given time, so I don't know if that'd be an issue as well.

You just need a virtualizer (for example VirtualBox) and installation CD/files of Windows XP, you don't need a license, Windows XP gives you 30 days to activate it, so you can use it for these 30 days and then just delete the virtual machine and set it up again.

The amount of free storage space might be an issue though, you need space for the whole WinXP OS, the game and some other stuff attached to windows.

I can say that I did use Dependency Walker as you suggested, and there's a very large number of messages saying "Error opening file. The system cannot find the file specified (2)."

I used this program just once so I can't really help with this. Google those errors, or look up forums.

This one might just be one of those games who are programmed in such a way that they need something specific from windows XP or maybe from drivers of that era. I know one such game, a czech adventure game Polda 1 has an Windows XP version which I couldn't get to run on Windows 7 at all. Had to find DOS version and use DosBox.

Windows 10 is notorious for its lack of compatability with older software. Running ANYTHING that wasn't designed for Windows Vista and up is pretty much gonna fail in my experience...

Yea, most of the older games I play that still work are those that have source ports, emulators, or GOG.

Windows 10 is notorious for its lack of compatability with older software. Running ANYTHING that wasn't designed for Windows Vista and up is pretty much gonna fail in my experience...

Well, the odd thing about this is that I also bought the Spider-Man game that came out the year prior, and I installed it, started it up, and it worked flawlessly. Absolutely no problems from beginning to end, no extra tweaking required. I also have the game based off of Spider-Man 2, which came out two years after the one I'm having trouble with, and that one worked as well. It's just this one game that's being extremely difficult, and there's no documentation of the problem because it's from 2002 and not many people care about this game compared to some of the others.

Yeah I was just making a general statement.

It will depend on the game and engine of course.

You can run older programs using earlier versions. You should go to the Start menu and should write Run programs made for previous versions of Windows, and then click the Advanced link on the Troubleshooter, then run as administrator, select not listed & next, and enter the location of the game and then try recommended settings & test it, it should be fine.