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Re:Hacking a 25 Year Old Game to Make It Work [video] by rasz on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @12:12AM (#38259423)
Microsoft used to keep a really good Shim library to hot patch troublesome applications. Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT)/Microsoft Windows Application Compatibility Infrastructure.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/plannin...

This hack could be accomplished with one of those. In fact here is something that might work https://ryanwill.com/create-and-use-shims-with-microsoft-app...

>CorrectFilePaths – These are similar to symbolic links, but are defined per .EXE instead of system wide

Re:Hacking a 25 Year Old Game to Make It Work [video] by pathartl on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @11:34AM (#38265586)
I've been working with getting games from 1995+ working on modern systems over the past two years, and honestly the biggest incompatibilities I've seen have been in the registry. Combined with some redirected filesystem calls, I really think you could get 98% of games working in a portable fashion.

The problem I have with some of these GoG releases is they just patch out buttons for things like networking, when features like local IPX multiplayer can still work with shims.