Does anybody have a good way to play the games nowadays? Best I have found is spinning up an XP VM in VMware (iirc correctly it was only hypervisor still shipping new releases with full 3D support for XP) and even that would crash after some play time.
Sadly no. Like you I've seen VMs suggested and also there was a patched version kicking about 6-7-ish years ago last time I looked that worked on Win 7.
I keep hoping that something like Proton will bridge the gap or we'll get a new one but hope flies in the face of reality I think.