TIL Windows XP had specific code just to maintain compatibility with Lego Island
TIL Windows XP had specific code just to maintain compatibility with Lego Island
Just learned this yesterday while watching this post's author's youtube series where he's decompiling the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToTEqoVv3I
That is so funny to me. Imagine how the devs felt to know their game was so notable to get a windows compatibility just for them.
I remember reading a blog post describing similar compatibility patches in Windows, writing something in the line of:
Whenever you start an exe on windows, the OS must first ask itself the good old question of "Am I running Lego Island"
If I remember correctly, Windows XP does include lots of patches and fixes to maintain compatibility with numerous games.
Win XP is like Gen 1 pokémon games. A lot of the code was patches and fixes held by duct tape.
What is it about Lego Island? It feels like there's always something new being discovered with that game.
From my understanding, it was created by a very passionate team who had to make what turned out to be a very ambitious game from scratch (no game engine to pull from) with very limited hardware.
They even had to invent their own audio compression algorithm to fit the game's soundtracks on the disc.
If that's the case for Lego island, I can't imagine how many programs windows has code for.
That was a video rabbit hole I wasn't expecting to traverse today