Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hello everyone.

I'm not a hardcore gamer like most of you are, but I do like to keep around a desktop just for playing the old games that I grew up with every now and then (I use my laptop for the serious business). I've mostly been keeping around a very old computer for that just so there won't be any compatibility issues, but the computer is now breaking down so badly that I've decided I need to get a new one. So basically, I'm getting a modern computer and partitioning the hard drive and doing all sorts of things to customize it to play those games. I've got nearly everything worked out with the compatibility issues, but one problem that remains is I've had a hard time finding a square monitor. It seems that everything is made to be widescreen these days. Worse, I can't afford a fancy graphics card at the moment, so it looks like I'll be using ATI, which I understand doesn't allow resizing of the display to a 4:3 aspect ratio.

So basically, I'm just wondering if someone can help me figure out whether there are solutions for getting the following old games to work on a widescreen monitor. I did look around on your site a bit, but I'm new to all this, so I was wondering if someone could help me sort it all out. The games I want to make work are:

- VERY old Sierra and LucasArts games (e.g. Leisure Suit Larry 1-3, Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, etc.). I've been told that because these were meant to be played on a 320x200 resolution, they'll work perfectly on a standard 16:9 aspect ratio. But correct me if that's wrong.

- Quest for Glory 5 (couldn't find this on your website).

- Nox (I read a post on your site that tried, unsuccessfully, to make a widescreen hack for this, but it sounded like they were somehow able to get it to play in a 4:3 ratio. I'm a little confused by whether they could get it to play or if I'd need any special hardware or anything.)

- Diablo

- Rise of Nations (I saw the article on your site which found a fix for this, so I suppose I have my answer for this one).

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.