Old games and 64 bit Win7

Hey folks. I have lots of old games that I love to play. I have Tomb Raider: Gold and I would like to install it on my Asus G73. However, I received an error when I attempted an install, it said that the game doesn't support 64 bit systems.

Are there any go-arounds? I have an old Windows 98 Upgrade disk. I was considering dual-booting it, but I don't want to go through that much trouble.

I was thinking DOSBox or something. Dunno. Halp pl0x?

 

Yes, running it in a VM is a good option if you can't run it using compatibility mode (have you tried running it with compatibility set to Windows 2000?).

 

That's an interesting idea. I'll try that!

 

Compatability mode didn't do squat. I'll do what I can with VM.

 

I tried using VM to play old games, but none of it worked I'm afraid.
I would always get an error of 'some' kind.

And VM doesn't support 3D graphics entirely, so playing older 3d games will not really be doable.

 

If it's a 16-bit game, I use Windows XP mode to emulate it (Castle of the Winds). If it's a 32-bit game that requires DirectDraw, I've used VirtualBox to do run it (Age of Empires). If it's a 32-bit game that uses DirectX/3D acceleration, I run it in compatibility mode and hope for the best. So far I haven't encountered any games that won't run in one of those three combinations. Only trouble was with Red Baron II, where it'd use the CPU to go as fast as possible. Had to limit my max frequency in the windows power settings.