Windows 95 had dedicated code to run Sim City

[gigel82]

> Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn’t free memory right away. That’s the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95.

Impressive; now, if only we could trick them into considering "privacy" a core feature and add "backward compatibility" for it in newest Windows releases, we'd be golden.

[scarface74]

Why is this “impressive”. Microsoft made money by selling Windows. If Windows got the reputation for being incompatible with popular software, people wouldn’t have bought Windows

[Macha]

It's interesting that the games media has treated this as some totally unknown fact on an obscure blog, when it feels like it even qualifies as common knowledge among HN (and obviously painting joel as some random ex-microsoft developer who just happens to have a blog is similar)

[gipp]

I've been a daily user of HN for near a decade and this is news to me

[rasz]

>"Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x

Ross wrote Sim City 2000 https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,7...

The story is indeed about Sim City 2000. Funnily enough this bug is also present in DOS version of the game. Dude who hacked together "DOS32AWE - DOS/4G compatible DOS Extender with Sound Blaster AWEUTIL MIDI synthesizer support for Protected mode,VIASB" https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=83065 rediscovered this independently.

It also manifests when trying to run Sim City 2000 using DOS32A instead of DOS/4GW https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=24929

[57FkMytWjyFu]

Now they tear out features to break Sim City. https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-SimCity-Games/SimCity-4-Wind...

[smilekzs]

This is more like eliminating outdated unsafe DRM.

As a commenter over there suggested, you could always use "a modified executable from the Internet".