Hello,

A while ago I bought a Windows ME laptop to play old games (like Theme Park) on original hardware. Unfortunately, some games have been harder to get working, and that includes Theme Park. I'm on a Dell Inspiron 4000 with a Pentium III and 128 MB of ram. It asks me to use setup to install it, only it doesn't work after I install it. Intro.exe does work, but without sound (I don't know my sound configuration so I don't know what option to choose when it asks me for a sound chip). Is Theme Park one of those unlucky games that need extra fiddling to get working on ME? Can someone help me out here?

Hi, the game was made for Dos.
I presume you need to have Dos Sound drivers installed and running on booting your device running (autoexec.bat/config.sys).

I think ME was still hybrid, with a dos core, so you should find out what kind of soundcard is installed in your device and get driver files and try installing these for dos.

I can't tell you anything specific, but this is my guess for being one of the problems. Since you run a PIII it might be too fast though. The game ran really well on a 486 DX2 40-80 MHz. Everything above makes the game run a lot faster and it is unplayable. I don't recall anymore if the game speed was tied to GPU or CPU, anyway it tends to run so fast on speeds above 100MHz, a year passes in like 2 Minutes.

Wish you luck with that.

Alright, so a year since your post I managed to get Theme Park working, sort of.

First off, you're right that I need a DOS sound driver, as the sound doesn't work. iFixit lists the specs for my laptop on this link:
https://tr.ifixit.com/Device/Dell_Inspiron_4000
I think that ESS Maestro 3i is my sound chip on the laptop. According to (https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=50743) this chip is compatible with SoundBlaster Pro. Do I just download the driver listed here on my laptop? https://support.creative.com/Products/ProductDetails.aspx?catID=1&prodID=1866&prodName=Sound%20Blaster%20Pro&CatName=Sound+Blaster

Secondly, you're right that the game runs far too fast on my machine. If iFixit is anything to go by, my laptop runs at 750mHz. Is there a way to slow the game down? How can I do that?

Thirdly, Windows ME did remove a lot of DOS-based features (Real-time DOS mode or whatever it's called), but it is based on DOS and should still be able to run a decent chunk of the games. It certainly runs Theme Park, but not entirely properly.

Lastly, Theme Park seems to be made up of 2 .exe files: the game itself and the intro before it. If I want to run Theme Park, I need to do that manually using the DOS prompt, at which point I can't play the two back-to-back automatically. I also don't know how to make these commands a shortcut in a way where I can play everything back to back. There is a shortcut that came with the setup of the game, but it doesn't work. How do I make a shortcut like this so I can play this game the way it was meant to?

Update: I did install SoundBlaster Pro but during installation, it did give me a couple of "missing file" errors. The sound still doesn't work. I may have done something wrong.

Why?

Why pick the Windows version with several breaking features inbuilt?

Hi again,

if you found some drivers, you need to implement them in your autoexec.bat/config.sys files for Dos.
There should be enough tutorials on doing that on Youtube (most drivers have similiar switches/inputs for these two startup files).

The game has 2 exe files, the intro file and the main file (the game).

previously there should be at least 1 or 2 batch files, theme.bat and setup.bat.

The later is for setting up your game.
You should try Soundblaster (not Pro or 16 ASP, just soundblaster) Compatible (for sound) and/or Adlib (music) as these are very common settings.
Ingame it is also likely that sound and music are deactivated.
You can find these setting in the menu bar on top (don't know the menu name),m where you can click on sound/music and it gets a checkmark and activates sound and music (music is only sporadic for different rides.

The game has a SNDSETUP.INF file, mine is set up to:
SOUNDFX = SB16 220 7 1
MUSIC = GENERAL 330 0 0

I use Dosbox, which supports these settings.
The drives you need to install for dos (via autoexec.bat/config.sys) mostly need to have switches like the ones you see above (Port, IRQ, DMA).

I don't think the creative driver is compatible with the ESS.
Try these:
https://www.dell.com/support/home/de-de/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=r40573

or search for compatible DOS drivers:

[url=https://www.dell.com/support/search/de-de#q=ESS%20Maestro%203i&sort=relevancy&f:iuxType=[Drivers%20%26%20Downloads]&f:langFacet=[en]&f:dynamicversioncategoryFacet=[Laptops,Inspiron]https://www.dell.com/support/search/de-de#q=ESS%20Maestro%203i&sort=relevancy&f:iuxType=[Drivers%20%26%20Downloads]&f:langFacet=[en]&f:dynamicversioncategoryFacet=[Laptops,Inspiron[/url]]

You might get a fitting result to match your Laptop and OS Version though.

Though even with sound you still will get a bad experience, with a game year running through in like 1 Minute :(