Download Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail

CLB66 2024-06-13 0 point

Okay, there is no way to DIRECTLY play this on a Windows 7+ era PC. But don't worry, it's still entirely possible.

The simplest way to do this is to create a "virtual machine" to run it in. I've found a pretty easy way to do this, repeatedly, for all my Win3x era software.

Start off with DOSBox. DOSBox doesn't emulate Windows, of course, but it emulates DOS pretty well, and Win3X ran on top of DOS. The most recent versions of DOSbox work best, typically, but in a few rare cases older versions do still work better, so I keep a series of versions of DOSbox on my personal machine, and can choose which one I try to run any given program through. However, for my Win3x-emulation efforts, I just go with the latest build.

Get ahold of the "image files" for the version of Windows you want to install... for me, that's Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, which is pretty much the last version of Win3x put out. Floppy disk image files typically come either as "*.ima" or "*.img" files. You won't be able to open these on your modern PC without special software (say, "WinImage," which is my personal favorite for floppies) but you don't really need to. You can "mount" these images within DOSBox (always easiest when running DOSBox through a window). You'll need to "swap" your floppy images while running... and the easiest way to do this is to have a "floppy image directory" where you drop any image you want "loaded," and ensure that the images are all named the same (so the program won't get confused when it can't find the image it thinks is there). You can just drop a copy of the image (keeping the original safe) into that folder, from outside of DOSbox, anytime the "disk" isn't being accesses, and it'll work just like you inserted a new floppy into the drive.

Once you get Windows 3x installed within DOSbox, you'll probably want to run it, configure it as you like it, and so forth. A few drivers may come in handy... S3 video card drivers work best in DOSBox-with-Win3x, and SB16 drivers for Win3x work best to get audio. Mouse drivers will also be needed, and you will probably have to install a generic CD-ROM driver as well.

This seems like a big hassle for every single Win3x program you want to run, and it WOULD be... if you had to redo this every time. But, instead, I simply make a "perfect, clean" setup like that, and COPY IT to a new directory, every time I want to set up a game or program. I can then install the software inside of the COPY, leaving my original DOSbox-with-Win3x setup unchanged and safe. In fact, in my case, I zipped the "perfect" installation, so I can simply unzip it to a new folder anytime I like. All I have to do then is create a shortcut to the new folder, assign a thumbnail to that shortcut, and there you go.

You CAN set things up so that when you start your Win3x operation, it runs Windows automatically, and then autmatically runs a "batch file" to start the program. I usually do that. And you can find "auto-shutdown" software for Win3x (I have a couple of options) which I can insert into that batch file so that when I shut down the application, Win3x shuts down as well. DOSbox, of course, can be set up to auto-shutdown once the program (in this case, Win3x) closes, as well... so this means that you can have a Win10/11 shortcut you run which transparently does everything... without you ever having to actually touch Win3x or DOS directly. And yes, you can set that auto-start and auto-shutdown stuff in your "clean copy" so that (with minimal modification) it will work for every application you want to run.

Note, DOSbox GENERALLY doesn't support 3D acceleration, but there are some special builds which do... mainly focusing on 3DFX 3D acceleration, though I've seen a couple which SORT OF emulate early DirectX as well (remember, when Win3x was the current Windows OS, they were still experimenting with 3D acceleration, and it wasn't until Win9x was fairly mature that it became commonplace!) As a rule, any 3D acceleration you'd use would be 3DFX, so just look for one of the 3DFX builds, and you ought to be fine. And remember, very few Win3x-era programs had any such acceleration, anyway, so it's probably a non-issue for you.

I mention this because this is exactly how I've set up all my 7th-Level Monty Python games. I have shortcuts which run it, so that it SEEMS like it's running as a native x64 Windows 10 application, even though it's really not. This also come in handy for a lot of other programs... say, the Star Trek reference programs (Omnipedia/Encyclopedia, Tech Manual, Captain's Chair) and the Klingon and Borg adventures. They all NEED this (along with their own version of Quicktime, which needs to be different for pretty much every program!) in order to run well, but if you do the above, and get it right up-front, it's trivial to then make that happen for all the individual programs.

I hope this is helpful, for anyone trying, and failing, to run this program (or anything else written with the intent of running on Windows 3.0 through 3.11WFW).

Pancho Barlito 2024-02-06 -1 point Windows version

Right....now, how does this work?

amongus 2022-12-12 0 point

how tf do i run this on my pc??

Bill 2022-01-22 -1 point

How do i actually run this? i got the VirtualClone thing but it wont let me play or setup

oneeye marco 2020-09-07 1 point Windows version

what is yor favorite color?

duck 2020-05-12 -10 points

I downloaded the game. How do I play it now?

MrVladimir 2017-04-10 -15 points

I have the PC version of this game.