So you want to make a videogame, great! But for some weird reason you want to re-live the sweet age of peak computing history. And people had games back then. People made those games back then. And they had to have tools for it. That's precisely what we'll be covering here: what you need to get started and approximately where you might find it. This will not be so much a tutorial to what lines of code you need or what to click to make a 3D shape appear. But you will have every piece needed to piece togethe a 3D videogame that you can play with both Win9x and Win11 which is like super duper cool!
If you think about games there's only three major things. Well all of them have smaller more spesific parts and elements but we'll be focusing on these three:
"Gee, thanks a lot! Now give me links and I'll be on my way!" I hear you yelling. But let me explain the choises made just a littlebit and not provide every link. Sorry for that. You could always use ready made assets (I don't even know how someone would go about creating sound effects themselves) but modeling and music creation make the videogame so much more yours. Truly. With ready made assets remember to always check filetype compatibility (in our case .mp3/.wav for sounds, .3ds for models) and licensing (are you allowed to make money, do you have to give credit, always give credit anyway). For those who can't wait to get goind, skip to the part about Blitz3D.
It's the last in it's line. Should have the best support and stability. But you should be able to use 95 or MilleniumEdition. Be sure to get DirectX 9.0c from for example my server (DX 7.0 would suffice but just get the latest). On newest Windows DirectPlay and stuff are no longer shipped with DX and it'll complain but you click the "install component" on the popup and it handles all the magic.
In the world of 3D modeling, this was the industry standard back in the day and they are in the business even today. Blender is nowdays in every indie dev's toolkit but win9x compatible releases (2.something) don't have support for .3DS files or even newer .blend so it's almost waste of diskspace. I'm not sure if some newer 3DS Maxes would work but information is scarse for this commercial product and I will not host that one for you. But it is out there! An old Twilight 018 warez disk had it with crack and everything and it is uploaded on archive.org. (please make sure it's legal to download in your country). I'll try to make a crashcourse for you to basic shape creation and link it here.
SFX should be searched online. Music can be made with a tracker software, FastTracker II is my go-to selection. DOS version is not currently hosted on my site but can be found... Ports to newer operating systems are also available so this wone will probably never die.
You need to provide a the tracker your samples and nothing beats Legowelt's Jupiter8 sample pack! You load the instrument sample in disk-ops, hit space to go to edit mode (bottom line changes colour) and use lower portion of keyboard to enter notes. Space exits edit mode, CTRL or ALTGr starts playback. Read the docs, check youtube, have a blast.The star of today's show, the one doing the heavy lifting, the game engine. Blitz3D was generously opensourced and development has been done as recently as 2024. Check GitHub for sourcecode and Itch.io. But don't jump to the downloads just yet. They claim to have win95 compatible builds but those just refuse to output sound on legacy systems. And you don't want to make a silent game as even the smallest pew pews make games livelier. You should really look into old 1.108 builds. I tried reportedly compatible 1.108b build but the installer just didn't open complaining about too old Windows version. Could be just some update missing but you don't want to hunt that! So get the earlier 1.108 that has older documentation included (which is super btw, be sure to read it!) and since the soft and source are both free you can download it from my server.
Now you should have everything. I'd suggest to just jump straight into the Blitz3D and read the tutorials. You will soon have CreateCube()'d something small which will then be controlled with the keyboard. At some point a spark lights up in your mind which would be a great moment to drill deeper into 3DSMax and make a simple object. Keep it low-poly as the machines of the era are surprisingly weak. Or go nuts and make something stunning like SCP Containment Breached!
Lauren Toivanen
2026-09-13