The eXo preservation project has just dropped something incredible for retro gaming fans: eXoWin9x Vol. 1: 1994-1996 – a fully preconfigured collection of 662 Windows 9x games, all set up and ready to launch with a single click.
What Is eXoWin9x?
If you’re familiar with the eXoDOS project (which preserves classic DOS games), eXoWin9x is its Windows-era sibling. It covers the Windows 9x era – specifically Windows 95 and Windows 98 – which marked a massive turning point in PC gaming history.
Windows 95 was the first widely adopted version of Windows to run natively in 32-bit, directly interface with hardware (rather than relying on MS-DOS as a middleman), and introduce DirectX – the technology that would go on to power PC gaming for decades. This era produced some of the most beloved and creative titles in gaming history, and a lot of them have been incredibly difficult to run on modern machines.
Think about some of the games we covered in our 20 Quintessential Video Games of the 1990s – titles like RollerCoaster Tycoon, Diablo, Alone in the Dark, and Tomb Raider all lived in this Windows 9x space. Getting those running on a modern PC has historically meant hunting down old discs, wrestling with compatibility settings, and praying. eXoWin9x eliminates all of that.
One Click. 662 Games. No Headaches.
What makes this project genuinely impressive – beyond the sheer volume of games – is how it’s set up. The team used DOSBox-X and 86Box emulation alongside Virtual Hard Drives (VHDs) with shared parent OS images. That means instead of packing a full copy of Windows into every single game folder (which would balloon the size to hundreds of extra gigabytes), all 662 games share the same base OS image.
The result? A lean, smartly engineered archive that actually works.
Here’s what you get out of the box:
- One-click launching – Games are pre-configured in standalone emulators. No setup required.
- Completely portable – Everything runs inside virtual machines. Nothing touches your host system.
- Online multiplayer – IPX hosting is automated, so you can play supported multiplayer titles against other people who have the pack installed.
- Extras galore – Manuals, soundtracks, strategy guides, Universal Hint System files, commercials, and trailers are included for games where they exist.
- Foreign titles included – Non-English games are included and tagged with dynamic playlists so you can easily filter them.
- Consistent metadata – Genres, series, and other fields are normalized across the entire collection, matching the format of other eXo projects.
The People Behind It
This kind of project doesn’t happen without serious dedication. The project lead gives massive credit to two collaborators:
TaraLonger cracked the core technical problem – he developed the clever scripting framework that made it possible to share OS images across games, eliminating the need for hundreds of gigabytes of duplicate Windows data. Without that breakthrough, this pack simply wouldn’t exist in its current form.
Dutchmagic spent months testing games and building out the metadata for hundreds of titles in the collection.
This is volunteer-driven preservation work at its finest, and the retro gaming community owes these folks a real debt of gratitude.
What’s Coming Next
Vol. 1 covers 1994-1996, but future volumes are already in the works. The project plans to continue into 1997 and beyond, pushing into the early 2000s. There are also plans to eventually expand beyond games into entertainment applications and select productivity software as add-on packs.
In other words: if you grew up with a Windows PC in the late 90s or early 2000s, your nostalgia trip is only getting started. And if the 90s gaming nostalgia bug has already bitten you, this pack is essentially a treasure chest waiting to be opened.
How to Get It
The full release is available as a torrent (262GB) from the official eXo project site at retro-exo.com. A full manual is also available for download there if you want to get the most out of the front end and its features.
You can also support the project through donations (which go toward identifying and acquiring unarchived software) or by picking up physical copies and limited items from their Etsy store.
Why This Matters
Software preservation is a genuinely urgent problem. Old games disappear. Discs rot. Installers stop working. Legal gray areas make official distribution complicated. Projects like eXoWin9x are doing the quiet, unglamorous work of making sure that a pivotal era of gaming history doesn’t just vanish.
The Windows 9x years were wild – full of experimentation, weird genres, bold creative risks, and some of the most inventive game design ever made. Hundreds of those titles have been effectively unplayable for years. Now they’re one click away.
That’s worth celebrating.
Have you been using eXoWin9x or any of the other eXo preservation packs? Drop a comment and let us know what games you’ve been revisiting – or what titles you’re hoping show up in future volumes!
