Genre: Action-adventure, Role Playing
Release Year: 1998
Developer: Monolith Productions
Publisher: Monolith Productions
Age Rating: 12+
Playability Status: Perfect
Tested On: Windows 7 x64, Windows 8 x64
Availability: Copyright retained - Out of print/unavailable
Take Atari’s classic coin guzzling arcade game “Gauntlet”, add in a dose of humour and a silly story about dragons and bring it all to the PC, what do you get? Get Medieval is a fun little dungeon crawler that’s much better when played with friends. The game supports up to four players via local coop and LAN and is well worth a look if you loved a little Gauntlet action in the arcades.
Installation
Get Medieval has a 16 bit installer program which unfortunately means that it won’t work at all on 64 bit versions of Windows. To work around this problem, we’ve produced a simple replacement installer which you can download here (link broken? Let me know here). Simply download the installer, insert your Get Medieval CD-ROM and then run the replacement installer you downloaded and follow all the on screen prompts. The installer will then copy the files from the CD-ROM and create shortcuts as necessary, saving you any hassles.
Running the game
The game itself runs fine on Windows 7 PCs, but isn’t quite so happy running on Windows 8 PCs. On our Windows 8 PC the game ran but suffered from jerky scrolling. We tried all the usual tricks to work around this, including the Wine Direct3D wrappers and the Microsoft DXPrimaryEmulation compatibility toolkit fix, but nothing seemed to improve the gameplay. Unfortunately, running the game via a virtual machine didn’t work well either, under VMWare the game suffered from flickering sprites. This was the situation for Windows 8 users until recently, when a new legacy DirectX wrapper appeared on the scene. Using dgVoodoo2 the game runs at full speed in Windows 8. Simply follow our dgVoodoo2 tutorial here to install and use it with the game. Keep in mind that dgVoodoo2 requires a graphics card or chip that is DirectX 11 compatible.
Configuring controllers
Surprisingly for such an old game, Get Medieval detected both our Xbox 360 controllers just fine. With 2 players on controller and 2 on keyboard we were able to play a 4 player coop game. The only thing you may want to do is configue Xpadder (or a similar tool) to assign the escape key to the controllers Start button, to allow you to access the in-game options menu and skip the cutscenes.
Network games
We had less success with network games. To play with a friend on your home network or even across the internet you will need his or her IP address. Usually on a home network that begins with the numbers 192.168, 172.16 or 10.0. You can see your current IP address for a computer by typing “ipconfig” into a command prompt window. The first time you try a LAN game you will most likely need to Alt-Tab out of the game back to the desktop to grant permission for the game to connect through the Windows firewall. While we were able to connect across our LAN, the games frame-rate was simply unacceptable, even using computers attached by our gigabit wired network.
Screenshots
Click on any screenshot below to enlarge it.
Dungeons go on forever!
Running the gauntlet.
The installer is giving me some trouble. It tells me it ‘can’t find the get medieval cd’
While my CD is in the drive, it’s just called ‘Medieval.’
Which version of Windows are you running?
Windows 7 – 64 bit
I just wanna point out that I’m using the installer posted above in case that was unclear
You must have a different edition of the game than the one we tested. I thought there was only one pressing of this game.
Mine won’t install either. Keeps asking for the CD wnen it’s in the CD drive. My version is one of the original. I’m in Australia. Would that make any difference?
Possibly, if Australia had a different version of the game to the rest of the world or Europe at least.
Same problem here, with an American version of the game. If it helps, the label on the CD claims to be 1.0. Is it possible that the installer is looking for the game in a particular drive letter?
Only if there’s a bug, it should scan all drive letters if it’s working properly.
Same problem. Can´t find the medieval CD. Using a European ISO.
Please, can you share your ISO (Is not illegal, since the game is very old and becomes abandonware) or at least your game´s region? Thanks in advance.
Sorry, legally there’s no such thing as abandonware.
Works perfect thanks man
Keeps asking for a CD! i wanna play it :( (EU)
There seems to be several revisions of the game available, sorry.
“The game itself runs fine on Windows 7 PCs” my foot. I tried, only for the game to crash every time I tried to start a campaign.
Yes, I did try running dgVoodoo2, but that only made things worse, as all I got when trying to run the game was “ERROR: Unable to create the DirectDraw object. (33001)”
Worked fine on our Windows 7 PC.
Works like a charm! Few clicks and you play! (win 7 64-bit)
Thanks for bringing my childhood back, even just for a moment!
Success in Windows 10. Just copied entire CD into hard drive. Did not run Set-Up (couldnt find cd drive). Game is choppy though.
can’t set dgvoodoo properly on windowns 10. game opens but it’s lagging when we start the gameplay.
Inside the medieval installation folder I copied the x86 files inside the MS folder and it worked fine.
I too had problems getting the new installer to run. Copied the entire cd to a folder.
Into the cd root I copied:
D3D8.dll, D3D9.dll, D3DImm.dll, Ddraw.dll
Into ‘system’ I copied the same 4 files.
Into ‘windows’ I copied the same 4 files.
Into ‘game’ I copied the same 4 files.
Into ‘c:\windows\syswow64’ I copied:
3dfxspl2.dll and 3dfxspl3.dll
I’m sure some of this was NOT needed, but I have a perfectly working game now. And, FWIW, I’m the original owner of the cd from 20+ years ago.
Yikes I hope you didn’t overwrite any system files. You only need to copy those DLLs into the games folder, not into any of the systems folders. Whatever versions of the dll the game finds in its own folder, it will use.
No, didn’t overwrite any files. This was me working over the past ~10 years to get it running, w/ tidbits picked from various websites. I should mention the latest ‘install’ is on win10-64 pro.
I’ve seen a competitive site with a link leading to DDrawCompat dll, but even with this you’ll have a problem when you have a widescreen monitor. I don’t think this will happen on a 4:3 screen, but even if I used a version of DDrawCompat newer than recommended 0.4.0, I got awful bars on the right and left (I got them also with 0.4.0!). There’s no tip on how to disable them and thus force the game to support 16:9 screen ratio. My operation system is Windows 10 x64, the game is from a magazine, from an issue released in August 2000. Note = I’m using a non-English 1.0 release. What’s wrong?