ALF: The Defender of Earth

[samstokes80]

I downloaded a Windows game a LONG time ago. It was a fan-made game called ALF: The Defender of Earth. When I was working on the Wiki a while back, I looked for it on the internet and couldn't find it anymore. I was going through a bunch of old CDs and unbelievably I found the files tacked on to a CD that was labeled MP3s. It indeed had mostly MP3s and then a couple of other random files including ALF: The Defender of Earth!

Now that I've found it, I have a tech issue. It says that it is not compatible with Windows 7, when I try to open it. I have also tried to run it in compatibility mode for 95, 98, and 2000 but it doesn't work. Does anyone know of any good emulators that will run old Windows games?

[Admin]

Could I get a copy of this game from you??? I once had it, but lost it at one point or another. I am very certain that it was on Luke Robbins website in the early 2000s, but I'll need to double-check to be sure.

As for emulators...I have no clue...

[Admin]

Confirmed - from Luke Robbins' old site (2001). Links at that time were:

lukerobbins.f9.co.uk/alf
alf.co.uk

[samstokes80]

I totally can't believe I found it. I assumed it was gone forever.

[samstokes80]

Yeah, that name sounds familiar. I would have never remembered it if you hadn't!

[samstokes80]

I'll e-mail it to you in the morning. It's on the desktop in the baby's room. The CD is in there, too. Don't want to risk going in there, because if he happens to wake up, it's time to play - even if it were 1AM!

[Admin]

Many thanks!

[ALFan]

I downloaded a Windows game a LONG time ago. It was a fan-made game called ALF: Defender of Earth. When I was working on the Wiki a while back, I looked for it on the internet and couldn't find it anymore. I was going through a bunch of old CDs and unbelievably I found the files tacked on to a CD that was labeled MP3s. It indeed had mostly MP3s and then a couple of other random files including ALF: Defender of Earth!

Now that I've found it, I have a tech issue. It says that it is not compatible with Windows 7, when I try to open it. I have also tried to run it in compatibility mode for 95, 98, and 2000 but it doesn't work. Does anyone know of any good emulators that will run old Windows games?

Try DOSBox. It typically runs older Window games.

[samstokes80]

Thanks for the tip ALFan, but I believe DOSBox can only run DOS games. At any rate, I went ahead and tried it and I get the message "This program must be run under Microsoft Windows."

I think you could probably use DOSBox to run Windows 3.1 and then load the game from there (assuming it is compatible with Windows 3.1). The only problem is that I don't have Windows 3.1 anymore.

[samstokes80]

Ah, success, IF you have Windows 7 Professional, you can play ALF Defender of Earth if you install Windows XP Mode and Virtual PC, which are available from the Microsoft website as free updates if you have a verified installation of Windows. You cannot download these to Windows 7 Home, so if this is all you have, you may be out of luck. I tried downloading Virtualbox, but I couldn't get it to work with that (not to say it couldn't be done).

Anyway, the exit screen of the game says that it is to be distributed as freeware, so I'm attaching the ZIP archive to this post, so everyone can access the game files.

It's a fairly short and simple game, but obviously the work of someone that loves ALF!

[samstokes80]

ALF: The Defender of Earth - Title Screen

ALF: The Defender of Earth - Level 1 - New York City

[Admin]

I just so happen to be sitting on my new laptop (I got it up and running a few days ago) that has Windows 7 Professional! It must be a sign

Thank you for posting the ZIP file - I look forward to digging into it later on tonight.

[samstokes80]

A Christmas miracle indeed, lol

[Melmac98]

I tried downloading Virtualbox, but I couldn't get it to work with that (not to say it couldn't be done).

*shamelessly blows a ton of dust off this old dinosaur of a thread*

I just got it to work in VirtualBox, so it can indeed be done. I had installed XP Professional SP3 32-bit in a virtual machine in there, and it worked flawlessly! My host machine runs Windows 10 Home 64-bit. I'm also thinking of installing Windows 7 Ultimate on another partition. At any rate, I'll try and run it again later with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 64-bit as the host OS, but I imagine that it will work, given how virtual machines work.

EDIT: I just tried to install it natively on my Windows 10 system... and this happened.

So it officially won't work natively in Windows 10 at all.

[samstokes80]

Hmm, it's too bad it won't run on Windows 10. I guess it's just going to get more and more difficult to be able to get that one to work. I should see if I can get it working on one of my machines and make a playthrough video, so people can at least check out what it looked like.