I was browsing fmhy and saw the section on abandonware games. I was looking through one of the sites listed and found The Crystal Key. It's a sci-fi point-and-click adventure "game" (it just plays videos and the environments are a panoramic image that gives the impression of 3D). I played it when I was like 11 or 12 on Window 98.

I tried playing it on Win 11 and it wouldn't render properly. I set up a Win 98 virtual machine and got to play it. It was such a nice little nostalgia trip. It's actually very short and it rips off the look of Star Wars a lot more than I remember. But it also has a very heavy late 90s design to everything, like some of the level elements look almost like architectural or industrial concepts from the period. The music was also very of-the-time. Almost like Halo in some parts.

It's been compared to Myst, but I never played that series. I'm seriously thinking about building a vintage computer to properly play these kinds of games. I'm having trouble getting the color to work correctly with VirtualBox. I was able to install more advanced drivers to increase bit depth but the game is still a horrible jaggy mess in some areas. I think playing it on authentic hardware will help.