How to get Grim Fandango to work on a modern PC

Since I’ve set up the forum and clan, I’ve been getting questions about the about the game Grim Fandango and how to get in working under Windows XP & Vista. First of all you need a copy of the game, which you can get for £5 - £10 from eBay and if you lived in the UK, try
Computer Exchange for only £3.50 and they do free P&P, but it is rare for them to have more than a few copies in stock.

The game came out in 1999, so about 2 years before Windows XP did, and it can work on some XP machines straight away without any configuration, if your hardware is over a couple of years old. I’ve only experience problems running the game very recently, after installing a new sound card and graphics card.

To my understanding, if you have a 7 Series nVidia graphics card the games should work fine, once have you downloaded and install the patch before you play. Problems seems to start with the 8 series and higher, like with mine which is a nVidia GTS 250. I don't know if these problems happen with modern ATI cards.

The configuration is very easy to do and you will have to reset the changes after you stop playing the game, so your other apps and games will work right. This will only take a moment to do.


Windows XP & 32 bit Vista

1. Install the game as you normally would and apply the patch, if you can’t install the game, please go to this web page and follow the instructions.

2. After installation, run the game and if you see horrible horizontal lines or graphics glitches, (e.g. like the images below), quit the game and right click on the Grim Fandango desktop icon and select Properties and go to the Compatibility tab.

3. Near to the top under Compatibility mode, select the "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" and choose Windows 98/ Windows Me and press OK.





4. Load up the game again, if you still having graphics problems, quit the game again and go to the Windows Start Menu and select Run, and in the dialog box enter DXDiag and the DirectX Diagnostic Tool should load up.

5. Select the Display tab 1, (not Dispaly tab 3 as shown in the image), and under DirectX Features, disable Direct Draw Acceleration. This will automatically disable the other two options in that section and then you need to quit the DirectX Tool program.



6. Load the game up and everything should be fine. The game naturally resolution is 640 x 480 and unfortunately it will stretch it to fit your screen and there no resolution option in the game menu. The game will look a bit blurred, but it isn’t too bad. If you take a screen shot during the game and paste it into Photoshop or MS paint, the image it will be at the original 640 x 480 size.

7. Once you have finish playing the game, open up DirectX Diagnostic Tool again and Enable the Direct Draw Acceleration option, plus the two others in that section or your modern games made not work right.

8. I did find this tool, which a fan of the game created, which will change the settings before and after the game, so you don't have to do it manually each time.


Vista 64

1. Copy all the files from disk1 and disk2 into C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\grim\. Some files are the same on both disks so just overwrite any when prompted.

2. The game is working now, but you will need the patch to play it correctly and you can't install the patch without installing the game..so, download the patch in .zip and not in .exe, you can download it here :

Download(Click Here)

3. Unzip the file archive which you have downloaded and copy the files into C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\grim\GRIMDATA overwriting the existing files.

4. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\grim\GRIMDATA\GRIMFANDANGO.EXE, right click the file and choose properties. On the compatibility tab, select both "run this program as administrator" and also "run this program in compatibility mode for windows 98"

5. Right click on C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\grim\GRIMDATA\GRIMFANDANGO.EXE, and choose "create shortcut". Place the shortcut on your desktop.

6. Run the game at least once by clicking on the shortcut, this will automatically create the registry entries you need.

7. [optional] To play the game without the cd's in the drive, add a new string value into the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC\Grim Fandango\v1.0 good_times=true

8. If you have a nvidia graphic card, then you will need to disable 3d acceleration within the game's options to have clear graphics.

9. Enjoy the game.

Glottis: Manny, until now we scraped along the ground like rats, but from now on, we soar. Like eagles. Yeah. LIKE EAGLES... ON... POGO STICKS.

Cheap b@stard! Buy one, it's cheap enough.