Guide to installing Grim Fandango

grim-fandango-melange

Grim Fandango is one of the few games that simply has trouble on new machines.  One of the first official patches helped fix puzzles that ran to quickly on anything above a 400mhz processor.  I waited for the Lucasarts Steam announcement, but was left still needing to research this dilemma.

Upon inserting the disc you are greeted to an autoplay that *may* reject your harddisc space due to inaccurate readings, and the Setup.exe will not run under any variant of 64bit Windows.  I am testing under Windows 7 RC, so this should work under Windows XP, Vista or 7.

  1. Instead, place disc A in the drive, then download and run this Custom installer available here: http://quick.mixnmojo.com/grim-fandango-setup
  2. I installed to the default Program Files(x86)\
  3. When prompted, insert disc B.
  4. Included in this custom installer is a Custom Launcher (available separately here; NOT NEEDED for this install): http://quick.mixnmojo.com/grim-fandango-launcher
  5. After installed, go to the Options of the Launcher and make sure there is a green check next to Run from Harddrive.

I am still trying to determine if the new Setup includes the patch or not (the readme file is not updated when you run the official patch after installation.  I do not think you need it, but can be found here: http://www.grimfandango.net/?page=patch)

That’s it.  I ran into trouble running with 3d acceleration, but it honestly doesn’t look very different from a nice window of software mode.

10 thoughts on “Guide to installing Grim Fandango

  1. Pingback: Hey. This guy hates drm, too. « don’t tell me the ending

  2. ok So im one of the few who love this game, but the patch did help with windows 7 build 7600 64bit, i tested before and after

    have fun

  3. Hey, had a similar hankering for Grim Fandango and downloaded your installed (running Windows 7 as well) but am having some troubles with sound. It’ll work just fine or a few minutes, and then something will set it off and it’ll either endlessly repeat 1 second of sound like a bad remix or go mute all together. Have you had this problem?

    • I have the same problem with sound… after a minute or so it goes mute or stutters. I’m running it on Windows 7 Home Premium on a PC with a bog-standard on-board High Definition Audio Device. I’ve tried running it in compatibility mode and as an admin but no joy.

      I might try running it under a VMware XP virtual machine, but then I might not bother, because no matter how much I’d love to play this game again, whilst testing it out I just recalled why I never got very far with it before… the controls are bloomin’ awful.

      I always wished they had just made it a point and click. To be honest, I’d love it if they remade it as a proper 3D third-person version that works the same way as Tim Schafer’s other classic, Psychonauts. But there’s probably about as much chance of that happening as there being a Psychonauts II.

  4. Okay, I found out that if you set compatibility mode to Windows 98/Me it works fine… I’ve also just discovered my wired Xbox 360 controller works with the game, and makes it a lot easier to control :)

  5. Will be trying this out as soon as I discover the hiding place of my GF disks from 6 years ago! Funny how you have to mess around with the old school games to get them to run. You should see what you have to do to the thief games!

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