Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (demo)

Firaxis / EA, 1999. 100-turn single-player demo. Registered as alpha_centauri_demo. The retail ISO (v1 + v4 patch, BYO-media route) is a separate investigation: alpha-centauri.md.

Fixture

• Source: test/binaries/win98-games-a-d/Alpha Centauri demo-SW/smacdemo.exe, a WinZip self-extractor holding an InstallShield 5 Disk1 (16-bit NE SETUP.EXE, data1.cab, ...) and a ready-to-run programs\ directory (terran.exe, sound.dll, art, fonts; 513 files, 32 MB). Only programs\ is kept: unzip -q smacdemo.exe then move programs/ under the demo folder, and node tools/gen-win98-games-a-d-manifests.js.
• terran.exe imports only system DLLs (DDRAW, DSOUND, DPLAYX, MSVFW32, WINMM, comdlg32...); sound.dll is LoadLibrary'd from the game directory.

Route (CLI, 2026-10-06, no emulator change needed)

Run with --screen=1024x768: the shell dialogs are laid out for a large desktop, and at the default 640x480 the welcome box is cut off at the bottom.

1. Welcome ("Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri DEMO version") -> OK (345,550).
2. Main menu -> QUICK START (835,362).
3. "PLANETFALL!" (a random faction; this run Deirdre's Gaians) -> OK (706,738).
4. "Enter a name for your first base" -> OK (510,344); the colony pod founds Gaia's Landing; tutorial prompt -> Close (362,735).
5. Numpad 6 (VK 0x66) moves the active Scout Patrol one square east; the map reveals and the supply-pod hint appears.

Evidence: scratch/runs/20261006-smac-demo-move. The run burns ~2M API calls per 10 s in its message loop (PeekMessage); pass --quiet-api.

Open

Audio, FPS, the browser route.