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(Glide, DirectDraw 1-7, Direct3D 2-7, OpenGL 1.1-1.2) <small>*Direct3D 1 doesn't exist, since DirectX 1 did not have a Direct3D component. The first release was Direct3D 2.</small>
During the 90s, many [[Intel CPUsPOS_(Pong_Consoles)_CPUs_and_Other_Chips#Intel_CPU.27s|PC]] game developers chose to use 3Dfx's Glide API for their Voodoo graphics cards. These developers didn't anticipate that 3Dfx would run out of money trying to compete with NVIDIA's offering, and in 2000 NVIDIA bought them for their IP assets (presumably to improve their own cards). Despite the API getting an open source release in 2003, neither NVIDIA or ATI adopted support for Glide in their own drivers, meaning a wrapper is now needed to play these games with hardware acceleration. Or, if we're lucky, the game gets [[Game Engine Recreations and Source Ports|ported or reimplemented]] to use other APIs instead.
Even games using older versions of DirectDraw or Direct3D can benefit from wrappers, since those interfaces may not even work properly on newer systems. Wrappers can even enable various overrides and enhancements, such as [https://reshade.me/ ReShade].
