I had trouble getting Steam's version of Fallout 3 to work on my MacBook Pro in Windows. The main menu would start, but the game would crash after I clicked "play", just before the intro movie.
Turns out the issue was related to my MacBook's Intel graphics chipset, an Intel Iris Graphics 5100. To get FO3 to work, I was able to use the Intel HD Graphics Bypass package to trick FO3 into thinking it's running on an Nvidia chipset.
If you're running an Intel graphics chipset, and can't get FO3 to run, this fix may work for you too:
- Manually download and extract the Intel HD Graphics Bypass Package
- Copy
d3d9x.dll
-->C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Fallout 3\
- (Optional) Create a backup copy of
C:\users\$USERNAME\Documents\my games\Fallout3\FALLOUT.ini
- Copy
FALLOUT.INI
-->C:\users\$USERNAME\Documents\my games\Fallout3\