Plants vs. Zombies and Plants vs. Zombies GotY installed together

Question

I have the original Plants vs. Zombies and the new Plants vs. Zombies Game of the Year edition. These are not Steam editions, but are just straight up boxed copies. My kids want to play the new version so they can create their own Zombies and get the new Disco Zombie, but my wife just wants to keep the old Dancing Zombie.

As I understand it, both of these versions of the game store their savegames in C:\ProgramData\PopCap Games\PlantsVsZombies. This leads me to believe that even if I install the new Game of the Year Edition into a different directory, there's no way to have the savegames store in a different location. Am I out of luck or is there someway to get around this conundrum?

Answer 1

Is it really a problem for the save games to be in the same place?

I believe my PvZ on Steam was recently upgraded (without me doing anything?) from normal to Game of the Year edition, and it imported all the old info just fine. Its possible all the Game of the Year save info is kept separate files, or that the files are adaptable and the old game will simply ignore save info it doesn't understand.

So, backup your current save files, then try installing the Game of the Year edition, and see if anything breaks. Maybe they'll both just work together.

Answer 2

They will use both the same folder for savings and if used, also the same keys in the Windows registry.

I would suggest you to try Sandboxie that allows to create "virtual environments" with dedicated registry, user data and so on.

I never tried Sandboxie for gaming applications but I don't see any reasons why it should't work.