Older games not appearing in widescreen resolution

[RealSlenderman]

Just got a new laptop, a Lenovo G510 with Windows 8. I've played newer games like Mafia II with no resolution issues but I've had problems with pretty much every older title I've tried to play, some examples being Counter Strike, Red Orchestra, Imperial Glory, and Medieval II. On Medieval II I was able to change the resolution to 1366 x 768 but the other games do not have the option for it. They all just appear perfectly square in the center of the screen with black bars on either side no matter what resolution I change them to. How can I fix this?

[Crypto Carlos]

Some games/older games have limited support for certain widescreen resolutions. If there's a way to set a custom resolution for a game, you can find it by looking at the Widescreen Gaming Forum (google WSFG).

[RealSlenderman]

I could do that. It appears I would just be making my viewable screen smaller and it wouldn't fix the problem with the games. I'd like them to play in fullscreen like they did on my other laptop, right now they're all a tiny square!