DOS games that were written for the Commodore 64 and other early computers will run on modern computers, but you will need to be careful about how you format them.
CPUs from the early days of computing were designed to be very fast. They had a lot of instructions and could do a lot of work at once. But as time went on, CPUs became more and more specialized, and they started to do things that only the most powerful ones could do. This made them much faster than something like an 80386 CPU, but they were still quite slow compared to modern CPUs.
This is why it’s so important for developers to create Windows 10 compatibility mode options that can be turned on and off, and to make sure that games that are released for the new operating system will work with older versions of Windows.
There are a number of ways to play classic DOS games on a modern computer. One way is to use a emulator. Emulators allow you to play old DOS games on your computer without any of the software needed to create or run them. Another way is to find and download classic DOS games from online sources.
Enter DOSBox
DOSBox is a software that accurately emulates the original IBM PC DOS environment. It also emulates some of the most popular hardware from that era, such as the Creative Sound Blaster sound card. Which means you can use it to play classic DOS games perfectly, just as if you were running them on a PC from four decades ago.
There are versions of the software for MacOS and Linux, as well as Windows. You will need to get your hands on games to use the software. This can be a little complicated. ..
Where to Find Games
This is a legal way to get your own copy of the classic DOOM game.
Piracy of full retail games from the DOS era is still a crime. If you download a copy of a game without paying for it, you are committing piracy. ..
If you still own the original DOS games on CD or Diskette then you should be able to use DOSBox to run the game (or a backup of it). It’s a great way to access your old collection of games again.
Good Old Games has a website where you can buy classic DOS games legally. GOG actually uses a pre-configured copy of DOSBox to make it all work. If you buy a DOS game from GOG, you don’t have to manually set up DOSBox at all. Unless you want to tweak the settings, in which case this guide will still be useful.
There are games that fall into a legal gray area. These games are owned by companies that have long since passed away, and no one is actively defending their copyright. You can find these games on abandonedware websites, but be warned that it’s not strictly legal.
Setting Up Your Game with DOSBox
DOSBox is a free and open source software that allows you to play classic DOS games on your Windows computer. Before you can use it, you need to install it. There are different versions for different operating systems, so be sure to find the one that matches your computer. After installation is complete, just run the program and start playing your favorite DOS games! ..
To run DOSBox, you first need to create a folder on your drive for your DOS games. This folder will act as a virtual hard drive in DOSBox and you can copy all your games there. We recommend creating this folder on the root of your drive to make it easier to access from DOSBox.
On our Windows 10 machine, the installer did not create a shortcut, so we had to navigate to the installation directory and run DOSBox.exe. Obviously, you can create your own shortcut from there to make future sessions more convenient. Once you’ve started DOSBox, the DOSBox window should open like this.
To run the DOOM shareware files in DOSBox, we need to first mount the “DOSAPPS” folder on our virtual hard drive.
This is a message from the Windows operating system asking you to confirm the Mount Point for C:\DOSAPPS.
In DOSBox, we can change our drive to Drive C by typing C:\ in the console.
This game still needs to be installed and the installation files are in a folder called “Doom19s”. To switch to that folder, we type cd\doom19s
The Install.bat file is a batch file that starts the installer program. ..
Now follow the instructions and install the game to your virtual C drive.
After the installation is complete, you will be presented with DOOM’s setup utility. ..
To play our games using a keyboard and sound card, we’ll choose “keyboard only” as our controller type and “Sound Blaster” as our soundcard. If you recall, DOSBox showed use the default Sound Blaster configuration at startup. So we choose Port 220, IRQ 7 and DMA channel 1. The default 3 channel mix choice worked just fine for us as well. ..
Once all of the necessary preparations are complete, we choose “Save Parameters and Launch DOOM.” This will ensure that all of our settings are saved and ready to go when we launch the game. ..
The game should launch successfully.
Wow, you’ve finally decided to play the game!
Additional Tips
To get a full-screen experience, just hit ALT+ENTER to toggle window modes. You can play the game just as usual. The next time you launch the game, you can simply navigate to the installed folder after mounting your C drive and run the game directly the same way we started “Install.bat”.
Some DOS games don’t require installation, you can just copy their entire folder into your DOS game folder and run them. ..
There are a lot of ways to tweak DOSBox to get it running just the way you want it. Check the DOSBox installation folder for their excellent manual text file. It’s full of tips and tricks.
If you’re looking to troubleshoot your computer, you can use the DOSBox software to do so. This software is a great way to get a refresher on those old DOS commands. The most important shortcut you need to know right now, however, is the CPU cycle toggle.
This tweak speeds up or slows down the virtual CPU of DOSBox. So if a game is running too slowly, just hit CTRL+F11 or CTRL+F12 to adjust its speed.
To leave DOSBox, type the following: Exit DOSBox
