Is DOS Gaming Dead?

Thanks to Monster Hardware for its article discussing the problems of getting classic DOS games working on today's state-of-the-art PCs. The author discusses trying the Microsoft Program Compatibility Wizard ("After fooling around with a number of games I was able to get a few of them half-way working"), before trying the DOSBox freeware util "...not perfect: Some games run, some games don't." After "trying and mainly failing for the last several weeks to get a handful of old DOS games... to run on a modern PC", is this author's experience typical, or are there any other ways to get old DOS titles running easily?

Comments

Re:It's easy

[thegrassyknowl]

Most modern PCs are too fast to satisfactorily run games - a lot of games run so fast that you've consumed all your lives and the game is over before you were even aware that it had begun.

Old PCs are so cheap (read: free) these days. I keep an old 486 around to run the old DOS games. It's easier than jerking around with emulators, speed throttling software, non soundblaster compatible cards, etc.

This is Typical

[vga_init]

It's actually quite surprising how support for old DOS games has been difficult to manage. With all of the information available on the subject, one would think that it's more simplistic and straightforward. After all, the hardware that these games was designed to work with was extremely limited, and there just wasn't enough plurality to suggest that a game required a feature of functionality that was so uncommon.

Granted, there probably were strange things that need to be addressed, but you'd figure that it shouldn't take *that* much to work out. And, of course, there is no doubt that they will eventually.

DOSBox is a great program, and it has worked wonders for me with regards to some of the more ancient games, but you can forget about using it to play the most recent DOS games. I have only used the Windows port of it, but the VM just wasn't fast enough to handle some of the fancier games, which was too bad. Even then, some older games don't work. Support is just across the board.

I approach DOS emulation with the same attitude that I approach WINE with; if your program works, then that's awesome! It will undoubtedly work well and you'll have a blast. Of course, there is a good chance that your program won't actually work (at least, not right away). Too bad for you.

In the end, there is just no substitute for the original machines available today. Maybe tomorrow.

Depends on the game.

[bluephone]

Games like Doom, old Sierra adventures, Maniac Mansion and othe rSCUMM games, they can all run on todays PC, albeit with help. DOOM/Quake/Hexen have lots of open source engines based on the open code, and support many newer features making the games look even better. Sierra games, like the Space Quest games, Leisure Suit Larry, and other Sierra SCI-based games also have new engines for modern PCs, although they've been reverse engineered, since they're closed source.

I have found the FreeSCI being the best for Sierra games, and it's available for Win32, Macs, Linux, DEC Alpha, etc. Same with Maniac Manson, Beneath a Steel Sky, and other SCUMM based games (lots of lucas Arts games). ScummVM is a fantastic, widely compatible engine for LucasArts and other SCUMM based games, and is also available for a host of formats. To boot, two different games are freely available for it, Beneath a Steel Sky, and Flight of the Amazon Queen (both are in the floppy version, and the full CD ROM version with voice audio! Beneath A Steel Sky will NOT disappoint, play it!).

The Z-Machine engine for Zork has been ported to everything known to man, and some things not known to man, so that's widely playable.

Lastly, for those niche games that you love (Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle!) try a virtual machine system, like VMware (the best, IMHO), Microsoft's newly aquired and freshly released Virtual PC 2004 (not as good, IMHO, and not available on Linux, obviously), or some other open source projects might work.

The last gasp is to install a copy of DOS or Win9x on a spare small partition (Mine's a half gig bootable partition on my second drive), and boot from it for really cranky stuff. This only works, mind you, if your sound card has some form of DOS based drivers/emulation drivers available. I have a Creative branded Ensoniq Audio PCI, and while I have the DOS drivers, they're a bitch to find now, and I keep them very safe. I've found that Demos and Intros are most likely to fail. I can't get Future Crew's Second Reality running with sound under anything but real DOS.

This is also another good reason to kep an old Sound Blaster 16 lying around. God knows they're plentiful enough and cheap, so no true old school hard core gamer/geek shouldn't have one. :)