How To: Play OLD DOS Games on your XP, 2000, Linux, Free BSD and MAC with DOSBox

I still love the old DOS games that I played almost 5-6 years ago. Two of my favorites PC games were Stargunner and Digger. Those were in fact, the first ones that I had played. Last weekend I was searching for information and utilities which would let me play those games with complete sound and graphics, again. [Most of those old games were later released as Freewares with FULL episodes and that’s why I was looking for such an application]. My search yielded positive results, and I found DOSBox, which not only lets you run old DOS computer games but any DOS application.

DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound, graphics, mouse, modem, etc., necessary for running many old DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux and FreeBSD. However, it is not restricted to running only games. In theory, any DOS application should run in DOSBox, but the emphasis has been on getting DOS computer games to run smoothly, which means that communication, networking and printer support are still in early development.

Installing DOSBox and running dos games

Here is a step by step guide to running your OLD DOS computer games using DOSBox.

First, download the DOSBox from [DOSBox on Sourceforge]. The current version has releases for Windows 2000, XP, Gentoo Linux, MAC OS X, Free BSD and Fedora.

The installation is very easy and finishes quickly. You don’t see any complicated setup and configuration screens during installation. The configuration after the installation is very easy. Here are the steps:

1. Install DOSBox to a folder in your system.
2. Create a folder to store/install all your DOS games

That’s it. We are ready to play! You expected more steps? Sorry to have disappointed you

Now, it’s time to play our games. The steps to first start DOSBox and mount your games directory are:

• Goto command prompt, start->run->cmd and switch to DOSBox directory. [CD C:\dosbox]. Then run dosbox.exe
• Now let’s mount the folder which has your DOS games. In our case, oldgames. Type mount C C:\oldgames
• Your oldgames directory is mounted on C drive inside DOSBox, now switch to the games folder that you want to play. Command is CD C:\stargunner [Stargunner is a sub-folder in oldgames]
• Run the DOS executable of that game. In my case it’s stargunner.exe

Quick guide to increase, decrease frame rate and many other settings to suit the application according the game you are playing is available on [DOSBox Page]

Want more OLD Dos games?

Stargunner – Full version can be found here. Also, you might be interested in Wikipedia’s list of commercial games that have been released as freeware games.