Category:DOS

From thecrankyhermit

The dominant operating system for IBM PCs and compatibles from 1981 until 1995, during which time (and a few years beyond) thousands of commercial titles were developed for it, and tens of thousands of non-commercial titles as well. MS-DOS is partly responsible for the explosion of IBM compatibles, and the eventual rise of PCs as the leading family of gaming computers.

DOSBox is the most popular emulator with near 100% game compatibility, and very good accuracy in a wide variety of hardware configurations that were popular at the time. Still, some games have better options than DOSBox, and some others have non-trivial configuration issues within DOSBox for optimal quality. Check reviews' specification notes for specifics.

GOG uses DOSBox extensively and is the most reputable storefront for purchasing DOS era games, and their DRM free packages lend themselves well to tweaking.

A general note on DOSBox configuration; out of the box (and as configured in many GOG titles), DOSBox will not fullscreen games properly! They'll be surrounded by black bars on three or four sides. But there is an easy fix. Find the dosbox config file being used for the game. In the case of GOG releases, it will be in the game install directory, and have a name such as "dosboxTheGame.conf," where "TheGame" is the title of your game. Ignore other files like "dosboxTheGame_settings.conf," and "dosboxTheGame_single.conf." Edit the file with your favorite text editor, and there should be a section that looks something like this:

fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original

Edit the "fullresolution" line. Change it to this:

fullresolution=desktop

Save, and then when you run the game, it should scale to your desktop resolution in fullscreen mode.