Best way to play old DOS games?

md99 · 22 Mar 2009 at 23:23

I've got a lot of old stuff in my collection that I haven't played in years. Games like Prince Of Persia, Monkey Island, Tomb Raider and so on. I know most games these days can be played on current OS's via patches and all sorts of lengthy workarounds but I don't think its worth the hassle.

Could I partition my hard drive and stick something like Win 98 on it or would there be any possible conflicts using such an old OS on modern hardware?

uv · 22 Mar 2009 at 23:27

md99 said:
Could I partition my hard drive and stick something like Win 98 on it

If you really can't be bothered with compatability patches and whatnot, you could always use a VM install rather than make a new partition.

jamiehavok · 22 Mar 2009 at 23:34

use scummvm for old lucasarts adventures plus other compatible games like broken sword and dosbox for all other dos games. scummvm runs virtually all supported games perfectly and dosbox runs pretty much all dos games ive tried great, currently running the pandora directive on it - old 6cd interactive movie graphic adventure - runs fine.

md99 · 22 Mar 2009 at 23:35

uvmain said:
If you really can't be bothered with compatability patches and whatnot, you could always use a VM install rather than make a new partition.

Makes more sense actually. Is the installation procedure as straightforward as installing any piece of software on my OS? None of my current data is at risk of being lost or anything like that is it?

iamdjdz · 22 Mar 2009 at 23:35

dosbox

HangTime · 23 Mar 2009 at 00:00

md99 said:
Win 98 on it or would there be any possible conflicts using such an old OS on modern hardware?

Main problem would likely be lack of chipset drivers

V4NT0M · 23 Mar 2009 at 00:09

Can't run much of my old games in vista any more even with dosbox, I tried a VM install of XP to run stuff on but that failed.

Phatjayunoi · 23 Mar 2009 at 00:23

From my personal experience, I find that having a seperate partition for Windows 98 screws things up completely, i.e. like the MBR so it could cause major problems with your current O/S. Having it on a seperate small old hard drive would be the better choice and even then like mentioned before, getting the Windows 98 drivers to get your devices working will be a pain in the arse itself.

One extreme and desperate way to play these older games is to build a small PC with all the old hardware components from like the Pentium II era or something and install Windows 95/98. The awesome power of 200-300Mhz, 16MB RAM, 1GB hard drive etc

. I still have some components laying around, some of which still work so I may end up doing this myself and at least makes this method easier to do.

me227 · 23 Mar 2009 at 00:45

iamdjdz said:
dosbox

With the D-Fend reloaded frontend. Thats what I use and I've never had much problems with it.

M31 · 23 Mar 2009 at 00:47

I love the old DOS games too, so cobbled together an old P200, 32 mb ram, basic SB card, cant remember what graphic card? but I got myself an old 3dfx v1 slave card from the auction site and fire this PC up from time to time, no windows, just DOS 6.22, it was as much fun remembering how to get sufficient memory with various boot disks for different games and the various DOS commands as it was firing up Monkey Island again.

My first ever PC was actually a 386 33MHz, with 4mb of ram, so this one would have been a beast back then.

Been meaning to get myself a working Amiga 500 as well for a while now, this was my first ever computer.

RobH · 23 Mar 2009 at 09:26

DOSBox should run them fine, get a good frontend like DBGL and you won't have a problem.

orderoftheflame · 23 Mar 2009 at 09:32

ScummVM for anything that'll run on it (most adventure games).

Dosbox for the rest.

daeneth · 23 Mar 2009 at 21:59

dosbox has worked well for me in the past.

Xionic · 23 Mar 2009 at 22:08

dosbox!.

PS: jamiehavok, isn't pandora directive a Tex Murphy game? always prefered Under a Killing Moon, have most of the Tex Murphy games on origional, god they were fun back in the day!

Theguy · 23 Mar 2009 at 22:13

yea pandora is a tex murphy game. had many many cds to it, if i remember correctly.
had that game many a year ago!

dandan556 · 23 Mar 2009 at 22:25

Another vote for dosbox here.

jamiehavok · 23 Mar 2009 at 22:49

yeah, finally got hold of under a killing moon and pandora directive after i had a hankering for a live action graphic adventure - i really enjoyed the beast within and phantasmagoria and the last tex game overseer but never played these last 2.

i finished under a killing moon in 3 days straight with no hints - most of the puzzles were quite easy - the only hard parts were finding objects in the environments - once you had found said object it was quite easy to figure out what you had to do with it. pandora diretive is prooving harder - more things going on at once, harder puzzles and more "assemble the letter/ 7th guest style puzzles which ive never been that good at - stil havent used a hint as im playing on game players mode but im really enjoying it so far.

Theguy · 23 Mar 2009 at 23:05

aa thats good to hear. theres abit later on, i wont go into any detail. but as a 10year old boy. it scared the crap out of me.

jamiehavok · 23 Mar 2009 at 23:13

heheh yeah i remember phantasmagoria scared the crap out of me when i was young lol - some stuff in that game was truely gross.