Note:
Install DOS Emulator
To play the old DOS games, you need a virtual environment where DOS games can run seamlessly. DOSBox is one of the most popular and easiest to use DOS emulators. With it, you can play almost all the DOS games without any hiccups. The good thing is, DOSBox also supports other operating systems like Mac, Debian, Fedora, etc. First, head to the official DOSBox site and download the Windows version.
Once you have downloaded the executable, you can install it like any other Windows software.
Playing DOS Games in DOSBox
Once the installation is done, launch the DOSBox application. Since DOSBox emulates itself as a DOS environment, you will be greeted with a command line user interface.
Here in this screen, we need to mount the virtual C drive. In this case, the C drive is nothing but the folder with all your DOS games. To mount a folder as the C drive in DOSBox, use the following command and press the “Enter” button. Don’t forget to substitute PATH with the actual path. Once the path is substituted, the command looks something like this.
After successfully mounting the virtual C drive, change the directory to the mounted virtual C drive using the following command.
Now if you have plenty of DOS games like Dave, Doom, etc.., in their separate sub folders, then navigate to the game folder you want to play using the command below. In my case, I navigated to the game folder “Dave.”
Once you are in the game folder, you need to execute the game in order to play it. To do that, use the below command to run the game. Substitute EXECUTABLE with the actual executable file (eg: game.exe).
In some cases, you may want to execute batch files (.bat) to run the game. In those cases, just enter the batch file name along with the extension and press the enter button (eg: go.bat).
As you can see from the below image, as soon as you execute the command, you can start playing the DOS game you selected.
That’s all there is to do. Whenever you want to play a DOS game using DOSBox, just follow all the above steps and you are good to go. Hopefully that helps, and do share your favorite DOS games using the comment form below. Image Credits: Trevor Shafer @flickr
