I Use DOSBox To Play The Games That First Got Me Into Gaming, And These 10 Are My Favorites

I started my personal computer journey when you only needed a good CPU to play the latest games. At the time, that meant either an i286 or, if you were a baller, an i386 with a whopping 40MHz clock cycle. Microsoft Windows was still in its infancy, and DOS was the main way to use computers. It was an exciting time for PC gaming, with the release of games that would define many of the genres we still use today. Modern CPUs are too quick to run these titles written to use a fraction of the clock speeds available today.

But there’s a solution. I recently discovered an emulator called DOSBox, which emulates DOS, the CPUs that were prevalent at the time, and even sound cards, so that you can run DOS games on modern PCs. You can download many of these games legally, thanks to them being distributed as shareware originally. I’ve been revisiting the games that started my lifetime of gaming, and these are the titles that had the most impact, not just on me but on the market as a whole.

Related

The Mac is the easiest way to play retro games — here’s how I did it

With Delta Emulator, I was playing all kinds of retro games on my Mac in about 90 seconds.

10 Discworld

Take a trip to Anhk-Morpork with me and enjoy all the puns

Fans of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels were in for a treat when this CD-based point-and-click adventure was released in 1995. The hapless Rincewind the “wizzard” has to save the city from a dragon terrorizing the populace. It’s a fantastic adventure for any fan of the series of Discworld novels, which was me when it was released, and I remember spending hours and hours trying to solve some of the more fiendish puzzles in between studying for my final exams.

Yes, LucasArts made the point-and-click adventure popular, and the humor in games like Sam & Max is great, but Discworld brought the novels to life in a way that I’d not experienced before, and that makes it worth revisiting. Be warned, it doesn’t spare any punches with its difficulty and is perhaps best experienced when using a walkthrough, since the puzzles can be tricky, and it’s easy to miss objects you really should have picked up.

9 Dune II

The classic RTS formula came from this 1992 gem

Dune II provided the blueprint for every real-time strategy (RTS) game we play today. Perhaps that’s unsurprising for a game designed to replicate Frank Herbert’s Dune’s resource management and inter-family fighting. Pick one of the three rival Houses, build your base from a single building, and harvest the mind-bending spice. All the elements of modern RTS exist here, including a story with cutscenes, a fog of war that needs to be uncovered to see enemy units moving elsewhere, and a decay mechanism for structures, necessitating their repair.

Adding to your woes is the ever-present threat of sandworms, which appear occasionally to try and swallow any units left wandering around on the sand dunes. And yes, that includes your harvesters picking up spice. The game was a sleeper hit for the developer, Westwood Studios, who would later achieve commercial success with the Command & Conquer RTS series that brought online multiplayer to the genre. Still, Dune II will always have a place in my heart, even with its clunky controls and often frustrating difficulty.

8 Prince of Persia

Jump, slide, and slash your way through life

I first played this classic on an Apple IIc in green monochrome because my monitor didn’t have the fancier color option. That meant it was running in ProDOS, Apple’s own variant of a disk operating system, but the same game got ported to PCs not long afterward. Prince of Persia is regarded as the first cinematic platformer, and games like the Uncharted series can trace their lineage all the way back to it. Unlike sprite-based jumping games, it used rotoscoping for its animations, with the player character being based on video footage of the developer’s brother.

One neat thing about this game is that the developer, Jordan Mechner, posted the original source code to GitHub for anyone to look at. Not that seeing the code will make it any less difficult. The game has 12 levels, which you must finish within 60 minutes or fail to save the imprisoned princess. That’s not the only hazard, as spike traps, deep falls, falling rocks, and hostile swordsmen can cut your playthrough short. I don’t remember ever finishing it as a kid, and maybe I never will. I’m okay with that, as long as it stays preserved as a piece of gaming history.

7 Rogue

Who needs graphics when the gameplay is this exciting

Dark Souls might be the most recent game to use its name to define a genre, but a little game called Rogue did the same thing back in the 1980s. Featuring randomly generated rooms in ever-expanding dungeons to explore, what it lacked in graphical acumen it made up for with addictive gameplay. It’s also one of the few games on this list that isn’t considered abandonware, as you can still pick a copy up from Steam and other storefronts.

Like successive rogue-likes, Rogue has a pre-determined winning condition: survive 26 levels before finding the Amulet and escaping with your prize. If you can deal with the alphanumeric graphics, it’s well worth a few frustrating afternoons of playing through the game that defined a genre for decades.

Rogue

$1.5 $3 Save $1.5

Rogue is the game that lent its name to the Roguelike genre, where dungeon crawling through randomly generated rooms first began.

6 Scorched Earth

Head-to-head multiplayer at its finest

In the early 90s, the internet was still out of reach for many, so multiplayer gaming had to be done in person, on the same computer. I couldn’t tell you exactly how many hours I played this game, but it was a favorite of my best friend of the time, and we often rushed over to his house straight after school to annihilate each other with the wide range of artillery on offer.

And what an arrangement of destruction was to be had. Small missiles, MIRVs that blanketed the deformable terrain in mini bombs, napalm that dripped dangerously downhill, and our favorite–the dirt bomb. This ordinance didn’t do any damage but enabled you to bury the other player, so they couldn’t fire back at you until they cleared the obstruction. Great fun when you’re a preteen, and still pretty enjoyable today.

5 Sid Meier’s Civilization

Where the CPU players cheat when you get good

Civilization might not have been the first turn-based strategy 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) game, but its enduring legacy is enshrined in every modern 4X title. The series is ongoing, with Civilization VII scheduled for release in 2025. Unlike most DOS games, it’s still shaping the genre, and the original title is very playable, even with modern gaming in mind. Sure, the graphics are limited, but the combination of gameplay elements is still addictive, and building up a civilization from a single city will never go out of style.

4 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Play along through the book in this text-based RPG

Text-based adventure games were big in the DOS games, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had me hooked. Taking the protagonist’s role in Douglas Adams’ masterpiece of irrelevant and quirky humor, you play through the book’s story. Except you don’t have the easy navigation of a mouse or even graphics to keep you entertained, just a command line that responds to the correct phrases.

It’s a fantastically amusing time and is even better if you don’t take it seriously, as the game can, and will, kill you at the slightest provocation. In fact, my most used command is savewhich I save scummed at every other command, so I wouldn’t have to restart from the beginning each time. You can also play it online, thanks to the BBC, who created a tidied-up version for the 30th anniversary of the game.

3 The Lost Vikings

Help this trio make their way home

It’s perhaps fairer to call The Lost Vikings a puzzle game, but at the time, it was an action platformer with a heavy focus on puzzle-solving. That’s not far off how every modern action-adventure platformer is designed, and these three mismatched Vikings paved the way. Each had a different skillset that needed to work in tandem to get through the levels and escape from Tomator, the emperor of an alien race who abducted them.

It’s also one of the first games by Blizzard Entertainment, although they went by a different name, Silicon & Synapseback then. I loved this game, with its branching gameplay and the need to think about every puzzle room from their three perspectives. Mastering the mechanics to finish levels was a great sense of achievement, and it’s still one of the main things I love about gaming.

2 Wolfenstein3D

The FPS was born on this day

It’s pretty safe to say we wouldn’t have Call of Duty or any other FPS title without this gem of gaming history. Wolfenstein3D was only the second major independent release by id Software, but what a banger it was. I spent a significant section of my childhood shooting Nazis on my way out of the castle, and I’m not sure if I managed to find every secret room. The barking noise from attack dogs still reverberates through my skull when I think of this game, as they were the bane of my existence back then.

Of course, the coding duo of John Romero and John Carmack would go on to greater heights with Doom, and Quakebut Wolfenstein3D is the game that started the genre, and is still pretty playable today.

1 Z

The Bitmap Brothers’ finest work

While I poured hours into the other RTS titles on this list, Z did things differently, and I loved it for that. New units were created by capturing regions of the map instead of the tedious chore of collecting resources or building different structures. The humor was particularly dark and often insulted the player when mistakes were made. You could take over unmanned vehicles, and the driver could be shot out of manned ones, allowing you to steal the vehicle. It was a tonic to the bloated resource management of other RTS titles at the time, focusing more on the tactical aspects. Nowadays, features live on in games like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, which uses the same capture mechanism for new units or upgrades.

MS-DOS might be gone, but it’s not forgotten

Even once Microsoft W indows became the de facto operating system of personal computers, many still played games using the command line of DOS. Thanks to tools like DOSBox and many front-ends like LaunchBox, these low-resolution games are still playable. You don’t need the best graphics card to play them, and you don’t even need to install anything in many cases, thanks to websites like RetroGames, which host the DOS emulators online so that you can play from your browser.

DOSBox

DOSBox is an emulator for DOS-based programs and games, enabling you to revisit a huge catalog of abandonware games from the early days of personal computing.