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Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

f055.net

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Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#21

Post by GeekyBear »

benoau wrote: post #9

This is why Rosetta 2's looming retirement sucks.

x86 gaming and running x86 Linux software are the exceptions.

> Starting with macOS 28, Rosetta 2 will be largely discontinued. Apple says that after that point, it “will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks.”

https://9to5mac.com/2026/02/16/macos-26-4-will-notify-users-...

It's the Mac native x86 software that hasn't been updated in most of a decade that would be affected.

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#22

Post by lastdong »

1313ed01 wrote: post #20
lastdong wrote: post #7

My favourite project to run these old games was Boxer (1). Based on dosbox, it creates a runnable self contained disk (app) for each game or set of games / software. It is pretty neat, but I am not sure if it has been maintained recently. 1 boxerapp.com

I do the opposite and put all games together, with DOS BAT-files to launch the games. I boot up my virtual dream DOS machine by just starting DOSBox-X and then I launch the games the way they are meant to be launched, from the DOS COMMAND.COM command-line. And as I mentioned in another comment, all of that is in one big DOS git repo. Nice thing with DOSBox-X is there is a built-in command to set config parameters, so…

Thanks, I’ll check it out

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#23

Post by chii »

smith7018 wrote: post #10
benoau wrote: post #9

This is why Rosetta 2's looming retirement sucks.

I get why Apple wants to remove it but it genuinely sucks. I can't imagine it costs them a lot to put it into maintenance mode and just support 20 years of macOS games and apps going forward. They want developers to fully move to ARM but older titles or software whose developers have moved on/passed will be lost to the sands of time.

If they choose to discontinue it, it would be nice to have them opensource it so that the community could have a go at maintaining it tbh. Surely that's better than letting it rot (both rosetta and the old software that it runs).

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#24

Post by fwip »

rimunroe wrote: post #19
fragmede wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that the area it takes up on the chip is non-trivial and so it'd cost them a ton to continue to have it.

I thought Rosetta 2 was a purely software layer

Rosetta 2 is software, but there are design decisions made for the M-series chips that are specifically made to improve the ability of Rosetta to work in a performant way. The main one I'm aware of is the x86-TSO memory-ordering mode - most ARM chips don't support this, but the M-series have it so that Rosetta can toggle it on for x86 emulation.

I'm not sure what the total cost of these are, but it's not zero.

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#25

Post by benoau »

GeekyBear wrote: post #21
benoau wrote: post #9

This is why Rosetta 2's looming retirement sucks.

x86 gaming and running x86 Linux software are the exceptions. > Starting with macOS 28, Rosetta 2 will be largely discontinued. Apple says that after that point, it “will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks.” https://9to5mac.com/2026/02/16/macos-26-4-will-notify-users-... It's the Mac native x86 software that hasn't been upda…

> Retro gaming

What they say is "we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks" which sounds like OS X games. But even if it is all-inclusive "retro" games, that means the 1,000s of contemporary games runnable via Crossover through Steam for Windows are being shut out.

They relented under pressure to continue allowing Linux virtual machines, so hopefully they continue to revisit this decision.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/abou...

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#26

Post by McGuffin »

f055 wrote: post #17
47282847 wrote: post #11

Is it really necessary to first install and copy from a Windows machine?

Hmm i guess this would require figuring out how to extract game data from an .exe installer GOG distributes. I guess AI would figure it out in like 3 minutes ;) I’ll check later.

You could try https://github.com/dscharrer/innoextract (installable via homebrew).

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#28

Post by giobox »

lastdong wrote: post #7

My favourite project to run these old games was Boxer (1). Based on dosbox, it creates a runnable self contained disk (app) for each game or set of games / software. It is pretty neat, but I am not sure if it has been maintained recently. 1 boxerapp.com

Boxer was wonderful in its day, I think it also became the basis of the official GOG Mac DOS game releases for a while too:

> https://www.gog.com/forum/general_archive/mac_dos_game_editi...

I've hoped for years someone would pickup the source and get it going again, it's essentially abandonware right now, no changes in nine years. The website is like a time machine back to the peak skeuomorphic mac app era. It still has the nicest UX of any of the DosBox variants I've tried. In this era of agentic rewrites, modernizing this app is probably the cheapest it has ever been too...

> http://boxerapp.com/

> https://github.com/alinebee/Boxer

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#29

Post by rigonkulous »

fragmede wrote: post #13
rigonkulous wrote: post #5

This is awesome, and I can't wait to have the time to set this up and install my GOG library .. but one thing has been bugging me for a long time about my GOG library, and that is: local multiplayer network gaming was awesome then. So .. is there going to be any chance of getting multiplayer networking setup for some of the GOG's? Has anyone accomplished this in the DOXBox-*'en .app'o-sphere yet?

Dosbox-X has network support via NE2000 drivers.

Ooh, that is really great to know - thank you! I will start with that first ..

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#30

Post by kbolino »

fwip wrote: post #24
rimunroe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Rosetta 2 was a purely software layer

Rosetta 2 is software, but there are design decisions made for the M-series chips that are specifically made to improve the ability of Rosetta to work in a performant way. The main one I'm aware of is the x86-TSO memory-ordering mode - most ARM chips don't support this, but the M-series have it so that Rosetta can toggle it on for x86 emulation. I'm not sure what the total cost of these are, but it's not zero.

There's another big one, 4K page support. The MMU can be told to set up a virtual address space with smaller, x86-compatible 4096-byte memory pages instead of the default 16384-byte pages.
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