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7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

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Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#61
Oh hell, I can run StarFlight (warning you must select EGA)? I haven't had a computer that could do that in years and I still have the original disks and more.

Being a young adult in the 80s and 90s was so magical for all the games that appeared. While seeing some again strips away the illusion I maintained of some of them looking and being better than they were the experience to revisit them again is well worth any slight correction to my memories

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#62

Woot! Sid Meier's Colonization is there. Hands down one of the best games of all time. Wing Commander II collection, but no Privateer? That game is why Star Citizen even exists.

I raise you HoMM3

Heores of Might and Magic 3 was a windows release, the last game in the series playable on DOS was HoMM2.

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#65

Woot! Sid Meier's Colonization is there. Hands down one of the best games of all time. Wing Commander II collection, but no Privateer? That game is why Star Citizen even exists.

Privateer was very tricky to run because it barely fit in 640k, and took a special config. I wonder if that makes it hard to emulate. It was the best of the wing commander series by far.

In my limited experience, it has been easier to get a good bunch of conventional memory available in DOSBox (and out of the box -- no pun intended) than it was in MS-DOS.

A freshly "booted" session seems to show 632k free right now. I can't remember ever getting that much free on MS-DOS, although my configs probably included cd-rom drivers and whatnot.

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#67
post #46
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree wholeheartedly, I recently came across a piece of graph paper in an old box with the systems and price histories for trading. The Righteous Fire add-on storyline was probably the best. I wrote my own AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS menu to select the right config and sometimes run a different .BAT file again. Still have a version of it and pulled it up for nostalgia: Colonization, Warcraft, Doom2 (single and network mo…

I did the same! Honestly don't remember how I figured all that stuff out without internet and stack overflow. Also, my friends would call me and ask for the secret code to start Doom. I'd begin: "cd doom2"....

I can't quite remember how those things were figured out either, but I think it was probably partially word of mouth. Games also had tips for memory configuration in their readme files or manuals. There was also at least one book I had at home that my father had bought that had all kinds of details on the workings of DOS (and PCs of that era in general).

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#68
post #41

This is really really nice, but I see some liabilities waiting to blow up here... How's Nintendo going to react to "Super Mario World DX" (an indie "cover" of SMW) for example?

They did not react well the first time they saw it. This project has been around for awhile. So maybe they just have not seen it yet? If I remember correctly that game was the one that morphed into giana sisters? Which is a cool game in its own right. The remake from a few years ago is decent.

Have to mess with this emu later. eXeDOS the project this thing is based on uses 6 different dosbox branches to get its compat with all the games working. This seems to be using 1? Which gets you most of them but about 200 or so will act oddly.

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#69
It's so easy these days to play old DOS games, it's great. Not just because of The Internet Archive's fantastic work in recent years with getting these onto their website, but also the work put in by the Dosbox and ScummVM people.

These old games are more accessible now than they were back in the day, when you had to configure your AUTOEXEC.BAT, get all your IRQs in order and make sure you have enough memory and whatnot.

The accessibility and availability of this stuff is one of the reasons why we started DOS Game Club a few years ago over on https://dosgameclub.com - it's like a book club, but instead of books we focus on a different DOS game every month and discuss it on our forums as we're playing them. At the end of the month we invite some members for a chat and publish it as a podcast.

Turns out there are loads of people interested in playing these old games, some of them quite young too! And with how many games are available all over the place, it looks like we'll have plenty of material to keep us busy for many years to come.

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#70
post #21

Woot! Sid Meier's Colonization is there. Hands down one of the best games of all time. Wing Commander II collection, but no Privateer? That game is why Star Citizen even exists.

Agreed! Love Colonization. Wish there was a remake. First game I thought of when seeing this list. Privateer was amazing too.

There is a link between these games that means a faithful update isn't possible. Both involve slavery. In both, the player can actively trade human lives, including the capture of slaves. Even in Colonization, where such depiction may be historically accurate, it is just too sensitive an area.
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