Even More DOS Games with DOSBox

After reading my DOSEMU post from 8/26, gnomie Andrew Rodland dropped me a line to tell me about DOSBox, another x86 emulator with DOS support. Andrew says it does a better job with DOS games, so I dropped on by their SourceForge page to check things out.

All I have to say is WOW. According to their database, version 0.61 of DOSBox supports over 767 games. Even more games on older versions are supported, and still more are playable (I presume “supported” means they actively work/ed on the game — their FAQ doesn’t explain the difference). A full, browse/searchable list of games is included, along with the game’s status and the version of DOSBox it runs on. I browsed the titles for a bit and saw several I had never heard of, but all my favorites are listed as supported or at least playable, such as the old Sierra Quest games and an early violent game called Harvester. It’ll even run Zork Zero, which I have but never got around to playing. Very impressive.

A GUI for DOSBox on Linux was released last month, and there’s a Mac version for your OS X-loving friends available as well. They’ve got a wiki for support and documentation, and so far the latest version has been downloaded over half a million times. With that kind of demand, they’ve got to be doing something right!