DOS Games Compatibility Wiki

[DOSGuy]

Naturally most of the best adventure games ever were for DOS. I see a lot of threads on a lot of forums (including this forum: http://forums.adventuregamers.com/showthread.php?t=13) about getting old games to play on new computers. Responders may fill page after page with responses in an unstructured way, sometimes with conflicting information, rather than editing each other's responses into a single, coherent answer. I felt that there should be a central location for people using any operating system to pool and permanently record their knowledge of how to get DOS games running on modern computers, so I created a DOS Games Compatibility Wiki at http://wiki.classicdosgames.com/. For any given game, if anyone knows how to get it running, they can post their solution and let the rest of the world know.

The first thing you'll notice is the lack of a logo in the upper left corner of the wiki. That's because I have absolutely no artistic talent and haven't created one. If anyone would like to create a logo for me, that would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise I'll just create something ugly later.

[Kurufinwe]

I'm a bit dubious about the scope of your project. As far as I'm concerned, there are two categories of DOS games: those that can be run with ScummVM, and the others, which should be run under DOSBox. And that's all. Trying to run DOS games directly under Windows, with or without VDMSound is just asking for trouble.

Now, what are the problems people encounter running games under ScummVM and DOSBox? I've been reading these forums, and others, for years (and posting for a couple of months), and I've come to the conclusion that there are basically three situations.


The game requires a patch, either to run it or to pass some particular point. Of course, it would be nice to have patches for all adventure games in one place (with the actual files, not links to servers that may remove them at some point). But if some people are too lazy to google for a patch before starting a game (or at least when they encounter a problem), I doubt they'll take the time to go to your site either.

The player is not using DOSBox properly, because they're unwilling to spend the couple of hours it takes to learn how to use it. Well, what can you do about that? There's already the DOSBox readme, the DOSBox wiki and the DOSBox forums (with several useful guides). What more could anyone do? If some people are unwilling to look for information that already exists, or to take the time it takes to read and digest it, you won't be able to force it down their throats. (The same things could be said about ScummVM, although there are fewer problems with it, as it is easier to use.)

The game is a special case, with particular problems, either because it really tests the limits of DOSBox or because getting it to run under DOS was already tricky at the time. Now, that's interesting, and it would be nice to have a list of those games, with the solution to make them work. Most of the information is already available on the DOSBox forums, but, once again, it might be nice to have everything in one place, with only the things that do work. For instance, the various Sierra collections don't work well, because they're basically a very sloppy job --- and were already causing problems years ago under DOS. I wrote a small guide (http://forums.adventuregamers.com/showpost.php?p=174758) on getting them to work some time ago; maybe that's the sort of thing you're looking for.


So really, I think that the information your project can provide will be more useful if it is restricted to very specific problems for those (very few) games which are tricky to run under DOSBox, instead of being crowded with a hundred copies of what would basically be a beginner's guide to DOSBox --- something that has already been written. :)

[DOSGuy]

As far as DOSBox: For Apogee games in particular, people often compare what cycle counts they use to make the games play smoothly. Some of their later games have much higher system requirements than the default DOSBox settings can handle.

Personally, I noticed a tendency to automatically play games in DOSBox without trying them in Windows XP. I didn't realize that Crystal Caves and Secret Agent (also Apogee) don't play well in DOSBox but play perfectly in Windows XP, so I wanted to have a list of games that play perfectly without DOSBox.

I also realize that many people use Linux and Macs. I've been too lazy to install Linux, but I know that Linux is a good platform for running DOS games. I wanted Linux and Mac users to be able to share their experiences in getting the games to work.

Beyond DOSBox and ScummVM, there are other DOS emulators like Bochs, there are Sierra emulators, there is FreeDOS, there is Virtual PC and VMWare. There seemed to be an infinite number of ways to make DOS games play on an infinite number of platforms, and compiling a list like that is far beyond anything I could create by myself, so I decided to create a Wiki so that the whole world could fill in the blanks.

I realize that DOSBox and ScummVM will probably handle most adventure games, but I still wanted to make this community aware of it in case there happen to be any adventure games that are difficult to get working, or in case anyone here is also a fan of non-adventure games.

[Ninth]

Yeah, sometimes it's not worth using DosBox when games are working perfectly on XP or with VDMSound. Which happens a lot, at least to me. :)