I titled this post as such to help those other searchers out there who will have trouble finding an answer to that question…
There are old gamers out there – like me. All these new games have their fancy graphics, 7.1 sound tracks, online play, and so on, and are impressive in many ways. But sometimes, for nostalgic purposes, and because I think the actual depth and stories are better, I like to play old stuff. Specifically, games like Zork, Tex Murphy, King’s Quest, and other DOS classics.
I have Vista 64. With the release of Vista 64, Microsoft discontinued any native legacy support for 16-bit programs (essesntially, old MS-DOS programs). There really is no way within Windows Vista 64 to configure those files to play, at least that I could find. However, there is a very good free, developer/community supported emulator called DosBox. So, for those of you like me that have some quality DOS games, here’s what you need to know:
- Download DosBox
- Install DosBox
- At the “Z:>” prompt type mount c c:\directory\, where “directory” is the location on your hard drive where your DOS games are located
- Type C: and press [Enter]
- Type in the name of the executable file to run your program
That’s it! Now, you’ll have to “mount” each time you run DosBox, but at least you can run your games in all of their former DOS glory. (I can’t guarantee that it will be that easy for you, but I had no problems following the DosBox directions to get things working. Also, I couldn’t even get some of my old DOS games to install from CD, so I just copied the files directly into my DOS games directory, and I was still able to run them from there. Good luck!)
On a sort-of related note, we’ve been continuing the Family Game Night thing. In the past few weeks we’ve played Big Payday, Mystery Mansion, and Trivial Pursuit – 1980′s edition. I’m thinking of having a “Zork” night pretty soon… “You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.” Classic stuff!