DOS is dead, but the games aren't!

Since I've been a gamer for long time, I got involved with computer games eons ago way back in my Commodore 64 days. I also still have fond memories of some of the old DOS games I used to play. In fact, I still have some of my old DOS games. They've been kept more for sentimental reasons than anything else. But hey, if ya got 'em, play 'em!

I'm still cruising with XP on my rig, so some games will run ok just by tweaking with the compatibility mode settings for the exe and using the setting for Windows 95. But not all DOS apps cooperate with compatibility mode. In these cases, you need something to provide an encapsulated DOS mode to keep the old boy happy. Two applications are big helpers for this:

• DosBox - Available at www.dosbox.com, it provides a DOS emulation container that lets you run many DOS games. It provides a windowed command prompt, but also can provide a point-and-click launch environment when combined with:
• DOSShell - a DOS application launch front-end for DosBox. It can be downloaded from Loonies software at http://www.loonies.narod.ru/dosshell.htm
• A full collection of utilities for getting the most out of a DOS game in Windows can be found at the Abandonia website at http://www.abandonia.com/en/node/23027

One of my favorite DOS applications that would stubbornly resist attempts to run on WinXP was called Pinball Illusions (a review can be found here). It was a collection of great standalone pinball games. It included themed audio tracks, which were some of the best I've encountered. Especially cool was the background music for the Viking pinball machine.

Check out this You-Tube video of the Party Land pinball machine...

Over the upcoming holiday break, I plan on messing around with the above tools to see if I can resurrect Pinball Fantasies and get it to run on my current machine. It would be a nice (and free) Christmas present to give myself.....