I saw a post about someone in my neighborhood looking for a windows 98 machine to play some old games and DOS games.

I messaged them (because I’m always up for helping people enjoy old games) and said I have a spare PC, that can run emulation and will likely be better for them to play their old games on (and a lot cheaper than the scalper prices on old machines now).

I planned to use either Mint/PopOS, and set it up so the computer will start DOSbox-x right away, to make it easy as possible for this person (I think they are not super computer literate but probably know how to navigate DOS and basic point and click instructions)

My question is, should I set it up with dosbox, or a virtual machine running Win98?

Any other tips welcome :)

Also, most of the games they want to play are FPS, like Doom, Duke Nukem, Redneck rampage, blood, and also some games like NFL challenge (DOS)

  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    IMO there’s no point in using real hardware to play old DOS games unless you want something really niche or picky, like using a specific sound card with particular MIDI voices.

    • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      That was kind of my thought. I think they just want a little better experience than playing it out of a web browser. So something that basically boots into dosbox should give them that. Its mostly a nostalgia thing.

      I know I rarely play my atari games on an emulator, its boring. I much prefer my real system.

  • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4·
    6 days ago

    One thing to be aware of when emulating Dos era games: in most emulated environments, a game that crashes often means something is wrong with the emulation environment.

    But DOS was… Special.

    There are many brilliant techniques that result in strong compatibility with diverse code - that only gained popularity well after the DOS era of gaming.

    It was very common back then to buy DOS software and never manage to get it to run on my own hardware, while it ran perfectly on my friend’s computer.

    It’s part of why Shareware was crucial to software sales. If I tried to free version and it actually ran, I could confidently buy the rest of the game.

    Anyway, all that to say, DOS emulation is not for the faint of heart. An accurately emulated environment can still be very unstable, depending on the game.

  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    6 days ago

    Emulation is generally not very good for newer DOS games, primarily because DOSBox is really bad with anything 3D. Its emulation of 3dfx cards might as well be non-existent.

    In this case, it actually would be better for them to play on genuine hardware.

      • xyzzy@lemmy.todayEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        Yeah. You can use Dosbox for most things, and Wine will handle some things, but if you want to play Windows titles and emulate specific configurations and 3D cards, etc., you should look into one of these.

      • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        Quake and Doom are early enough to be okay. But for later games, like Elder Scrolls Adventures Redguard, DOSBox has a lot of problems with those titles.

      • Redkey@programming.devEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        I think that when RHoI wrote “3D”, they meant “hardware accelerated 3D”. Many early 3D DOS games either did their 3D entirely in software, or included hardware acceleration support as a kind of optional bonus. Software 3D shouldn’t give DOSBox much more trouble than most 2D games. The original release of Quake didn’t even have any accelerator support; it was patched in later.

  • NastyNative@mander.xyzEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    Just dosbox and show him how to use it or make a .bat he can run. Over the years I have created a VGA folder full of my fav VGA games. One of my fav is “the incredible machine”!

    The other big game changer is a 4:3 monitor it does not stretch the picture and the art looks like it should

    • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      I did think of this i just dont like that you have to also dual boot with mint to do any sort of file browsing or save roms. Batocera only does the front end, nothing else (to my knowledge)

      • whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Yeah that’s true, if you want to expose the file system to them to add/remove ROMs it’s probably not the right option without a dual boot or USB stick with another distro on it.

  • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.comEnglish
    31·
    6 days ago

    Those FPS games you list all have very good source ports like eDuke32, and Chocolate Doom, so they are best played on a modern computer