Today's PC Games are much more than a danger to our youth. Beside turning society's future to sadistic madmen, kinky murderers and sex-crazed heretics, contemporary games try to bore the rest of us to death. Sad. But, that's is where philosophy can help us. The future is written in the poetry of the past, said one of the well-educated full-bearded brigade. Same thing goes with games. You can corrupt yourself and the neighborhood kids using older games, without getting bored. This time it will not be just another Dune 2 or Wolfenstein 3D clone. It will be something totally different and (usually) inspired. Problem is your average 2006 PC doesn't look like this:
Problem solved. Mr. Emulation Mostly, using his powerful C++ arsenal, came to the rescue of our gaming values and memories. Take a look at the following links:DOSbox: The ultimate way to enjoy Wing Commander and probably the best DOS emulator available. It's free too, but so is every other program on this (tiny) list. Unless of course it's shareware.
ScummVM: SCUMM. SCript Utility for Maniac Mansion. Also, something you'd rather wouldn't like as an adjective attributed to yourself. Also, the best way to run every old Lucasarts adventure and more (Beneath a Steel Sky, Simon the Sorcerer, Gobliiins ...). Extra simple interface, with added friendliness.
Sarien: Something like ScummVM, but for the early Sierra games, and definitely less polished.
WinFrotz: Something like Sarien (and apparently like ScummVM), but for the ancient Infocom text adventures.
VDMSound: An old soundcard (Adlib, Sounblaster etc) emulator. Or to put it in a fancier way: "a modular, extendable soundcard emulator".
CPUkiller: A shareware little program, that lets you slow down your PC. Seems strange, but does come in handy.
DodGE: It's a DOS game emulator. Again. A great one too.
Abandon Loader: In the words of the publisher: "Abandon Loader provides a front-end interface designed to maintain compatibility and simplify configuration of old DOS games on modern PC's".
Mind you, beside corrupting young people, you might want to try some of these tools on the free games included in this cute list. On the other hand, you could just take a look at a nice DOOM 3 mod, or help develop a Half Life 2 one.
Related Tags: Download, Downloads, Abandonware, Abandon, Emulator, Emulators, Free, Freeware, Dos, Sierra, Lucasarts, Infocom, Retro, Games, Game, Gaming, PC, Adventures, SCUMM, ScummVM, Entertainment, Weblog
There's an excellent (and free) DOSBox GUI called D-Fend(Dosbox Frontend) which greatly simplifies the DOSBox configuration process, and works natively with VDMSound.
ReplyDeleteHmm...Yes, indeed there is... Thanks a lot mate.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I come here I'm reminded about just how little I know. What a great way to learn though. Posted an answer to your Japanese question over my place. Thanks to you I'm probably not going to get that early night I promised myself, now let's see ah beneath a steel sky happy days on my Amiga.... damn look hitchhikers....Defender of the cro......
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you like what you read, and now hurry. Tea is served. So is the tequilla.
ReplyDeleteAnd what a great blog you have...
I didn't know that there were that many emulators for older games; this acutlally helps me with my research for my podcast on dos box emulation. Thanks Gnome for putting this together! (Blogged)
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ReplyDeleteI didn't know that there were that many emulators for older games; this acutlally helps me with my research for my podcast on dos box emulation. Thanks Gnome for putting this together! (Blogged) P.S I linked your blog on my blog: http://www.compuguy1088.be/
ReplyDeleteThanks compuguy... Linked back already...
ReplyDelete:)
Allow me to second the vote for DFend. DFend is awesome, and it just plain works.
ReplyDeleteSome more good reasons for emulation:
1) You can run the games in a window, which allows you to check email, IM, etc. DFend will instantly pause all games by hitting a key, whether the game supports pause or not.
2) Those crappy old DOS games can't crash your system. Advanced Civilization would run on my XP system, but it crashed if I alt-tabbed or anything else grabbed the focus. And it crashed HARD...usually took a hard reboot to recover. In DFend, I just close the window and it's fine. I've never had DFend bring down my system.
3) Many of those DOS games require you to check manuals or maps. Since you can run in a window, it's easy to have the PDF of the manual up, or look at a jpeg map.