Essential links for the Classic Computer Gaming fan.

[Kuros]

There is always a need for some good linkage for the person who missed out on a lot of the classics, or the person who just forgot about them.

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net

DOSBox, for the most part necessary to play many of the older DOS games on XP. Pretty easy to use and pretty easy to setup. I love being able to play the classic games such as Commander Keen and the Might and Magic games on my XP system.

http://www.the-underdogs.info/

The Underdogs, pretty much the best site for finding lots of good older games and where to find them.

http://www.castleofthewinds.cjb.net/

A freebie from me to you. The two part Castle of the Winds series. A fun RPG to play when you wanna play something that's easy to play and easy to hop on and off of. It's freeware now so get both parts and play.

[roushimsx]

VDMSound (http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=2071) - Soundblaster emulator for Win2k/XP. Also has basic VESA support.

SolVBE (http://sol.gfxile.net/solvbe.html) - Universal VESA 1.2 driver for WindowsXP. Designed from the ground up with the sole intention of getting Terra Nova working properly in WinXP...everything else was just a nice side effect :)

Zeckensack's Glide Wrapper (http://www.zeckensack.de/glide/) - Enables glide support for a wide range of games (such as Carmageddon 2, Independence War, Incubation, and more)

dgVoodoo (http://dege.freeweb.hu/) - Another glide wrapper, only this one supports Glide 2.11 as well. Who cares? Just about everyone that has a copy of 3dfx Mechwarrior 2 and wants to play it :)

DOS32a (http://dos32a.narechk.net/index_en.html) - a replacemenet for DOS4GW that's both a hell of a lot smaller and a hell of a lot faster. Compatibility isn't perfect (for instance, Shadow Caster doesn't work with it), but it does wonders for giving a speed boost with most titles within DOSbox. Also, sometimes it can be used to make games playable in WinXP that otherwise would not work. Score!

[cyberfluxor]

Like emulation on the computer for consule games, I prefer to play the games on my official DOSbawx. :P That is a pretty good game list they have there though, would be nice if they had links to where you can get some of the abandonware. I guess they just want to strickly let you know what runs and what have you.

[Kuros]

Like emulation on the computer for consule games, I prefer to play the games on my official DOSbawx. :P That is a pretty good game list they have there though, would be nice if they had links to where you can get some of the abandonware. I guess they just want to strickly let you know what runs and what have you.

Yep, they don't provide any of the software at all. But that's fine, the games are pretty easy to find if you know where to look.

[roushimsx]

That is a pretty good game list they have there though, would be nice if they had links to where you can get some of the abandonware.

Considering any links to anything calling itself "abandonware" would be illegal, I can understand why they don't do it. It would be neat for the Shareware/Freeware/Public Domain stuff to be linked, though.

Really, anything can be found via either eBay, Google, Amazon, or just asking a friend. I go out of my way to provide full on cd images for people when they mention anything about getting a "cd rip" from The Underdogs (tangent: it's always pissed me off that they preach on and on about preservation of underdog classics and yet they have ripped down ghetto mid-90s warez releases complete with the original NFOs instead of proper cd images for a lot of games).

9 times out of 10 that means I'm sending someone a bin/cue of Snatcher and telling them to quit fucking around with Gens and use Kega Fusion, but sometimes I get to do something fun like put these Realms of the Haunting or Terra Nova discs to good use (fucking awesome games, btw!) :)

Also, I'll take DOSbox over a real DOS machine any day of the week. Never having to reboot, ability to grab screenshots (in any resolution I want), ability to run games from multiple eras at their proper speeds without any hacky slowdown utilities (that rarely worked just right), plus support for a wide range of hardware ensuring that I'll always be able to get the best audio/visual possible (MT-32 emulation, glide emulation, etc) without having to have any exotic hardware (other than a nice PC :)). DOSbox is actually one of the leading reasons behind my impending upgrade.

...but yea, if there's any old PC games you're looking for and you're having trouble, let me know and I'll help. :)