Category — Games

Dr. Sheldon Cooper, GOG.com, and Kickstarter inspired me to consolidate my old games onto a 20GB Windows XP virtual machine at home for the semi-weekly pleasure of enjoying “Vintage Game Night.”  I’m not sure what Sheldon used to play older games, and despite still owning an IBM x286 and a Dell x386, both running MS-DOS 5 and 6, I went the more practical route.  To start, DOSBox (a x86 DOS emulator) allows many older games to play easily on newer machines.  I choose Windows XP just to avoid any complications with 32-bit vs 64-bit, the need for 256 colors, and Windows 7 in general is still too new to be sure.  I loaded up what I have in my apartment from Sierra Online (how I miss you) and was playing King’s Quest in fewer than 5 minutes.  Just install DOSBox, launch it, and mount your logical drive – easy.

GOG.com has several classics available for under $10 so I was able to fill in the gaps to my own collection.  They also use DOSBox bundled with the software that mounts your drive automatically, so its pretty seamless – just click and play.  Its been years since I played Zork and I never played the Wing Commander series so those are great additions to buy when I’m ready.  I did lay down the cash for the entire Tex Murphy series when I saw it – such a great series that was ahead of its time.  The cool thing about GOG.com is the lack of DRM and the TLC they give these games – maps, manuals, and even wallpapers, where applicable, are itemized in the download section of each game available – sure beats playing $10 for a game on eBay that is likely scratched and missing those needed accessories.

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