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FlamingSpaceJunk
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Legal DOS Games

Sun Feb 25, 2018 8:47 pm

Anyone know of a legal place to get disk images of old DOS games? Not to be confused with downloading random disk images off the 'net. >_<

My Dad was talking about playing some old DOS games today, and I thought I would look around and see what I could setup for him on Linux. I've got DOSBox, but I need something to test it with.

Ebay is an option, but I'm not sure the diskettes won't get shredded the first time I try to read them.
 
bfg-9000
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Re: Legal DOS Games

Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:01 pm

I suppose curated archive collections of orphan works could be considered as not random?

http://www.abandonwaredos.com/

https://www.myabandonware.com/

I should point out the Internet Archive has a large collection of nearly 4,000 DOS games as well, and they suggest DOSBox in Wine

https://archive.org/details/classicpcgames&tab=about

They also have a DOS software library for use directly in a browser DOS emulator: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos
 
FireGryphon
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Re: Legal DOS Games

Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:53 pm

GOG.com is a great place to find old DOS games. No fancy emulation tricks needed, but you'll have to pay a few dollars per game.
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GrimDanfango
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Re: Legal DOS Games

Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:56 pm

FireGryphon wrote:
GOG.com is a great place to find old DOS games. No fancy emulation tricks needed, but you'll have to pay a few dollars per game.

Well, there are fancy emulation tricks... GOG just pre-configure and package self-contained DOSBox setups with most old DOS games, so you don't need to set it up yourself.
 
FireGryphon
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Re: Legal DOS Games

Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:58 pm

GrimDanfango wrote:
FireGryphon wrote:
GOG.com is a great place to find old DOS games. No fancy emulation tricks needed, but you'll have to pay a few dollars per game.

Well, there are fancy emulation tricks... GOG just pre-configure and package self-contained DOSBox setups with most old DOS games, so you don't need to set it up yourself.


Right, that's what I meant, of course.

A good place to start: https://www.gog.com/mix/linux_native_source_ports
and https://www.gog.com/mix/great_gog_games ... s_on_linux
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xgsound
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Re: Legal DOS Games

Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:19 pm

Don't forget to check out https://www.scummvm.org/ for software to run many old Lucas Arts and Sierra games on current hardware.
 
bthylafh
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Re: Legal DOS Games

Sun Feb 25, 2018 11:27 pm

DBGL is a nice Java-based front end to DOSBox; further down, its page also has links to download freed and shareware game packs, including Daggerfall, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, etc.

http://members.quicknet.nl/blankendaalr/dbgl/

Download the game pack zipfiles and import the zips directly into DBGL. Don't unzip them yourself or it won't work.
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Aranarth
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Re: Legal DOS Games

Mon Feb 26, 2018 11:56 am

Doesn't the internet archive have dos games you can play in a browser?
I don't have the exact URL on hand but I'm sure a little bit of googling will find it.
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FlamingSpaceJunk
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Re: Legal DOS Games

Mon Feb 26, 2018 7:48 pm

bfg-9000 wrote:
I suppose curated archive collections of orphan works could be considered as not random?


As long as the mods allow it, it counts. ;) Just trying to keep this thread within the ToS. It's a fuzzy area, but one that could come into focus very quickly if someone deems it worth the attention.

I'll check those out.

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