Some of the greatest games ever were made for DOS and have now been categorized as abandonware. Meaning they are made freely available. Including amazing classics like Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, Betrayal at Krondor and countless others.
Not only that, but these games can be played on any operating system by using DOSBox, which emulates an Intel x86 PC with all the necessary components for running old DOS games. This means that I can run almost all DOS game properly on Linux, OS X, or any version of Windows.
Many of the most common DOS games can be found at bestoldgames.net, but if you can’t find what you are looking for or you want to browse a huge selection, check out the-underdogs.info (very slow download speed though).
DOSBox takes a bit of setting up but there is a very nice wiki page at dosbox.com with details of how to configure things for Windows, and I found a very helpful blog page for Linux (links below).
Setting Up DOSBox
Windows
Linux
Also, the DOSBox Game Launcher looks like a promising program to help organize and simplify using DOSBox.
One final word. These games were made without the benefit of great graphics and computing power, which means they had to be fun and addicting. Download DOSBox and re-live what was likely the best era of computer gaming thus far.
Tags: Abandonware, bestoldgames, Betrayal at Krondor, Civilization, Classic Games, Computer Games, DOS, DOS Games, DOSBox, Heroes of Might and Magic, MSDOS, Old Games, The Underdogs
