Classic Windows gaming on Mac.

About a year ago I came across DOSBox, a cross-platform DOS emulator. I occasionally fired it up to play some Commander Keen or One Must Fall and relive my childhood, but I was always disappointed that I couldn’t play early Windows games too. (I have a PowerPC chip, so Boot Camp is out, and I’m not about to buy Parallels just for nostalgia’s sake.)

A few days ago it occurred to me that Windows 3.1 ran on top of MS-DOS as a shell, so there wasn’t any reason it shouldn’t run on top of DOSBox too. I did some searching and found an old copy of Windows, and lo and behold, it worked.

That success led me to scour the Internet for the games of my halcyon youth. Some, like SkiFree and Castle of the Winds, have been released freely into the wild by their authors. (I missed Castle of the Winds so much that I asked MetaFilter for replacements.) Many more are available on abandonware sites such as Home of the Underdogs and, as always, through Google on sites of dubious legality.

UPDATE: Joe recommends I go after Space Quest or King’s Quest next. Good choices! King’s Quest VI was another childhood favorite. Other games I’ve downloaded so far: BioMenace, The Adventures of Willy Beamish, Crystal Caves, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Doom, Duke Nukem, Hugo’s House of Horrors, Betrayal at Krondor, Lord of the Rings (the 1991 RPG by Interplay), Mario is Missing, One Must Fall 2097, Raptor, Railroad Tycoon, Skunny, The Incredible Machine, Wacky Wheels, Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure. As you can see, I spent a good number of my formative years in front of a computer screen.