I always used ScummVM, you should try it

Virtual Machine with VirtualBox with Dos on it

You can try Abandon Loader. Been awhile since I used it so not sure of the state of it now.

Why a pain in the ass? The only thing that's slightly complicated is mounting the drives.

There are guides online for setting up most of the more popular games in DOSbox, and really, for the most part it is far easier to get something to run well in dosbox than it ever was in native DOS.

There are different front-ends that offers a GUI for dosbox. You might want to look into one of those. I for one don't use one, so I can't give any recommendations, but you could always ask for some help on the dosbox forum.

VDMSound

DosBox alternative for Mac users

I knocked out a DOSbox setup and installed a demo of Madspace and was playing in about 10 minutes the other day.

buy stuff over at gog.com

have you tried any of the frontend for dosbox?

all good suggestions - I appreciate the input gonna give VirtualBox a try, from reading some of the manual it looks to be exactly what I'm wanting. So if it ends up a flop I'll try the others - it's all not a huge deal, in an ideal setup with proper square footage I would just have an old clunker at the ready, but that's not practical right now.

I highly recommend closing the thread then bookmarking it. You wouldn't want to be getting new replies like this.

Use boxer if you are on mac it works great :)

run windows 3.1 via dosbox and set up the autorun(that text config file.) Then just use it like a desktop to play dos games, that is what I do!

on a side note this also works for certain other games that don't work on new systems that run in windows 3.1 but not DOS such as sim tower.

you can edit the options file and tell it to use your current sound/video
secondly its not that hard to use, you can even just drag the game exe your trying to run ontop of the dosbox shortcut and it'll automatically run it

What are you trying to say? DOSBox is EASY! You kids these days don't know how it was back then. Bashiong around in config.sys and autoexec.bat just to get a few kB of free conventional memory more. Network play? Try a null modem cable connected to a serial port. Meh... I hate the present days. They don't make games (and gamers) like they used to :-P.

TresBox

vmware and dos setup files.

open up dosbox,pull the exe of the game you want to play inside the window,adjust cpu speed with shift f7 or 8,how is that pain in the rectum?

Stick with DosBox, but get a frontend like D-Fend to help with the configuration. And don't forget to hunt down a Gravis Ultrasound driver pack :)

an early 1990's pc would be the best thing with regular DOS or win95

If you have trouble using dosbox, just take the program you want to play and drag it on the dosbox icon... That way it will start without having to type everything out

Try going into the dosbox list of frontend (the one I'm hooked on is DOSshell), makes using it a lot easier. Between that & just setting up a folder in c:\games for dosbox stuff, it makes it a lot easier. Still might have audio/video issues with some games depending on how the game works but if it's just cutscenes that are an issue you might find it on youtube.