How to play classic MS-DOS games on Windows 11 with DOSBox

We all love old games. It’s a nostalgia thing from when we played those games on our 286 (or older, like an MSX) computer, either using floppy disks or cassettes / cartridge. When we were young. There is nothing much sysadmin about this, it’s all about FUN! You all remember Airborne Ranger, Operation Wolf, Blues Brothers, Gunboat and The Lost Vikings, right?

Let’s play those old games again! 🙂 Here is how to play old games on Windows or Linux using DOSBox. Classic games that are worth your time, all for the fun!

Recently I discovered myabandonware.com. My Abandonware is a website hosting thousands of old video games from 1980 to 2010. I found computers games I played years, years and years, ago…

However, old games on a modern computer can be a “bit” 😉 of a problem. Some of you might remember running Airborne Ranger on a 486 or Pentium computer, and the game played waaay too fast…. Not to mention 16 bit back then, versus 64 bit Windows or Linux nowadays.

And that’s were DOSBox comes in. DOSBox is an open source DOS emulator for BeOS, Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2, and Windows. Primarily focuses on running DOS Games.

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DOSBox Staging

Development of DOSBox (an x86 emulator with DOS) has been slow for several years. That’s why others created “DOSBox Staging“.

DOSBox Staging is a modern continuation of DOSBox – your existing configurations will continue to work, and you will have access to many advanced features.

They describe DOSBox Staging as a (mostly) drop-in replacement for older DOSBox versions – your existing configurations will continue to work, but you will have access to many advanced features.

If you’re using DOSBox Staging, you can often leave the output setting on auto or opengl – it handles the “alt-tab” and multi-monitor setups much more gracefully than the original version, preventing that annoying “resolution snap” when you switch windows.

After downloading, the installation is pretty straightforward. You may have to unblock the downloaded file first. All you need to run and play these old games on your modern day x64 Windows 11/10 computer is:

• DOSBox or DOSBox Staging
• Some old games, download from My Abandonware, or buy from GOG.com
• Time: probably a day or two, let’s say the whole weekend, because it’s fun!
• Any of these games: Airborne Ranger, Carmageddon, Operation Wolf, Wolfenstein 3D, Blues Brothers, Gunboat, The Lost Vikings, Prince of Persia
  • see the downloads at the end of this post 🙂

I’m not providing a full installation guide here, it’s too straightforward for that. Install and run DOSBox is all you have to do, along with setting up a proper directory structure in your C: root of course. I chose c:\oldgames\.

This DOSBox setup guide provides a clear visual walkthrough for mounting directories and installing classic games

One thing I’d like to mention is: DOSBox 0.74 gave me some headaches at first. It just sat there without producing any screen output. I changed the shortcut properties to run it under Windows XP Service Pack 3 Compatibility mode. This, however, should not be necessary anymore.

If you wonder how an app from 1990 runs on 64-bit Windows. The following diagram explains the “container” aspect of DOSBox:

graph TD
    subgraph Host [Windows 11 / 10 x64]
        A[Windows Kernel]
        B[DOSBox Application]
    end

    subgraph Emulation [DOSBox Virtual Environment]
        C[Virtual CPU 8086/286/386]
        D[Virtual SoundBlaster / AdLib]
        E[MS-DOS 5.0/6.22 Interface]
        F[Your Game.exe]
    end

    B --> C
    B --> D
    B --> E
    E --> F

Games in full screen

To play in full screen mode in DOSBox / DOSBox Staging you have to press ctrl + F10 (lock mouse to DOSBox) and then alt + Enter.

Tuning the emulated CPU, when games run “too fast”

Legacy 8-bit or 16-bit MS-DOS games are highly sensitive to CPU clock speeds, as they were often programmed to run based on the hardware’s internal cycles. On modern Windows machines, this results in games running at “warp speed,” making them impossible to play. You can manually throttle the emulation using Ctrl+F11 to slow things down or Ctrl+F12 to speed them up until the game feels natural.

For a more permanent fix, edit your dosbox.conf file to set specific cycle counts for different eras. Use cycles=fixed 3000 for original IBM PC/XT titles, or cycles=auto for later 486 and Pentium-era games that require more overhead. Finding that “sweet spot” ensures the game logic and music tempo match exactly how they were meant to be experienced in the 90s.

If your mouse cursor feels “jumpy” or disappears in full-screen mode, try changing the output setting in your config file from surface to overlay or opengl.

Classic game setup guides

In the following sections I show you how to set up different games in DOSBox / DOSBox Staging.

Play The Blues Brothers

The Blues Brothers is one of those old platform games I played a lot. It is based on the band The Blues Brothers, and you have to evade police and other vigilantes to get to a blues concert. Picking up boxes and garbage bins and throw them to enemies was fun.

Let’s play Blues Brothers again, here are the screenshots of running Blues Brothers. You can follow them as a step-by-step guide:

Mount your old games directory: mount c c:\oldgames

Use the mount command in your dosbox.conf to automatically map your games folder on startup. It saves you from typing the same mount path every time you want to play.

Enter the mounted oldgames directory (c:) and list its contents: dir

Enter the Blues Brothers directory and list its contents: cd blues, list all executable files: dir *.exe (run 1.exe to start the game).

Tell me, what is your top 5 old games to play? Settlers 5 – Herritage of Kings is one of them for me, as is Command & Conquer.

Command & Conquer on Linux

Here is how to play Command & Conquer on Ubuntu 16.4 LTS, or any other Linux flavor. First you need to install DOSBox:

apt-get install dosbox

Hereinafter, you obviously need the CD-ROM. No worries, you download these from The Internet Archive for free! Here you find the original Command & Conquer by Virgin ISOs:

• https://archive.org/details/Command_And_Conquer_1995_Virgin (unfortunately no longer available).

Create a folder for your games, for instance:

mkdir -p ~/dos/c

I have my game ISO’s somewhere else:

mkdir -p ~/iso/games

Start DOSBox Emulator, mount your games folder as c:

mount c /home/jan/dos/c

Mount your downloaded C&C ISO (either one):

imgmount d /home/jan/iso/games/cenc1.iso -t iso

Run the C&C installer:

d:
setup.exe

Change dir to where you’ve installed Command & Conquer, and start the game:

c:
cd c&c
c&c.exe

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Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty

To start and play a game like Dune II, you have to start DOSBox (Staging) first and mount your games folder. As explained earlier in this post. In a nutshell you type

mount c: c:\oldgames

Replace c:\oldgames with the location of your old games archive.

Keep in mind you have to replace c:\oldgames with your own location, or it won’t work. All commands end with pressing the ENTER key.

Typing in c: takes you to your mounted c: drive and folder. Type in dir to get a listing of folders and files.

I want to play Dune II, so I type cd dune2 followed by an ENTER, to enter the directory (folder). To find out which file I need to execute to start the game, I type dir.

By experience 😉 , I know I need dune2.exe, so I type that and press ENTER. The game starts! 🙂

Choose Play a Game, and ofcourse you choose House of Harkonnen, right?! 🙂

When he’s finally done with his story (…), the level starts and you build your base.

This showed you how to start and play Dune 2, in either DOSBox or DOSBox Staging. Fun game, hè?

Or did you want to play Paperboy 2?

Play Paperboy 2 in Windows DOSBox

I bet you have played Papberboy 2 in an arcade hall at least once. So bring back that joy to your PC!

Paperboy 2 was one of those games I loved to play on my, very, old 286 computer. Or even before that, I can’t really remember lol 🙂 . Here is how to play it in Windows using DOSBox (Staging).

1. mount c: to c:\oldgames: mount c: c:\oldgames
2. c:
3. cd paper2
4. dir
5. run / execute game.exe

California Games – short on memory

If you have California Games and try to run it using calgames.exe, you may receive the following error message:

YOU NEED MORE MEMORY TO RUN CALIFORNIA GAMES!

You are 199K RAM short of having enough memory.
You need to buy more memory or remove
any memory resident programs, Dude.

Start California Games using DOS’ loadfix. LOADFIX is a program to reduce the amount of available conventional memory. It’s useful for old programs which don’t expect much memory to be free. Loadfix is an internal DOS command and ensures that a program is loaded above the first 64K of conventional memory, and runs the program.

loadfix calgames.exe

Where to download old games for Windows and MS-DOS

As said, you download a lot of games from myabandonware.com. Another great resource is DOSGames.com. For fun, I’ve made some old computer games available for download here. You can download them right from this site.

• Airborne Ranger (286 kB)
• Operation Wolf (600 kB)
• Wolfenstein 3D (1,1 MB)
• Gunboat (Gunboat: River Combat Simulation) (485 kB)
• The Lost Vikings (1,2 MB)
• Prince of Persia (350 kB)
• Titus the Fox (660 kB)
• Settlers 5 Heritage of Kings op Windows 10 spelen? (post on ITFAQ.nl)
• Serfcity – Life is feudal (het eerste deel van The Settlers – 1,3 MB)

Bonus: MS DOS Editor edit.com

You can relive the full 90s sysadmin experience by using the MS-DOS Editor (edit.com) directly within DOSBox to manage your startup menu. While it is tempting to use a modern text editor on your host machine, using the classic blue-and-white interface of edit.com to tweak your [autoexec] logic is a great way to test your errorlevel commands without ever leaving the emulated environment. It’s the perfect tool for perfecting those menu alignments and ensuring your retro workstation feels authentic from the moment it boots.

The tool we all used to edit autoexec.bat, create start-up menus, and so on. Want to run the old edit.com editor in DOSBOX? Download the zip file from the Internet Archive and drop it somewhere DOSBox can access it.

• Microsoft MS DOS Editor

Javascript implementation for in-browser gaming

The Internet Archive put 2386 MS-DOS games online, which you can play… in your browser! Yes, that’s right, they’ve created a javascript implementation of DOSBox, to let you play old games in your browser. Cool he! Classics like Doom, Budokan, Prince of Persia, Lemmings, Wolfenstein and Leisure Suit Larry are in the archive available.

In total, over 2300 games are in the MS-DOS archive. Go check it out!

Retro-style startup menus: automating DOSBox Staging

Automate your game launches: a DOSBox startup menu.

To give your startup menu that authentic 1990s BBS or “Norton Utilities” look, you can use Extended ASCII box-drawing characters (like Alt+201 for ╔ and Alt+187 for ╗) in your echo commands. It’s a small detail that makes your DOSBox environment feel like a professional, period-accurate workstation.

To make your DOSBox experience seamless, you can turn your configuration file into a bootable game menu. By editing the [autoexec] section at the bottom of your dosbox-staging.conf, you can use the CHOICE command to create a numbered list. This allows you to launch your favorite titles like Aladdin or Prince of Persia with a single keystroke, rather than navigating directories manually every time.

The dosbox-staging.conf file is located in AppData\Local\DOSBox, you may find my [autoexec] section here:

[autoexec]
# Each line in this section is executed at startup as a DOS command.
# Make sure c:\games exists, or change the location below.
mount c: c:\games
c:

@echo off
cls
:start
cls
cd \
echo.
echo ╔════════════════════════════════════════════╗
echo ║          SAOTN RETRO GAME MENU             ║
echo ╠════════════════════════════════════════════╣
echo ║ 1. Aladdin                                 ║
echo ║ 2. Blues Brothers 1                        ║
echo ║ 3. Blues Brothers 2                        ║
echo ║ 4. Pac Man                                 ║
echo ║ 5. Prince of Persia                        ║
echo ║ 6. Titus the Fox                           ║
echo ║ 7. A10 Tank killer                         ║
echo ║ 8. Raiden                                  ║ 
echo ║ 9. Exit to DOS                             ║
echo ╚════════════════════════════════════════════╝
echo.
echo =============
CHOICE /c123456789 /N CHOOSE

if errorlevel 9 goto dos
if errorlevel 8 goto startraiden
if errorlevel 7 goto starta10tankkiller
if errorlevel 6 goto starttitus
if errorlevel 5 goto startprince
if errorlevel 4 goto startpacman
if errorlevel 3 goto startblues2
if errorlevel 2 goto startblues1
if errorlevel 1 goto startaladdin

:startraiden
cd raiden
raiden.exe
cls
goto start

:starta10tankkiller
cd A10
A10.com
cls
goto start

:starttitus
cd titus
ffc.com
cls
goto start

:startprince
cd prince
prince.exe
cls
goto start

:startpacman
cd pacman
pacpc2.exe
cls
goto start

:startblues2
cd blues2
blues.exe
cls
goto start

:startblues1
cd blues1
runme.exe
cls
goto start

:startaladdin
cd aladdin
aladdin.exe
cls
goto start

:dos
cls

You must have noticed the /N switch for CHOICE. It hides the default [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]? prompt so the custom CHOOSE text looks cleaner. Using the CHOICE command is the ‘clean’ way to build menus in DOS. Unlike SET /P (which requires the you to press Enter), CHOICE reacts the instant a key is pressed, making your game menu feel like a professional, built-in interface.

Remember the destination folder in the mount command must exist. Change it to where you have your games located.

Quick reference for creating this startup menu with ASCII Art:

• ╔ (ALT 201) and ╗ (ALT 187): Top corners.
• ╚ (ALT 200) and ╝ (ALT 188): Bottom corners.
• ═ (ALT 205): Horizontal double-line.
• ║ (ALT 186): Vertical double-line.

When editing your dosbox-staging.conf in a editor like VS Code or Notepad++, ensure the file is saved with CP437 (OEM United States) or UTF-8 encoding, otherwise, those special ALT characters might show up as weird symbols or question marks inside DOSBox.

Conclusion

Playing old games guarantees hours of fun. So enjoy! If anything is unclear, let me know, and I’ll update this post later. Do you have kids in the age range 6 – 10 years old? Show them these games, they will LOVE it, and it teaches them about keyboard and mouse usage and eye-hand coordination.

Read why we can use your help and support ❤️

Done playing Commander Keen? If you’re ready to jump back into the 21st century and secure your modern workstation, check out my guide on using YubiKey for OpenSSH on Windows 11. Because if you think managing IRQ interrupts was tough, try defending against modern credential theft!

Enjoy!