This is the first of a monthly series about older PC games that are not just great classic titles, but that hold up well enough to play today.  Whether you are a long time PC gamer or just someone with a PC or Mac who is just a little curious about all of these amazing classic PC games that you have heard a ton about but have never played, I hope I can convince you to give some of these old games a try.

For this first entry, I thought I would talk about:

Getting Ready to Play Old PC Games





This article does not go into the specifics of the exact steps necessary to get games running with DOSBox or ScummVM.  It is a primer to get those interested in the process pointed in the right direction.

Old PC games can be played a number of ways.  If you are a little DOS-curious and are planning on giving some of the games from the Golden Age of PC gaming a try, I recommend the following solutions:

An old PC running DOS or Windows 3.1/9x
If you have an old PC or can obtain one for little to no money down, this is a great way to get started.  Especially since there is a small chance that the machine will already have some games loaded onto it.  Be warned, though: 30 year old PCs can be quite temperamental and old parts can be hard to find/expensive.  Not to mention the fact that installing and running games used to be a whole lot  more complicated than it is today. This option is for the purest of purists.  By the way, Purest of Purists is the name of my James Taylor cover band.

DOSBox
http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1

DOSBox is a program available for free on just about any computer platform you can think of.  It is an x86 hardware/software emulator that will run many DOS programs but is mainly geared towards gaming.  DOSBox does not include any games, it is just the environment you will play them in.  This is the option you want to go with if you own the original game and want to play it on a modern machine without purchasing a digital copy on Steam or GOG.  If the original game is on 3.5 disks, you may also want to pick up a USB floppy drive to transfer the content to your floppy-less computer. 


Fair warning: If you aren't familiar with how to navigate a DOS environment, DOSbox can be a little confusing.  Type "intro" without quotes once DOSbox opens up and it will walk you through a lot of the basics.  Or you could give one of the many frontends  that are available right on dosbox.com a try.  I like D-Fend but, to be honest, I haven't tried tried many others.

ScummVM
http://scummvm.org/downloads/

SCUMM is a scripting language that was developed at LucasArts in 1987 to help with the development of Maniac Mansion (it stands for Script Management Utility for Maniac Mansion).  ScummVM is a collection of game engine recreations that makes it easy to play certain older PC games on any modern computer platform.  Instead of emulating the hardware and operating system like DOSbox, ScummVM acts like the part of the software that interpreted the scripting language that the original games used to describe the game world.  While originally intended only for games that originally used SCUMM, other game systems have been added to the software over time.  ScummVM is what you will use to play LucasArts SCUMM games such as Full Throttle, Monkey Island, and Day of the Tentacle as well as Sierra On-Line games such as King's Quest, Space Quest, and Police Quest.


GOG
http://www.gog.com/

Formerly Good Old Games, GOG has taken the MTV and AOL approach and shortened the name of the company to the acronym.  GOG (as well as the next option) is the absolute easiest way to play old PC games on your modern PC. Every game on GOG runs on Windows XP or later and select games run on Mac OSX 10.6.8 or later.  The library is enormous, the prices are great, there are tons of sales, and there is no DRM.  That's right, you buy it, you own it.  Download it as many times as you like and install it on as many machines as you like, no restrictions.  One of my personal favorite features is that most games include a bonus content page where you can obtain scans of the original manuals, items shipped with the original game like reference cards, and most have a link to a DRM free original soundtrack.  I really love GOG.

Just look at all that extra stuff...

Steam
Old faithful.  Steam is great for classic PC games too, but for different reasons.  If you are also a fan of modern PC games, this is where you are already shopping and having one place to go to find all of your PC games is nice.  However, Steam does allows you to add shortcuts for non-Steam applications so you can still have a list of all of your games in one place.   Steam sales are a little more frequent and the prices very close to those on GOG.  You typically don't get as much bonus content as you do with games purchased via GOG, though, and game is locked to your Steam account making it slightly more difficult to move your game around.  Many games are available on both GOG and Steam but not everything, so you will likely use both platforms.  Once you have a little experience with both, you can lean towards one or the other.   

There is one small thing about buying classic DOS based games that always gives me a chuckle.  Sometimes, when you buy a DOS based game on Steam, the game hasn't been re-programmed or tested for modern systems.  Sometimes when you buy a classic game on Steam the game is just a self contained DOSBox shell.  Check it out:


Are you ready to play?

There are plenty of great PC games from the past 20 years.  I have some personal favorites that I can't wait to fire up and play again.  Next month's Dust Off Your DOS Box entry will be about a game that is available on both Steam and GOG for under $6.  It is a point and click games filled with puzzles and FMV when FMV was still newfangled.

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