Happy Thanksgiving from Koopatech! May your Turkey day be filled with good food and good video games.

How to play old PC games on a modern computer and retro gaming PCs

 

The PC has a huge library of games dating back to the early 1980s. It can be difficult to get those games running on a modern PC. There are several platforms where you can find old games for sale to download. The website GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) was launched in 2008. This website sells downloadable versions of old games designed to run on modern PCs. There are also other platforms that sell downloadable old games such as Steam, launched in 2003 (Steam also sells new games).

Newer platforms, like archive.org’s Software Library have made old PC games available free to play online. Their software library does not have every game but they still are adding to it. There is also abandonware. Abandonware is software that has been ignored for a long time by it’s creator. It might still be under copyright but the copyright isn’t enforced. There are several abandonware sites where you can download old games, like my abandonware. You will need other software to run these old games on a modern PC.

For MS-DOS games (usually games released before 1997), you can use an emulator such as Dosbox to run MS-DOS games on your modern PC. If you don’t know DOS command line interface, you can use a graphical user interface frontend for Dosbox called Dfend. Dfend has a wizard and they make it fairly easy to set up your game. You will need to have both programs installed. 

If you have a physical disk or CD you can use Dosbox or try running it in Windows. Probably the easiest thing to do is play it on an old computer if you have one.

PC games released before 2005 might only have the problem of no widescreen resolution. You can usually fix with a patch or sometimes by going into the folder and editing the .ini file. I’d recommend just Googling this for that specific game.

Enthusiasts might want to buy or build their own retro gaming PC. Personally I like Windows XP for my retro system. Microsoft Windows 98 and ME were the last operating systems to be built on DOS. Windows 98 is ideal for playing MS DOS games, but might have some problems running newer games for other versions of Windows. Windows XP isn’t built on DOS but still has some of the functionality to launch older games. I like a program called VDMS sound. This program emulates old sound hardware. With this software installed, usually most MS DOS games will play fine on Windows XP and all you need to do is right click on the game and select run with VDMS sound. Another problem is that some games were designed for a very slow CPU speed. There are utilities like CPUkiller to fix this. If your PC is below 2 GHZ you might not have a problem, but that is good to have.

Ebay sells a lot of old computers, these are usually way overpriced but sometimes you can find a good deal. There is also craigslist. People in your area might be trying to get rid of their old computer or parts. Another option is looking for a local reseller. In Sunnyvale, California Weird Stuff sells enough old components you can build an entire retro PC. So that’s what I did! I chose hardware from around 2004-2005 for my retro PC.

Koopa Retro PC Specs: 
Generic Case
Thermaltake Purepower 420 Watt Power Supply
52x Max CD Rom drive, IDE
Lite On DVD/RW, Sata 
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ @ "3800+" 2.42 ghz w/Thermaltake heatsink and CPU fan controller.
Asus K8N-E motherboard Socket 754
G.Skill 3 GB Ram DDR 400 PC 3200 
ATI Radeon x850 Pro 256 MB AGP video card
80 GB HDD Samsung Spinpoint 7200 RPM, IDE
Creative Sound Blaster Live! sound card PCI
Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3
Max Payne Mouse Pad
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 usb (mouse I had in 2000)
Logisys blue keyboard PS/2 (Keyboard I had in 2000)
22" Dell LCD monitor