The Tao of Walking Ridge

I sometimes wondered why I kept the old disks.  Floppy disks, with old DOS games.  But I couldn’t part with them, they were too cool.  Before photorealistic graphics, game designers had no choice but to infuse good strategy and fun into their games.

But alas, even though Windows 95 and 2000 had DOS capability, the machines were so fast that the programs didn’t run right.  And the new hardware, stuff like USB joysticks, did not have DOS support.  One of my favorites, the original Red Baron (with zeppelins!) would no longer play with sound.  Sigh.

In the games directory of Ubuntu I found DOSbox.  It plays old dos games in a window, emulating DOS, but providing (specifically) USB joystick support!  It also emulates the soundblaster!  Wow.  So even a new machine without a “soundblaster” sound card can play DOS games.   How does it work?  Overall, I’d say better than Windows.

I am dual booting my 3000 N200 Lenovo laptop as I wean my way off of Windows.  For the most part, I keep Windows on it to run Photoshop CS, with a Black and White plugin I just love.  It converts color to black and white with controls for how the colors are converted, much like B&W film.  Most B&W film is panchromatic, which is not equally sensitive to all colors.  But I digress.

I decided to pop in some old favorite games.  Comanche gold (meant for Windows).  Crash.  Nascar 1999, crash.  Red Baron II - crash.  Sports Car GT - crash.  Sports Car GTR - crash.  I got Soldier of Fortune - Platinum edition to run, and Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator to run (imagine that).

Over on the Linux side, I find DOSbox and install it.  Piece of cake.  Up comes a window with what looks like DOS.  You choose the directory to mount as a C drive (or F drive, or whatever).  Type the DOS commands, just like DOS.  Configure the game to use a SoundBlaster for sound and music.  That’s it.  Commanche (the DOS version, not gold) ran, but is a bit fast yet.  The original World Circuit, a premier F1 sim, that I spent hours playing more than a decade ago ran GREAT.  Imagine playing World Circuit with a steering wheel and pedals (USB no less)!  Indycar V1.05 played well too, though the joystick was a bit touchy.  Some tweaking of settings may work through this.  But it played better than the patched up Windows version of Indycar that came out to convert the game to Windows.

And the original Red Baron.  It flys better than it did in DOS!  Great sound.  No hitches.  Especially for a laptop, which is unlikely to play the latest games with the kind of refresh rate you need, this is really cool.  A fun trip down memory lane.

In our throwaway society, it is cool to rebel against being forced to throw more away.  “Stop playing the old games, and buy our new ones.”  I think not.  Linux and DOSbox, keeping the essence of great games alive.  The ultimate in recycling.

       - the Muse

Tags: Linux

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 11:44 am and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.