How to play abandonware games : complete walkthrough - My Abandonware

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New to abandonware? Start with this guide to play DOS games

on Windows 7 or 8, or on your Mac. Most games works fine
with fine tunning, but some are very hard to install properly.
A large majority of our catalog games are DOS games, if you need to play
Windows or Mac games, go to the bottom of the page or follow these links :
Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Mac.

TOP DOWNLOADS

WHY IS THIS NOT WORKING?

Most abandonware games on PC were created for the MS-DOS operating
system. Today's computers no longer offer the same environment for the
programs. Hopefully, some people were unhappy with that and created free
software to mimic the old computers operating system!

WHAT PROGRAM SHOULD I USE?

Depending of you operating system, you have different options.

OREGON TRAIL DELUXE

SIMCITY 2000

WOLFENSTEIN 3D
DOOM II
DOOM
SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION

FOR EVERY OPERATING SYSTEM

DOSBox is the master DOS emulator, it works with almost every OS, and will be
enough for a quick play of most games. Check the DOSBox website for more
information

You may use another program for many point and click games, ScummVM. You
should check their compatibility page and search for the game you wish to play

WARCRAFT II: TIDES OF

THE INCREDIBLE MACHINE 2
SIMANT: THE ELECTRONIC ANT
MARIO TEACHES TYPING

DOSBox has many frontend programs (complete list here) that give you a more
appealing interface. DGBL is one of them, and it runs on Windows, Mac and
Linux

THE SETTLERS II (GOLD EDITION)

BATTLE CHESS

WINDOWS (XP, VISTA, SEVEN, 8)

X-COM: TERROR FROM THE DEEP

Most people are using Microsoft's Windows and an easy solution is available :
D-fend Reloaded. With a graphical interface, a lot of things are done for you
behind the scene

COMMANDER KEEN 5: THE

WARCRAFT: ORCS & HUMANS

MAC OS X

LIST OF TOP DOWNLOADS

Boxer is clearly the best DOSBox frontend on Mac, I use it everyday.

LINUX
On Linux, you should use one of the cross-platform frontends like DGBL. Check
the complete list on the DOSBox wiki

I NEED HELP THIS IS NOT WORKING!

Please note we do not provide support for playing abandonware games. We
strongly suggest you to ask for help on dedicated forums, like Abandonia or
Vogons. You may also use the DosBox subreddit.

DOSBOX SETUP
You should carefully read the DOSBox Wiki for a good walkthrough. Mac OS X

users should pay attention to those instructions, although I recommend using

Boxer.

DOSBOX DRAG AND DROP (WINDOWS)

Many of the standard DOS games can be played immediately with a drag and
drop, after a standard DOSBox setup :
download the game archive and unzip it ;

MOST RECENT

drag and drop the game folder on the desktop icon of DOSBox ;
the game folder will be mounted as C:\ just choose the right .exe file ;
tips : use DIR command in DOSBox to list game files, and use the TAB key
to autocomplete the .exe file name.
If you don't have the DOSBox shortcut on your desktop, the drag and drop

works on the DOSBox executable file located in C:\Program Files\DOSBox0.xx\.

GRAND THEFT AUTO 2

GRAND THEFT AUTO

X-MAS LAMERS
GALACTIC ENCOUNTERS

D-FEND RELOADED SETUP

XTREK
As a start, download the latest setup of D-Fend.
Once installed, you shall follow the following steps (click on the pictures for full
size). Screenshots taken in Windows 8.1, may 2014.

STEP 1

FOLLOW THE UPDATES ON

FACEBOOK OR TWITTER!

Starting with a fresh D-Fend install, you should see this screen after launching

the program. You can already launch DOSDox DOS to bring an operational MSDOS system. Guess you want to play a GAME, so not much to do here.

STEP 2

First, unzip the downloaded game somewhere. Then click on Extras > Open
game folder... This is where you will put the game files.

STEP 3

The game folder is the virtual drive used by the default D-Fend setup. For this
tutorial, I unzipped the Sid Meier's Civilization in the Downloads folder, then
moved the game folder to the VirtualHD of D-Fend. The name of the folder
itself is not important, but you should avoid spaces or special characters.

STEP 4

Now that the game files are on the virtual drive, we must add the game to DFend. Click on Add > Add manually... > Add DOSBox Profile. A new window will
appear, as shown on the screenshot, the "Profile editor". We must set the

program file by clicking on the folder icon at the right end of "Program file".

STEP 5

The explorer will show you the contents of the virtual drive. Navigate through
the game folder until you see program files. Some game only have one file

listed here, Civilization has several, usually the right file to select is named after
the game. This time, it's "CIV", select the file and click Open.

STEP 6

Coming back to the Profile editor, we can see the executable file in the Program
file field. The last thing to do is setting the name of the game in the Profile

name field. Once this is done, click on Ok. The game appears in the list, double
click to run it and have fun!

D-FEND RELOADED WIZARD

You may also use the game wizard in D-Fend Reloaded, it's simpler to add a
game.

STEP 1

After downloading and unzipping the game files somewhere, launch D-Fend,
click Add > Add with wizard... A (wild) window appears, "Create new profile",
Emulation type should be set to DOSBox. Click on Next.

STEP 2

Clic on the folder on the right side on the "Program to be starded". Navigate in
your folders to the game folder and find the proper executable file (see Step 5
in the other tutorial). Click on Open.

STEP 3

D-Fend will auto detect the game sometimes, you may also select one in the list
as shown on the screenshot. By clicking Next, you get some additional
information on the game, anyway you can click Ok, the game will listed in the
main windows and ready to be played!

ADDITIONAL STEPS AND TROUBLESHOOTING

Amongst different problems we have run into, here are some additional tips.

GAMES RUNNING TOO FAST OR TOO SLOW

Many old games were made to run as fast as the computer could get, those may
be too fast with DOSBox default CPU cycles. You have to reduce the CPU cycles
with CTRL-F11 in DOSBox. Other frontend programs may use different
shortcuts.

On the opposite, the default CPU cycles may be too low for "recent" DOS games,
you will have to rise the CPU cycles with CTRL-F12 in Dosbox. Other frontend

programs may use different shortcuts. You can also skip frames in DOSBox to
get better performances, use CTRL-F8 to increase the number of frames

skipped. You can read more about performances in DOSBox on the official wiki.

GAME SETUP
You all remember the setup.exe for having sound, better graphics or even
mouse support. You should add the setup program to the Setup section below
the Program section and launch it before playing the game.

DOSBox can emulate several sound cards, check out the wiki about sound
setup.

VIRTUAL DRIVE
Some games require you to emulate a floppy drive and have the game content
mounted in it. To add this floppy drive, edit the game profile, click on Drives

and add a new drive. You may use a folder or a real floppy image (.img) for the
floppy content. Same goes for CD games.

PC-BOOTER GAMES
We have some PC-Booter games, theses games have to be booted to work.
DOSBox can handle this fine, but these steps are not so clear.

Chuck Cartia gave us a nice walkthrough, using SpitFire Ace as an example:

1 - Create a folder to put your .img files in, for this example, on the C:\ drive
make a folder named DriveImg.

2 - Now put the file spitfire.img in this folder. Add a line to the dosbox.conf file
in the [autoexec] section:
boot c:\DriveImg\spitfire.img -l a

That's dash ell (for letter) and the drive letter you want to assign.
3 - Make sure you have any other references to this drive letter remmed out
with the # like this:

#mount a a:\ -t floppy

or

#mount a s:\install.
4 - That's it... Save the dosbx.conf file and when you start DOSBOX, the game
should boot and start automatically just like the good old days when you
shoved the disk in and turned on the (Atari) computer.

After reading this, the explanation in the DOSBOX readme.txt file should make
sense and you can figure out how to add more drives for multiple disk games.
Note: You don't need to use the IMGMOUNT command when you use the BOOT
command. Don't forget to rem out the boot line and unrem your other line(s)
when you want to use DOSBOX normally.

MEMORY PROBLEMS
Some games have memory problems at startup, like error message telling you
"Not enough memory". You should try several combinations of options in the
"Memory" part of the profile, enabling loadfix first.

For additional help, you should ask your questions over the Vogons forums or
the DosBox subreddit.

WINDOWS 3.1 GAMES

Some games were made for Windows 3.1 instead of DOS, you will have to install
Windows 3.1 in DOSBox. Follow these tutorial to get it running : Vogons, Sierra
Help or this blog post.

WINDOWS 95 GAMES
As we continue to release more and more recent games on My Abandonware,
some games we publish were made for Windows 95. Many of these won't run
on recent Windows versions, but you can install Win 95 in DOSBox. The

procedure is a bit complicated, hopefully dada_ and some folks over Vogons
and #dosbox@freenode set up a guide to do this, check it out in the Google
doc.

WINDOWS 98 GAMES
Some of the earlier abandonware games were made for Windows 98. You can

still get Win 98 working on your computer using VirtualBox. You will find a

guide to the installation here, then a second guide to setup properly Windows.
You should read BOTH of them before installing Windows 98.

MAC GAMES
About 1000 Mac games are available on MyAbandonware, from 1980 to 2005.
You will need one of these softwares to play them :

SheepShaver : games from mid 90s to 2005 (MacOS 8.1 to 9.0.4), follow

the download links to the precompiled binaries, made available on EMaculation forums ;

Basilisk II : games from 1991 to 1996 (MacOS 7 to 8.1), follow the

download links to the precompiled binaries, made available on E-Maculation

forums ;

Mini vMac : games from the 80s, although some games were still made for

the emulated Mac in th early 90s.

Many old games will work fine in a SheepShaver or Basilisk II, you should only
install and configure one emulator first and to run the game in it.

COMPLETE GUIDES FOR MAC EMULATION

Making Mac games work is quite complicated compared to DOS games. You'll

have to find a Mac computer ROM to emulate a Mac computer. These ROM files

are quite annoying to get, you can extract one from a working Mac, or get some
one for vMac here, or several one with this guide at Redundant Robot. You
should then follow these guides :

SheepShaver : setup guide on Windows, Mac or Linux ;

Basilisk II : setup guide on Windows, Mac or Linux ;
Mini vMac : setup guide on Windows.
Mac emulation is more complicated than DOS emulation, but the E-Maculation
community is very helful, with tons of guides and tutorials in english. You
should also read this page from Macintosh Garden.

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