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Filed under: Fun, Games, Macintosh

Play DOS games on your Mac


Lee's posts about gaming old school in your browser or on your PC have had me itching to get in on the old-school action myself. Unfortunately, because I use a Mac and prefer to stay in OS X when possible, some of the cooler emulators and browser ports are off limits. Sure, I can always play with the wicked cool Virtual ][ and get my Oregon Trail on like it's first grade all over again -- complete with whirring disk sounds -- but I think we all know that all the real old school computer games were made for DOS.

Russell Heimlich, AKA kingkool68 in the comments, tipped us to a great OS X front-end for DOSBox: Boxer. If you aren't familiar with DOSBox, it is an emulator that simulates an Intel x86 PC running MS-DOS, with a focus on running games as smoothly as possible.

Boxer feels very Mac-like and is extremely easy to use. Just add .boxer to a game's folder and the corresponding EXE files will open up in Boxer. You can then launch games from the Finder and have access to Mac-friendly keyboard shortcuts.

Sound, video, the whole thing works flawlessly. Within a few seconds of downloading Doom, I was presented with that familiar music and the the bloody menus that brought back to 5th grade all over again. Now I want to track down some old school games like Theme Park and Sim Ant!

If you're a Mac user and want to get your DOS-game on, check out Boxer! It runs on Intel Macs running OS X 10.4.11 or higher, though Leopard is recommended.

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