DOSBox on an old laptop changed how I play 90s games

I was trying to get Star Wars: Dark Forces running on my modern desktop and it kept crashing at the cutscenes. After hours of fiddling with compatibility settings I almost gave up. Then I remembered I had an old Dell Latitude from 2007 sitting in my closet. I installed DOSBox on it, copied over the game files from a CD, and it ran perfectly with zero tweaking. The key was setting the cycles to auto and using a custom config for the sound card emulation. Now I use that laptop as my dedicated retro gaming machine for anything older than 2002. Has anyone else had better luck running old games on actual period hardware instead of modern rigs?

2 comments

2 Comments

cameron_chen6325d agoMost Upvoted

Those old Dell Latitudes had rock solid Soundblaster Pro emulation too.

kim.sandra25d ago

Running old games on a 17 year old laptop just to avoid a few compatibility tweaks feels like overkill. How often are you really playing Star Wars: Dark Forces, once a year tops. A modern $30 SSD and five minutes in compatibility mode would probably solve the crashes without dedicating a whole machine to it.