Gaming Consoles & PCs How to Use DOSBox Play classic video games you thought were lost to time by Nicholas Congleton Writer Nick Congleton has been a tech writer and blogger since 2015. His work has appeared in PCMech, Make Tech Easier, Infosec Institute, and others. our editorial process Twitter LinkedIn Nicholas Congleton Updated on December 01, 2020 Consoles & PCs Xbox Buyer's Guide Tweet Share Email Classic MS-DOS video games don't run on Windows, Mac, or Linux. If you want to play these classic DOS games, install DOSBox on your PC. DOSBox is a free emulator that works across operating systems. Here's how to use it. You can find some classic MS-DOS games for sale on GOG.com. These can be played without an emulator like DOSBox. How to Install DOSBox Before you can play games, you need to install DOSBox. You can get the software for free, regardless of your operating system. Then, follow these instructions to download and install it. Create a folder for the old games you want to play. Label it something like C:\OLDGAMES. How to Install DOSBox for Windows Follow these steps if you have a Windows PC to download and install DOSBox: Open a browser and go to the DOSBox download page. Locate the latest Windows installer download, and select it. After the download completes, run the installer. Follow the on-screen directions. It's fairly simple, and the default options should suffice in most situations. How to Install DOSBox for Ubuntu/Debian Linux Open a terminal window, then enter $ sudo apt install dosbox to install DOSBox on Ubuntu. How to Install DOSBox for macOS Follow these directions to install DOSBox on a Mac computer: Open a browser and go to the DOSBox download page. Locate and download the latest DMG file for Mac. Double-click the file to open it. Drag the application for the DMG into the /Applications folder. Wait for the application to finish copying, then eject the DMG with the eject button. How to Play Games on DOSBox With DOSBox set up on your system, it's time to download a game and start playing. There are several places to get DOS games online. My Abandonware hosts hundreds of free classic games that were abandoned by their developers. Here's how to download games on that site: Open a browser, and go to My Abandonware. Select Platform and search for DOS games (or follow that link). Find a game you're interested in playing and select it to download it. Unpack the archive the DOS game came in and place the files in a folder that's easy to access. Open DOSBox. Mount your game folder as the C: drive. You can do that by running the mount command and passing it C first, followed by the path to the game folder. It should look something like mount c /path/to/game/folder. Change the directory to the new C: drive. Do this by typing C:. Type the name of the .exe file and press Enter. DOSBox launches the game. Use the on-screen mouse icon, if there is one, and the keyboard to control the game. When you're done playing, exit the game normally. To exit DOSBox, type exit in the terminal. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. You're in! Thanks for signing up. There was an error. Please try again. Thank you for signing up. Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit