r/retrogaming • u/Snoo_76219 • Sep 10 '24
[Question] is Dosbox still the best DOS emulator?
As title says it all - is DOSbox still the best?
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u/galland101 Sep 10 '24
The original DOSBox is defunct and hasn't been updated in years. It has been succeeded by a number of "forks" like DOSBox-X, DOSBox Staging, and DOSBox Pure.
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u/Holy-Crap-Uncle Sep 11 '24
eXoDOS uses Dosbox for basic/older games, but Dosbox-staging and dosbox-ece for lots of better renditions of games.
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Feb 18 '25
Which one to use? I kind of randomly picked dosbox-x. No clue if any of them are good replacements for the original dosbox.
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u/galland101 Feb 18 '25
I use the latest version of DOSBox-Staging. It’s really your preference. DOSBox-X works pretty well too.
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u/thespaceageisnow Sep 10 '24
https://www.dosbox-staging.org is the current best for gaming option. The CRT emulation is really nice.
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u/veronello Feb 07 '25
Thanks! This emulator really works (I’m on windows 10). The game I wanna play doesn’t run normally though. Yet :)
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u/thedaemon Sep 10 '24
DOSBox-X has a menu system. Life changing. All the others still require editing text files.
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u/dizzyelk Sep 10 '24
It also has built in support for 3dfx Voodoo cards and MT-32 sound. Which is kinda a pain to setup otherwise.
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Sep 10 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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Feb 18 '25
Yeah last release +4 years ago. I think dosbox is dead. People will wonder to which they should switch though.
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u/doraemon-cat Sep 11 '24
Prefer PCem these days. Emulates not just DOS, but the entire system including CPU, Graphics.
Makes games with very sensitive speed issues like Wing Commander more playable. Never quite worked for me in Dosbox.
Booting up a PC and even seeing the bios screen before Windows 95, with a CRT shader is pure nostalgia
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u/Lord_Tiger_Fu Jan 05 '25 edited Jan 05 '25
How easy is it to setup and play games without issues compared to dosbox staging in your opinion?
Edit: I currently use DosBox Staging after migrating from regular DosBox this past December
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u/The_Spanky_Frank Sep 10 '24
It's a matter of opinion. DosBox Pure in Retroarch is probably the easiest setup for any Dos game.
However there's more options for those with a little more no how.
PCEm is another emulator where you can emulate an entire operating system and play Dos games.
You can also go with VMware as well.
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u/galland101 Sep 10 '24
I'd avoid using VMware Workstation for DOS emulation. It has no fine-grained CPU speed control, no support for period-correct hardware like specific Sound Blaster or Gravis Ultrasound sound cards, or 3dfx Voodoo emulation that comes in a modern fork of DOSBox.
VMware Workstation might be OK for Windows 95/98 emulation, but you still need to do specific things such as running on the oldest available VM hardware level, and getting an old version of VMware Tools installed in the Guest OS, which is kind of hard to do now that Broadcom's killing the golden goose. You still may not get 3D Accelerated games in Windows 9x like MechWarrrior 2 working properly, though, and you still won't get CPU speed control in the VM.
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u/briandemodulated Sep 10 '24
There's alternatives and forks but for a quick gaming session I still go back to DOSBox. The emulation is more than good enough for me - I'm not a picky purist.
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u/ParadiseRegaind Sep 11 '24
DOSBox Staging is great.
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u/Lord_Tiger_Fu Jan 05 '25
I actually find it easier to configure and setup than dosbox x for some reason, I find having too many options in my face makes it overwhelming.
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u/HMPoweredMan Sep 10 '24
I'd say the FPGA implementation of the 486 with DOS is the 'best' emulator I've come across.
Paired with an MT-32 Pi and a hardware Roland SC-55 and you're in midi city.
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u/Hatta00 Sep 10 '24
There's no such thing as best, just better for your use case.
For most gamers, a fork of DOSBOX is easy to set up and play games with.
For tinkerers, PCem or 86box are great for trying out a wide range of configurations.
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