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First off, DOS has very direct hardware access. This means it works very well in more embedded environements. It also means it's just flat-out fun to hack on fo

First off, DOS has very direct hardware access. This means it works very well in more embedded environements. It also means it's just flat-out fun to hack on for some sorts of people, for much the same reasons that, say, ITS was fun to hack on (although no ITS user would ever admit to liking DOS, obviously) Secondly, FreeDOS is useful for bringing a semi-modern operating system to your 486 or whatever, without it being unbearably slow: breathe some life into the thing. Finally, legacy software. DOS has a massive library of some of the finest software ever conceived: games in particular. Doom, Quake, Duke3D, Wolf3D, King's Quest, Monkey Island, Myst, Lemmings, Dune II, Descent, various Infocom games, and far more that was less widely ported than the above and hard to play nowadays.

digi_owl 10y ago
Lemmings originated on the Amiga, iirc. First level on PC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ9CS0KUZvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ9CS0KUZvY First level on Amiga 500: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOZ-zeVJCxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOZ-zeVJCxw Anyways, to elaborate a bit on what you stated. It was common back then that games came with driver libraries rather than having them installed on the OS. Effectively each game took over the PC for the duration of play, and if it crashed you reached for the ever so useful reset button. Quake for example had multiple versions. The original one that used software rendering. One that was custom built for 3DFX cards (assets now owned by Nvidia), GLquake that used OpenGL, Quakeworld for playing online (different network code to be less sensitive to latency etc), and the list continued on. Quake 2 had a in-game toggle between 3DFX, PowerVR, OpenGL and software render.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  >Lemmings originated on the Amiga, iirc I think you might be right. I was confused because it was made by DMA Design, who would later rise to prominance on the PC (I know what you're thinking: what could possibly be more prominant than Lemmings? To which I answer that DMA Design is still around: However, they are now known as Rockstar. Yes, that one). >Anyways, to elaborate a bit on what you stated. It was common back then that games came with driver libraries rather than having them installed on the OS. True, although my point was merely that there were many excellent DOS games that haevn't been ported to other systems.

digi_owl 10y ago

Lemmings originated on the Amiga, iirc. First level on PC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ9CS0KUZvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ9CS0KUZvY First level on Amiga 500: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOZ-zeVJCxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOZ-zeVJCxw Anyways, to elaborate a bit on what you stated. It was common back then that games came with driver libraries rather than having them installed on the OS. Effectively each game took over the PC for the duration of play, and if it crashed you reached for the ever so useful reset button. Quake for example had multiple versions. The original one that used software rendering. One that was custom built for 3DFX cards (assets now owned by Nvidia), GLquake that used OpenGL, Quakeworld for playing online (different network code to be less sensitive to latency etc), and the list continued on. Quake 2 had a in-game toggle between 3DFX, PowerVR, OpenGL and software render.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
>Lemmings originated on the Amiga, iirc I think you might be right. I was confused because it was made by DMA Design, who would later rise to prominance on the PC (I know what you're thinking: what could possibly be more prominant than Lemmings? To which I answer that DMA Design is still around: However, they are now known as Rockstar. Yes, that one). >Anyways, to elaborate a bit on what you stated. It was common back then that games came with driver libraries rather than having them installed on the OS. True, although my point was merely that there were many excellent DOS games that haevn't been ported to other systems.