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Boxer: The DOS game emulator that’s fit for your Mac.
- lanstein 16y agoThexder still hates me.
- jbellis 16y agoThat game is _hard_. Thexder HD was released on PSN recently, btw.
- adamtmca 16y agoJust installed the original C&C. Thanks!
- aaronbrethorst 16y agoLet’s maintain the convenient fiction that you won’t just google “abandonware” and avail yourself of the many websites for pirated DOS games instead. Seeing Dark Forces really brings me back. edit: after reading through the thread, I realize I'm the 3rd or 4th person to say that Dark Forces "brings me back." Sorry to add so little, but it's also fascinating that so many of us have such fond memories of that one game.
- swah 16y agoThe incredible machine anyone?
- swah 16y agoBrings back memories. I suppose at the time my dream was to understand how those games worked. And I think I still couldn't write one today...
- bjelkeman-again 16y agoVery nice. Good that I still have the original X-Com box lying around.
- swah 16y agoGreat product - it even helps you go through the installers. I had to change from A: to D: for installing Stunts though! (I had a copy...)
- abestor 16y agoLet me know (via the Send Feedback link in Boxer's app menu) where you got your copy of Stunts from - I'll check it out and see if the import process needs tweaking there.
- swah 16y agoLemme just grab a copy of Bananacom so I can download some games from the local BBS.
- yeahsure 16y agoOh no! Now I'll have to play Maniac Mansion again! :-)
- nathos 16y agoyou may be better served by ScummVM for that: http://scummvm.org/ http://scummvm.org/
- zavulon 16y agoI couldn't find this info on the site, so how is this different from DosBox?
- veyron 16y agoDosbox was not self-contained [i.e. when you fire it up, you have to mount a directory and then run the game]. It looks like boxer makes the .app for you
- mhiceoin 16y agoi am guessing that it is a DosBox wrapper, to make management and running of games, both easier and prettier. :) No more mounting and all that crap.
- Torn 16y agoSeems like it's indeed a frontend for DosBox: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/DOSBoxFrontends#Mac_OS_X_Frontends http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/DOSBoxFrontends#Mac_OS_X_Frontend... Boxer should at least acknowledge DoxBox on their homepage IMO, feels to me a bit like taking DosBox's glory for themselves?
- airolson 16y agoBoxer started its life as a sort of frontend but is now a fork of DOSBox. All of the changes are meant to fix (replace) the awful workflow that DOSBox currently has with mounting drives and tweaking config files and etc. DOSBox is mentioned in the About window, the credits, and Boxer itself when you launch a gamebox. It also used to be on the website, though checking now I'm not sure where it's gone. Boxer is properly GPL and you can find the source code here: https://bitbucket.org/alunbestor/boxer https://bitbucket.org/alunbestor/boxer
- abestor 16y ago(I'm the developer of Boxer.) You're right - Boxer's homepage did actually acknowledge DOSBox until a couple of days ago, when I rewrote most of the copy and in the process took it out. I now realise this was caddish of me, and have added the acknowledgement back in. It wasn't my intention to take credit for DOSBox's work; it’s an excellent emulator and responsible for 90% of what Boxer does. However, it's also extremely painful to use on the Mac - and I wanted to avoid the suggestion that Boxer's user experience was like that of DOSBox’s. As airolson noted, DOSBox is also prominently credited within Boxer itself.
- nanoanderson 16y agoAt least one of those screenshots is going to pull some heart strings for people who played games way back when. I became a PC gamer at the tail end of DOS gaming, when Command & Conquer was only available on DOS and Dark Forces was released to mild acclaim. That shot of Dark Forces brings me back…
- DLWormwood 16y agoDark Forces strikes me as an odd choice, since at that time period, LucasArts had in-house Mac porting developers. Dark Forces, Loom, and even Sam & Mac got classic Mac OS ports that supported better graphics resolutions than the DOS games of that time period. Pity it was mostly based on the work of one key developer who moved on after a couple of years… EDIT: Citation Needed… http://www.aarongiles.com/history/index.html http://www.aarongiles.com/history/index.html
- pohl 16y agoAh, they have Dark Forces on the downloads page. I just played through the first level, and memories came flooding back.
- bradly 16y agoThe site is dragging quite a bit right now, but you can download from their Bitbucket page https://bitbucket.org/alunbestor/boxer/downloads https://bitbucket.org/alunbestor/boxer/downloads
- zackola 16y agoEpic Pinball! Woo! Donated 10. Should probably give some to DosBox too :)
- xtacy 16y agoI like Boxer/Dosbox, but why does it burn my CPU though it doesn't/shouldn't require much processing power?
- maggit 16y agoIt simulates a computer entirely in software, which is expensive. This is different from for example Virtualbox which virtualizes a computer, and still executes most of the instructions directly on the processor.
- pmjordan 16y agoModern preemptive multitasking operating systems send the CPU to sleep when there's no work to be done. In DOS, the currently running app or game usually just used every available cycle (aside from interrupts handled by the BIOS or DOS) for its own purposes. I don't know if Dosbox has some kind of limiter in place, but if not, the game/app will eat every single cycle it can unless it's specifically designed to wait for the vsync interrupt.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- xtacy 16y agoYou're right, but DOS emulators are usually configured to run at a slower speed than the host CPU. If not, the games usually run very very fast :-)
- invertedlambda 16y agoAn underrated game I've never been able to find again was Hyperspeed by Microprose. Super awesome. Anyone know where to find a copy?