About four years ago Rockstar modified GTA, GTA 2, and Wild Metal for use on the modern PC.  A few days ago my brother brought this to my attention, and I thrilled in the old school Grand Theft goodness. It was incredibly magnanimous of Rockstar to give these games away, but I was also impressed by how easy they made it to install and enjoy. My experience with these Rockstar games was nothing like the difficulty I had in getting Day of the Tentacle to run on my XP PC a few months ago.

One glorious day not too long ago I discovered a backup CD from an old computer switchover. The disc was labeled “Games”, I found it buried in the middle of a spindle of CDs containing old pictures and music. Needless to say, I was far more thrilled wondering what treasures this disc might contain. So I popped it into the drive and to my ecstatic wonder contained therein were backups of Quest for Glory games, Day of the Tentacle, Grand Theft Auto, and if memory serves correctly, Doom 2 (before you go jumping to conclusions, yes, I owned all these games). After a few pointless minutes of trying to explain to my girlfriend why this was so incredibly awesome, I settled down to trying to get the games to run on my PC.

Once I discovered DOSBox, things began to get rolling. Though it had been a long time since I had used a command-line interface, my fingers seemed to remember DOS well enough. After only a few hiccups in the road I was fighting demons, interacting with George Washington, and killing innocents like I was still a pubescent lad.

Which brings me to my point, if you have a little know-how (and if you enjoyed these games in the first place, you probably do) DOSBox is the greatest program ever. The people behind this free to use program are nothing less than gaming saints. History will smile on these good people, and their praises shall be sung from all corners of the internet. Oh DOSBox, you emulated your way straight into my heart.

-Matt Frank

Tags: Doom 2, DOSBox, GTA, Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle, Quest for Glory, Rockstar

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