DOSBox
Many times I have wished to play some old DOS games on my Windows 2000 workstation. And many times I have been disappointed with incompatibility. In last few years the only solution was a dual boot with compatibility drivers for sound and graphic cards, and a huge basket of luck. There was no real and effective DOS emulator on the scene. Then DOSBox appeared. DOSBox is completely free of charge and open source DOS emulator for modern operating systems like Windows (2000 and XP), BeOS, Linux, MacOS X... DOSBox also emulates 286/386 CPU real mode, Directory FileSystem/XMS/EMS, the SoundBlaster card (and others) for excellent sound compatibility with older games. There were a lot of problems in earlier versions, but now over a thousand games are supported, many of them are completely playable (Full Throttle… finally).
If you are unsure about how to use DosBox, check our step-by-step forum tutorials!

ScummVM
ScummVM is a 'virtual machine' that allows quite a few classic adventure games to be run in Windows with sound. It is designed to run: Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2, Beneath A Steel Sky , Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2, Flight of the Amazon Queen, and games based on LucasArt's SCUMM system such as Monkey Island , Day of the Tentacle , Sam and Max and more. On their site you can also find freeware CD versions of some games that are supported by SCUMM VM.

Boxer
Boxer is the easy to use Macintosh equivalent of Dosbox, allowing Mac users to easily install and run the games here. Boxer plays Ms-Dos games on your Mac. It is based on the robust DosBox emulator, with a lot of magic sprinkled on top.

Run DOS programs from Finder. Wrap your games into tidy packages that launch like Mac apps. Painlessly install games - you can even install from CD's or CD images - don’t struggle with mounts and emulation settings; don’t nurse a greedy games database; don’t bang your head against a DOS prompt; just play your games. Boxer takes away the fuss and leaves the fun.

7zip
7-Zip is a file archiver with a very high compression ratio.
You can use it on any computer, including a computer in a commercial organization. You don't need to register or pay for 7-Zip.
Supported formats:

Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM
Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z.

WinRar
WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. You can try WinRAR before buy, its trial version is available.

VDM Sound
VDMSound is a program that overcomes what has probably been the most exasperating limitation of DOS boxes since Windows NT - sound support. VDMSound emulates SoundBlaster compatible as well as Adlib music. In development are improvements to the existing joystick emulation, and possibly VESA support. It is a self-contained, 100% software emulation program that is completely independent of your audio hardware type and settings. VDMSound works with any soundcard, and will even work on computers that have no audio hardware at all. This software is highly recommended if your computer is too slow for running DOSBox as it will start most games in regular WinXP command prompt.

Hamachi
Hamachi allows you to create a virtual private network via a simple download with a user friendly interface, allowing you to manage your created network as you need it.

Hamachi supports the following operating systems:

* Microsoft Windows (Win2000, WinXP, Server2003, Vista, Win7)
* Linux 2.4 or newer
* FreeBSD
* Mac OS X
* Windows Mobile - beta
* Palm Pre and webOS

So in other words, it practically runs everywhere. On top of that, it doesn't have any problems with router firewalls and doesn't need any port forwarding. Because it's just that awesome.

Frotz
Frotz (aka DOSFrotz) is an interpreter for Infocom's and any other Z-machine games. It was written by Stefan Jokisch in the years 1995-1997, complies with standard 1.0 of Graham Nelson's specification and has been ported to several platforms. Just read the FROTZ.TXT.

The 16 colours you can use are the CGA ones:

I recommend to use the parameters -l1 or -l2 and -r1 or -r2 to have a left and a right margin for easier reading. The screenshots of Infocom's Z-machine games on Abandonia are taken with Frotz - in display mode MCGA (parameter -d3) to have a resolution of 320x200. ~Luchsen

WinFrotz
WinFROTZ is a Windows port of Frotz (see above). Really easy to use, to open a game you must go to:
- File
- Open New Story
- Select a .z5 game file
- Enjoy!
Nice features are the possibility to change background and font colour, as well as what font to use and its size, and a lot of commands that make your typing easier. A helpful help file (duh!) is also included.

RPG Maker 2000
Many of todays freeware RPG games are made using this system. It is based on the ASCII engine that is most known to Nintendo players. Not only does this program run games located on Abandonia, but it can even be used to create your own games. It will enable you to enjoy the old-school look and feel of RPG games under any modern Windows system. A very handy tool indeed.

Daemon Tools
Daemon Tools is an advanced application for loading CD images as virtual drives. You will need this program in order to use the CD images of some games we provide on the site. Daemon Tools works under Windows9x/ME/NT/2000/XP with all types of CD/DVDROM drives (IDE/SCSI) and supports nearly any CD protection.

Norton Commander
Norton Commander is an absolute must for every experienced DOS user. It is the Windows Explorer of yesterday, but better ;) Windows clones of this legendary utility are still being made today. Using NC you can browse through directories, move, copy, rename, view and edit files, see disk usage statistics, extract zip files etc. To say the least, the features are very numerous. An absolute must for both simple&serious DOS file operations.

Image files (requires image mounting software! Use the link on the left if you don't know how to work with .img files. *.img files can be copied to real floppies using English unpacked NC 5.5 disk copying utility that is included in unpacked NC 5.5 in the link on the left)

NC5.5 english
NC5.5 german
NC5.5 polish
NC5.5 russian

Microsoft WinG v1.0 16-bit GDI Graphics/Video Acceleration Runtime Libraries

The WinG API was introduced to provide faster graphics performance on Windows 3.x. It is no longer included with Windows systems since Windows 98SE, but a number of older games will not run without it's DLLs.

If a game reports it is missing wing.dll, wing32.dll, wingde.dll (or a similarly named file), installing this will solve the problem.

Confirmed to work on Windows 3.1x/9x/NT/2000/ME/XP/2003. Vista and Windows 7 compatibility untested.