Is there some way to make the screen bigger?
 

some games, such as hexen, doom, and strife for example, have screens that are just too small.

is there any way, using dosbox, to make them bigger? perhaps switch them to a VESA video mode? the small screens scale the graphics down and make them very pixelated.

i know very little about this, so please keep that in mind when answering.

When using DOSBox, pressing ALT-ENTER will toggle the screen back and forth from window to full screen mode.

If you have a big widescreen mon it usually isn't a good idea to go full screen, then you can edit the dosbox conf file to set the window bigger.
Something as:
[SDL]
fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=1024x768
output=ddraw

And before you ask:
http://h.imagehost.org/t/0182/dosbconf.jpg <- click

And read the dosbox manual, there are a lot of stuffs you can do.

Best to use a scaler if your computer can handle it rather than using full screen. I use HQ2x (which might only be available in an official CVS build) but there are a bunch of others.

If you don't already, I recommend using a front-end with Dosbox like D-Fend Reloaded. It's easier to tinker with settings and lets you setup profiles for each game to easily load them in with whatever settings you want.

The small screens don't scale the graphics down, but display them at their original size. And yes, they were that pixelated to begin with.