It's hard for an oldie to get going :(
 

Ok guys I go back a long way and using dosbox i have no trouble running any of the text games..ie mounting the c drive etc...but when I come to play a non text game I have great trouble getting it to play. I do change dir etc and look for the exe or bat file...but whatever game I try I just do not get it to run....so to keep things simple could someone suggest an old dos game (something popular subject is not important but running the game is) and take me through the process...I have read the various beginner notes and read lots of posts on the forum but cannot seem to get any games only text games to load...So lead me by the hand and encourage and help me to finally get a nice little game up and running in my brand new dosbox :drool:
a rather perplexed trevtherev in not so sunny Bristol UK

All right friend,

I'll try to write a quick guide for you here. I'll try to walk you the steps of running Tetris Classic.
Download the game on to your computer.
When done, extract it to your dos games folder, mine is called 'dos' and is located on my D drive.
Now, the path to .exe file of Tetris Classic would be the following:

D:\dos\TetrisC\tetrisc.exe

Whenever I would like to play some Tetris, I start DOSBox, and type the following:

The above commands mount D:\dos as the C drive of DOSBox, then I of course switch to the C drive by typing C:, I enter the folder of Tetris Classic with cd TetrisC, then run the executable by only typing the filename.

Note: When the game prompts you to select your graphics card, press 1 for VGA, then either 3 for SoundBlaster music or 12 for no sound.

In order to save time you can create shortcuts including a command that can enable you to start your games solely by double-clicking on their icon on your desktop.

Here's how:

Right-click on your deskop, select New-> Shortcut. When prompted, either browse or enter the path of your DOSBox. By default, it is in C:\Program Files on Windows XP, and C:\Program Files (x86) on Vista, 7, and 8.
After you have selected the executable file DOSBox.exe, you need to copy or write the absolute path leading to the game you want to run. For example, the path of my Tetris Classic is D:\dos\TetrisC\tetrisc.exe. You might also want to enter the commandline switch -noconsole behind everything in order to get rid of the console window appearing in the background.
Here is what my Tetris Classic shortcut includes:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74\DOSBox.exe" D:\dos\TetrisC\tetrisc.exe -c -noconsole

You might use this and substitute the path with the path of the game you want to play. Note that this is going to mount the game's folder as your C drive. If you have got any questions, feel free to ask here, have fun playing whatever you want!

Thanks Tracker for taking the time to help me get dosbox up and running! I got tetris to play lovely :) and set the short cut up as you described...great!! The hardest part of setting up any game is trying to locate the proper start or exe file in order to run the game...I downloaded policequest a marvellous game for running in dosbox (I had to rename the download file to something that dosbox would recognize) and then the difficult part...after changing directory to polquest I had to find the correct file to load the game...but after a little experimentation I found that "sierra" was the correct file and hey presto we are up and running..I hope the forum does not mind me posting if I have future problems as I love the authenticity of dosbox and the memories it invokes for someone who played games a long time ago :)

It is nice to see you finally managed to get your games running. Do not worry, feel free to ask for help on our boards whenever you're in any kind of distress regarding old video games. Remember, it's about the community, helping people have fun with old games.

Also, trevtherev, there is one very simple way to play 90% of games in DOSBox. :)

If you have link to DOSBox on your desktop, you can simply drag exe/com in question on that link. (Dragging on actual DOSBox' exe will work too, but link is more convenient :)

In that case DOSBox will automatically mount directory of exe in question as C and start this exe. :) It's enough for any game that not required specific dir/subdir (and it's true for mentioned 90% of games :).

One of the reasons why I recommend using Norton Commander is that you can filter the displayed files by name and extension. Setting *.exe *.com *.bat as the filter will result in displaying only executables and batch scripts (which some games need to be started with rather than with the executable directly)

typing "dir *.bat" and "dir *.exe" do the same thing. All the basic original DOS commands work too.

I'm pretty sure you can even display both at the same time but that's extremely advanced command use, even for me. I could look it up but I usually don't bother because those commands are executed instantly and it actually take less time (for me) to type out the next command and look at the results than to remember some obscure flag in such a command. ;)

Edit: Oh yeah, and if you want to display the results columns by columns you can also use the /w flag. ;)

With NC the filter can be on the entire time - even across different sessions - without having to retype the command. Which is kind of convenient. :p

Total Commander forever! :D

Yes, but there's no TotalCommander under DOS, only Norton Commander. :)