Next steps

That’s all, folks!

All good things must come to an end, and this guide is no different!

Congratulations—now you should be able to use DOSBox Staging fairly confidently at a basic level, and we’ve actually touched on quite a few intermediate topics as well. Armed with the basics, now you have a much greater chance to figure things out on your own, and you’ll be able to ask more specific, directed questions from the more experienced members of the community when seeking help.

So what’s next? Try setting up a few more games yourself; peruse the various configuration options in the primary configuration file; look around on our wiki; familiarise yourself with our feature highlights; read the release notes on our releases page—there are plenty of learning opportunities if you wish to delve deeper!

If you’re stuck with something, you can always ask questions from the DOSBox Staging community directly on Discord.

Most importantly, experiment, enjoy what classic PC gaming has to offer, and have fun!

Further reading

As your interest in DOS gaming grows, you might be interested in learning more about the history of PC gaming and PC hardware in general. Below is a selection of the very best learning resources to get you started!

RetroGrade - The ultimate guide to pre-millennial PC hardware (mirror)

An excellent collection of articles that takes you through the most important milestones of early PC hardware history, starting from its humble beginnings in the early 1980s right until the year 2000, covering the DOS era in its entirety and then some more.

DOS Days

This very comprehensive website contains a great deal of information about DOS-era PC hardware, useful tips on setting up DOS games, and articles and guides on a variety of DOS-related topics. It’s a highly recommended resource, and you’ll inevitably end up here anyway when researching anything DOS-related via your favourite search engine…

Nerdly Pleasures

Written by The Great Hierophant, there’s simply no better resource online that does such extremely thorough and comprehensive deep dives supplanted by original research on a number of interesting DOS gaming-related topics.

PhilsComputerLab

Phil’s YouTube channel offers a dizzying amount of quality content on a variety of retro-PC-related topics with a special focus on actual hardware. Checking out his DOS tutorials and MIDI and wavetable series is a good start, but you can pretty much pick any of his videos at random, and I guarantee you’ll learn something interesting. His aptly titled three-and-a-half-hour long (!) Roland MT-32, CM-32L, CM-64, CM-500 Ultimate Tutorial is a work of art—probably there isn’t anything more to say on the subject!

DOSBox game compatibility list

If you’re having problems with a game, it’s worth having a look at the game compatibility list on the old DOSBox website. Although some information there might be outdated (e.g., mentioning DOSBox issues that have long been fixed), some of the comments document important issues present in the original games. That’s one very common trap to fall into, thinking that certain game bugs are caused by emulation and, therefore, must be fixable at the DOSBox level. Often these bugs are present in the original games, so you just need to live with them or work around them.

VOGONS

An acronym for Very Old Games On New Systems, this forum is an oasis for all retro-hardware and retro-gaming enthusiasts, mainly focusing on PC compatibles and DOSBox-related things. The combined knowledge of the community on all things DOS and retro-PC is next to none—try asking any obscure question, and there’s a good chance you’ll get a very detailed (and correct!) answer within a few hours.