DOS Gaming yesterday and today

Lets start with some history, shall we?
It all started in the golden age of videogames. Games started to be developed for home computers, and distributed in floppy disks, plastic bags and ROM cartridges. The one and only Richard Garriott distributed some copies of Akalabeth in plastic bags before it was published (Richard Garriott is Lord British in case you didn't know).

Sooooo, games started to be made aviable to pc owners and it led to pure EPICNESS.

Games like Zork (Text adventures), King's Quest, Karateka, Prince of Persia (No neat acrobatics), Rogue (Started a genre of it's own, pure epicness), The Bard's Tale, Golden Axe, Dragon's Lair, DOOM series, Ultima, TES 1 and 2 were released and became part of popular culture (at least some).

Thanks to this times surge of technological advances, developers were able not only to create games that were fun because of themselves, but to create whole worlds, full of lore, story and literary content. A fine example of this is my favorite game of all time, the epic, the only: DAGGERFALL.
Now developers were not limited to tell the game's story in the instruction manual, they could tell the story with videos, cut-scenes, in-game books, character monologues. This was the real start (For me) of the golden age of gaming. I cant count the hours I passed wandering the gigantic world of Daggerfall, the hours spent pillaging ships in Pirates!, the fun i had with Ultima, and let's not forget: Master of Orion.
To continue reading and to eat this day's cookie, click "Read more" below.

This is what we call OLD SCHOOL, a feel (with it's graphics and attention to story and gameplay) that only a few modern games can even hope to achieve. Only a chosen few, like Spiderweb Software really have the ol'school feel and look.
DOS games were true games. Games in which you had to explore the world to find your objective without a huge bright arrow pointing in the objectives direction. Games where if you stray from the path you wouldn't find an invisible wall impeding you to walk, but instead you might find a giant troll, or a cave full of magical treasure. Sadly to play this games today, you need DOSBox, a DOS emulator. Take a look here to learn more and download it.

This was a time when games could be creative without fearing failure or low sales, games back then were ART. Now instead, we have big gaming companies that develop more and more of the same, companies like EA, that shut down servers of games that don't give them enough money anymore (even tough players still plays them), or insults their buyers assuming them all to be pirates (FUCK YOU DRM), that is why YOU should support indie games. Plus, indie games for the most part have that ol'school feel ;)

But enough ranting! You had your coffee, it is time for you to have your cookie!

I said earlier my favorite game is Daggerfall, well. IT IS FREE!!!!
Click here to have a direct download of DaggerFall setup, an exe for modern computers. It comes with:
* DaggerFall 2.13
* Official CompUSA Special Edition quest pack.
* Fully configured DOSBox. Just click and play!
* Unofficial fixes, quests, translations and utilities that are optional to install. (Like EyeOfArgonia, a tool to maximize the view distance.

That was quite a cookie huh? Have fun.