Playing on Steam Deck

[jeffrey]

#7893

Hey all,
I really enjoy playing and setting up configs for DOS games on my laptop – all my real hardware has been donated or sold in the last few years, though I’d love to have the machine I had as a kid. Nostalgia abound!

For modern gaming I have fallen in love with my Steam Deck – it’s a very capable linux machine at its core, so I imagine DOSBox and the like run fairly well. I plan to document my adventures here of trying to play DOS games on the deck, and happy to discuss with anyone else who’s tried. Will it be terrible? Maybe!

[patrick_wd]

#7894

While I don’t have a deck specifically, I do all my gaming (including DOS stuff) on Linux, and it works great.

For best results, you’ll want a version of DOSBox that uses SDL2. I recommend dosbox-staging or dosbox-x, both of them are quite good. The main challenge will just be using the dosbox keymapper to set up usable control profiles for different games so you can play without using a keyboard.

There’s also 86Box if you want a maximally authentic experience, including setting up the BIOS and installing DOS itself. I’m not sure if it supports controller mappings though, so it might not be as suitable for deck use.

[jeffrey]

#7926

Thank you! I like 86Box in theory, I’ve tinkered a bit on my laptop. Great suggestions.

[watchful]

#8401

There is DOSEmu as well, though I haven’t tried it in a while.

[trumad]

#9084

I’ve had good luck using DOSBox Pure via retroarch. It’s got controls profiles set up for lots of games, so it feels almost as plug & play as a console emulation experience.

https://docs.libretro.com/library/dosbox_pure/