DOSBox Pure for RetroArch aims to simplify classic MS-DOS gaming

YouTube user Psyraven—who is apparently Bernard Schilling himself—created this video as an introductory demo for DOSBox Pure.

Recently, indie developer Bernard Schilling published a new fork of the DOSBox classic-gaming emulator. If you're not familiar with DOSBox, it's a way to play classic MS-DOS games from the 1980s and 1990s on a modern Windows, Mac, or Linux PC. DOSBox Pure is an attempt to simplify and eliminate some of the donkeywork involved in actually loading and playing games in DOSBox itself.

DOSBox Pure isn’t a standalone app

For those among us who aren't already intimately familiar with retrogaming—even those of us who lived through the period when those games were new—it isn't necessarily the most welcoming scene to get into. Although DOSBox Pure is specifically trying to alleviate that, it falls afoul of the same nest of expectations of what "everybody already knows," and I found it rather frustrating digging all the way to the bottom of "what is and how can I make it work."

The very first thing you'll need to know is that DOSBox Pure itself runs underneath the broader RetroArch application. RetroArch, in its own words, is "a frontend for emulators, game engines, and media players." DOSBox Pure is a "core" for RetroArch—meaning, when properly installed, it serves as one of the engines that RetroArch can use to run an older game.

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