The ScooterBlog

Chalk this one up to things I want to try in the very near future. One of my favorite old PC games was Wing Commander: Privateer. Long before it was cool to be a “sandbox” game, this game let you have the freedom to build your ship, ally with whomever you wanted, as well as complete and execute mission based combat, all within the classic Wing Commander space combat engine. It was a well done, easy to play but very challenging game. They did even eventually port this to Windows XP, although the original DOS port is what I grew up on and loved.

So, now with dual core processors measured in speeds a hundred times higher, how do you play a game without speed throttling? With Dosbox, the DOS Game emulator! The Wing Commander News site has posted directions on how to configure Dosbox to let you play the entire Wing Commander Series on modern machines in their initial glory.

Not only that, but there’s a nice looking remake out there which runs the original story and code in a new OpenGL way, which can through this Slashdot article from way back yonder (and hopefully it works with Vista). I’ll give a full report on it when I give it a shot.