Category:DOS


 *  For help running MS-DOS games on modern operating systems, see the DOSBox guide. 

MS-DOS is an operating system marketed by Microsoft that was released in 1981. As a result of being distributed on IBM systems during the '80s it soon became immensely successful, and the platform of choice for computer games. Both MS-DOS and its direct competitor, IBM's PC DOS (also released in 1981), originated from an OS called 86-DOS.

After the release of Windows 95 many games were still produced primarily for MS-DOS, albeit including some additional features when run under Windows. Once DirectX gained widespread support, MS-DOS was quickly abandoned by developers.

On more modern versions of Windows many MS-DOS games will not run correctly, and, just as often, many will not run at all. One popular solution for running these games correctly is the open-source emulator DOSBox.