h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It appears that, in spite of being superior in almost every other respect (4 built-in USB ports instead of 2, slightly higher processing speed, about 1.7 times as much RAM, a more sensible sound system, a *funtioning* heatsink, other stuff that isn't broken), my new laptop is even *less*-suited for actual *gaming* than my previous laptop. Unfortunately, this is my primary interest in using a computer. In particular, several games crash altogether. (I can just hear Affy laughing when he sees this. )

So, I think I'm going to have to get the old one fixed somewhere. Bah ...

Well, no, I'm not laughing. Custom fitting a PC to always work for your games of choice can be difficult.

I mean, getting all my old DOS games to work on a computer that's designed to handle the latest and greatest from the gaming companies is a personal challenge. I still can't quite get all the bugs out of Zork Nemesis on my current set up.

Heh, I know, I was just poking a bit of fun.

But, yeah, I recognize that we have approximately the same problem except turned around. Have you tried using DOSBox? I admit that this is more a different set of problems than a solution, but someone's probably put up a "guide to Zork Nemesis in DOSBox" on the web somewhere ...

I'm a huge fan of DOSBox and all that it does for me (and I have to admit that I cackled quietly to myself when I bought the latest Space Quest collection a few months back and discovered that it made ample use of the DOSBox program anyway.)

However, Zork Nemesis and other games from that era are all sitting right on this uncomfortable pinnacle of software acheivement that was cutting edge right before DOS stopped being the standard foundation upon which PCs were built. As such, while DOS box works for Zork Nemesis, Zork Grand Inquisitor, Riven, etc., it isn't exactly what I'd call "fully functional." I'm sure there's some secret combination of install instructions that I can give DOS Box to improve it, but I've not quite figured out what they'll be for my PC (to give you an idea: even my keyboard caused some problems for DOS Box. It read my : as a ], which made typing in stuff difficult until I manually went into the software and remapped how it interpreted the keys on my keyboard.)