As mentioned in the help section, today's computers generally have trouble running these old games. Two programs can help you with that. They are DOSBox and D-Fend.
DOSBox - This is the DOS emulator itself. It runs with a bunch of operating systems and is regarded as the best DOS emulator. DOSBox has a lot of important features. The main one for me is the ability to change the Cpu Cycles. This is good because many games run at an awkward speed and changing the Cpu Cycles enables normal play. Here is a list of the shortcuts of DOSBox, taken from the README.txt file:
ALT-ENTER Go full screen and back.
CTRL-F1 Start the keymapper.
CTRL-F4 Swap mounted disk-image. Update directory cache for all drives!
CTRL-F5 Save a screenshot.(png)
CTRL-F6 Start/Stop recording sound output to a wave file.
CTRL-ALT-F7 Start/Stop recording of OPL commands.
CTRL-ALT-F8 Start/Stop the recording of raw MIDI commands.
CTRL-F7 Decrease frameskip.
CTRL-F8 Increase frameskip.
CTRL-F9 Kill dosbox.
CTRL-F10 Capture/Release the mouse.
CTRL-F11 Slow down emulation (Decrease DOSBox Cycles).
CTRL-F12 Speed up emulation (Increase DOSBox Cycles).
You will probably need the third last one for when you click outside DOSBox and click back only to see that the mouse won't move anymore. Press CTRL-F10 and it should work again. The last two are the ones I was talking about with the Cpu Cycles. The screenshot function of DOSBox is what I use to take screenshots for the site.
D-Fend - This is the tool that makes using DOSBox easier. You can run your DOS games with just DOSBox fine, but you have to do all sorts of mounting and typing, and this program makes all that go away. With D-Fend, all you have to do is locate the game .exe and setup .exe files of the game you wish to run and you are set.
The quickest way to do get a game going with D-Fend is to start off by clicking on the "Add a profile using the Profile Wizard" button which looks like a wizard's hat and is under File or pressing F2. Next type in a name for the game. Now browse for your game .exe file and setup .exe file. If the game doesn't have a setup file leave that field blank. Press "Accept all defaults" and the game should now run fine. Run it by clicking on the profile name in the main D-Fend screen.
Remember: you need to have DOSBox installed on your computer for this to work.
Enjoy these applications and let me know if you have any troubles with them by emailing me at admin[at]80sdos.com.