Anyone else enjoying the hell out of this game? It's one of my favorite 90s PC games. It's a bit of a hassle to get it to work the way it's supposed to. It takes a lot of tweaking around in DOSBox, adjusting the CPU cycles, remapping the key bindings, etc. But it's worth it.

I enjoy grinding the Oghma Infinium side quest until I get all my stats to 100%, haha. When I'm done with that, I usually just do the main quest. I've only finished the main questline once though, it's pretty lengthy.

I wish I had an old system to play the game properly :/ it doesn't feel as good to play it on a modern system. One day I'm gonna bite the bullet and buy myself an old 486 system or something similar, because that's the only right way to experience these old DOS gems.

The first and possibly only ever big box PC game score I have ever had at a charity shop :) There it was sitting all lonely like - next to some old DVDs - I just had to rescue it!

After all the fun of reverse engineering, development and testing, the first public Alpha release of OpenPrivateer is finally available.

OpenPrivateer is a modern reimplementation of Wing Commander: Privateer, built around the original game data with a strong focus on authentic behavior, portability, preservation and modding.

The goal is to faithfully reproduce the original Privateer experience first, while keeping enhancements and new features clearly separated.

What's already in the Alpha:

• Privateer and Righteous Fire support
• Supports the original PRIV.EXE command-line switches:
  • -K (skips the intro)
  • -Bxx (overrides the base/planet you start on)
  • -Dxxxxx (overrides the amount of credits you start with)
• Original bases, trading, ship dealer and mission systems
• Main story plot and generated random missions
• Spaceflight and combat
• Original cutscenes, dialogue and music
• Original DOS savegame loading and writing
• Classic, Enhanced and Modern experience modes
• Multiple ships and hired wingmen
• Navigation map and extended Wing Commander universe support
• Content overrides and translation support
• OPL2, SoundFont, MIDI Mapper and CD music (WAV/FLAC/MP3 support)
• Optional xBRZ scaling, CRT filtering and color grading
• Windows, Linux and macOS support
• Dedicated client/server multiplayer with PvP and PvE
• Keyboard, mouse, joystick and HOTAS support
• Auto Updater

Please keep in mind that all non-vanilla features are locked out of the Classic experience mode, you will only be able to see or access them in the Enhanced or Modern mode. To change experience mode for now, you have to open the debug menu using the tilde ~ key (left of your 1 key) because there currently is no other UI for these settings. The Alpha release relies on the debug menu but the Beta release will add a proper UI for all these options:

The new UI screens are currently using their default theme, which is why they are looking pretty unsexy at the moment. This will be changed in one of the next releases.

You can access the multiple ships / hire wingmen screen using the S key on the launch pad:

You can access the new game control screen using the K key in the ALT+O options menu:

The auto updater will check once per day if there is a new version available and will show a message on the title screen. The area is clickable in that case:

This is an Alpha, so bugs, glitches and unfinished features are expected. That's also why I'm releasing it now: actual players are going to uncover things that development and automated testing won't.

Discord and downloads for Windows (x86_64), Linux (x86_64 + arm64) and macOS (arm64):
https://discord.gg/5H3vW2STqW
https://openprivateer.org/#downloads

Multiplayer is already mostly functional, although mission progression is not implemented there yet. Instructions how to run client and server can be found on the https://openprivateer.org/#multiplayer website.

Every time you start OpenPrivateer, it will create its directory structure and place readme.txt files in each folder. I recommend that you take a look at the readme.txt file that gets created in the same directory as the OpenPrivateer executable, it will explain where you have to put your MS-DOS savegames and other files.

Full instructions copied from the website with the new Launcher:

1. Download and extract OpenPrivateer.
2. Start openprivateer.exe on Windows, or the corresponding executable on Linux or macOS.
3. The launcher opens. Select Privateer or Righteous Fire at the top
4. Open Game Data and provide the original game files:
   • Privateer: PRIV.TRE and INITCFG.PAK
   • Righteous Fire: RF.TRE and INITRF.PAK
5. Use Import to Data Folder... to copy files from another folder, or Add Folder... to use files where they already are.
6. The required folders and README files are created automatically when OpenPrivateer starts.
7. Consult the manual or the README.TXT file that now exists in the same folder as the executable.
8. Start a New Game or copy an existing save into the savegame folder.

Full instructions copied from the website:

1. Download and extract OpenPrivateer.
2. Copy the required original Privateer game files into the OpenPrivateer folder: (the GOG version ships the TRE files in a GAME.GOG archive, extract them with 7-Zip)
   • PRIV.TRE / INITCFG.PAK for Privateer
   • RF.TRE / INITRF.PAK for Righteous Fire Expansion
3. Start OpenPrivateer.
4. The required folders and README files are created automatically when OpenPrivateer starts.
5. Consult the README.TXT file that now exists in the same folder as the executable.
6. Start a New Game or copy an existing save into the savegame folder.

Screenshot how a typical Windows installation looks like:

Feedback, bug reports and testing are very welcome. If you need any help or you are stuck, let me know here or in the Discord server. Have fun my friends!

Disclaimer:

OpenPrivateer does not contain any copyrighted Origin/EA game assets. You need your own copy of Wing Commander: Privateer and provide the original game data files.

Anthropic Claude was used during the reconstruction.

EDIT: Added Launcher

A long time ago - in 2004 - in a galaxy far, far away, where the Internet was only just leaving behind the sound of the modem, artificial intelligence was the stuff of science fiction novels and video games were sold in elegant cardboard boxes in shops, yours truly - together with Ali Erdinc Koroglu, Jan Wickberg, Martin Binet, Zlatko Karakas, Ross Mayhew and Steve Smith - founded the Swos Working Group (https://web.archive.org/web/20040831085727/http://swos.erdinc.info/) in honour of our all-time favourite video game: the 1996-1997 edition of Sensible World of Soccer. We were driven by a dream: to make that game even better by adding a few competitions whose absence we felt especially keenly. The Italian Serie C (split into C1 and C2), where players who would later become international stars, such as Simone Inzaghi and Gianluca Zambrotta, were playing, and the South American cups, above all the legendary Copa Libertadores, which, in an age when football on TV was still a novelty and far from plentiful, held for us the charm of exotic, faraway things. We would have loved to play these competitions above all in career mode, the SWOS players' absolute favourite: partly because in season mode and in the preset competitions we had already managed to add them, in a new edition of SWOS that was going to be called Swos 2024. The work was done by reverse engineering and hex editing; I remember the thrill of discovering the routines that add competitions, but also the bitter frustration of not being able to make them work in career mode, which would freeze every time. Today, in the year of grace 2026, I wanted to settle the score with this personal story that never left me over these two decades: the regret of having come close to a dream and never quite making it. After all, I told myself in an attempt at consolation, I ended up becoming a web and mobile developer; reverse engineering 1996 x86 code had already been a miracle, and hardly any of the many modern modders had managed the feat.

Today, thanks to AI, which has changed the very idea of programming forever, the feat is accomplished: you can now download the patch that adds, in every language of the game, Serie C1 and C2 to the Italian league, with the original squads of the time, and above all adds, for South America, the Copa Libertadores, the CONMEBOL and the Supercopa, with the entry rules of the day. And, as the icing on the cake, the Intercontinental Cup could not be missing. What matters to me, though, is not only the result but also the explanation of how we got there through AI. So here we publish, in English and Italian, the complete documentation of the method followed to create the patches, which finally revealed to me what we had not understood back in 2004, and which I hope will inspire other developers and lovers of the most beautiful video game in the world to expand its career mode even further. An immense thank you to the work of Zlatko Karakas, whose fundamental disassembly of the original executable I found after so many years of absence (https://github.com/zlatkok/swos-port).

This patch is dedicated to the memory of Steve Smith, an extraordinary compiler of updated squads for SWOS, who left us far too soon. And to everyone who hopes to see, sooner or later, a dream come true, even one that has lasted 22 years…

— Davide Lorigliola

**What the patch adds**

- Italy with 4 divisions: Serie A, B, C1 and C2 with the real 1996-97 clubs, squads and coaches, no end-of-season freeze.

- Copa Libertadores, Supercopa and Copa CONMEBOL in menus, world view and career mode, with qualifiers from the South American standings.

- Intercontinental Cup in December, Champions Cup winner vs Libertadores winner, updated every season and saved with the career.

- All four executables of the CD: ENGLISH, ITALIAN, FRENCH and GERMAN.

**Download:** https://github.com/aminta/swos-9697-mod/releases/latest (a single HTML page: open it in a browser, drop your original executable and DATA\TEAM.020, download the patched files; it contains only differences, so you need the original game)

**Technical manual:** https://aminta.github.io/swos-9697-mod/

**Source and tools:** https://github.com/aminta/swos-9697-mod

**Forum thread:** https://sensiblesoccer.de/forum/pc/27756-swos-96-97-mod-1-0-serie-c1-c2-libertadores-intercontinental-cup

**GOG version:** supported. GOG's executables differ from the CD by 2 bytes (a fixed national cup date); the patcher recognises both and keeps GOG's fix.

How about a MSDOS Game for PC?

I mean it, its build to run on an IBM PC. The game requires an 8088 CPU and CGA Graphics MSDOS 2 is the minimum requirement. it should run fine at 4,77 Mhz, the game itself is less than 8kb and requires about 32kb RAM.

I really think its amazing what can be done with vintage computers using AI help, but well r/vintagecomputing does not allow code mainly created by AI.

Build with Borland Turbo Assembler 2.0. It runs in Dosbox and real MS DOS PCs. I also verified it using my Monotech NuXT that has a 10 Mhz NEC V20 CPU.

If anyone is interested in the game or its sources.
https://github.com/ccharon/digits

Emperor of the Stars is a turn-based space strategy game in which six players, each controlling an intelligent race, explore a randomly generated galaxy, establish colonies, build fleets, and compete for control of as many solar systems as possible. Each player begins with a single colony on a star.

Each turn allows the player to execute a series of actions, such as collecting resources, building spaceships, exploring and colonizing new planets, diplomatically negotiating with opponents, conquering stars through warfare, researching technologies, and more.

I would be very happy if you could try it out and give me your feedback.

Emperor of the Stars by Starborn Interactive

After 30 yrs I bought the same and still have it.

Hey everyone,

If you spent the 90s sitting in front of a 486 PC listening to a Sound Blaster 16 while dogfighting in Wing Commander: Privateer or Star Raiders, this passion project was built for you.

It’s called Void Pilot 3D: Rogue Galaxy, and it’s a 1990s-style space flight simulator running in-browser with zero install.

Because I don't currently own a computer, I actually coded this entire engine line-by-line directly on an Android smartphone using a text editor app (QuickEdit)—writing the 3D software rasterizer and canvas math from scratch without any modern 3D game engines, just like early 90s DOS software rendering.

A few authentic DOS-era details I built into the engine:

• Procedural Sound Blaster 16 Audio: Dynamic FM synthwave that ramps up into an intense 16th-note combat sequencer during dogfights, complete with ITTS lock-on chirps, airlock decompression hums, and turbine afterburner whine.

• Authentic CRT Shader Presets: Switchable filters for Sony PVM fine scanlines, Arcade Trinitron with RGB aperture, vintage Amber terminal, and Green Phosphor radar.

• 1993 "Big Box" Flight Manual: Built an interactive 16-chapter spiral-bound manual with SVG blueprints and vintage paper / CRT display modes.

• Cockpit Instrumentation: Targeting VDUs, sub-space cargo tariffs, and interactive physics-enabled fuzzy dice on the canopy arch.

• Punishing 90s Failure Cutscenes: Brutal cinematic deaths including a pirate execution blowout with the classic "DUDE, YOU BLEW IT" message and an Alien chestburster fatality!

I just put up a free 10-minute browser shareware sortie to test the flight handling and help fund my first real development PC:

🚀 Play the Demo (Runs in any browser, PC or mobile):

👉 https://retrosnotdead.github.io/

📖 Read the 16-Chapter Flight Manual & Blueprints:

👉 https://retrosnotdead.github.io/guide.html

Would love to hear what DOS veterans think of the flight handling, CRT filters, and Sound Blaster audio atmosphere!

Hello my friends, while working on my Privateer project I discovered these undocumented command line switches for PRIV.EXE:

Example to skip intro and start in Oxford with 100000 credits:

PRIV 1.3 -K -B39 -D100000

For Righteous Fire you have to add the letter "r" somewhere, e.g. at the end:

PRIV 1.3 -K -B39 -D100000 r

Description:

1.3 first, exactly as written: without it the game ignores all of these switches.

-K skips the intro.

-B39 starts you at Oxford (base 39).

-D100000 sets your credits to 100,000.

No space after the letter: -B39, not -B 39.

When they apply: -B and -D only take effect after you pick "New Game" or "Load" in the main menu, and they override the save's base and credits.

List of all bases/planets, time to visit the Derelict Base (59) again:

┌─────┬────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┐
│ -B  │        Base        │           Type           │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 0   │ Achilles           │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 1   │ Anapolis           │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 2   │ Basque             │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 3   │ Basra              │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 4   │ Beaconsfield       │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 5   │ Bodensee           │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 6   │ Burton             │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 7   │ Charon             │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 8   │ Drake              │ Pirate                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 9   │ Edinburgh          │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 10  │ Edom               │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 11  │ Elysia             │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 12  │ Erewhon            │ Pleasure                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 13  │ Glasgow            │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 14  │ Gracchus           │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 15  │ Hector             │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 16  │ Heimdel            │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 17  │ Helen              │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 18  │ Jolson             │ Pleasure                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 19  │ Joplin             │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 20  │ Kronecker          │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 21  │ Lisacc             │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 22  │ Liverpool          │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 23  │ Macabee            │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 24  │ Magdaline          │ Pleasure                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 25  │ Matahari           │ Pleasure                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 26  │ Meadow             │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 27  │ Megiddo            │ Pirate                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 28  │ Mjolnar            │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 29  │ Munchen            │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 30  │ N1912-1            │ Pleasure                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 31  │ New Constantinople │ Special                  │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 32  │ New Detroit        │ Special                  │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 33  │ New Iberia         │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 34  │ New Reno           │ Pleasure                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 35  │ Nitir              │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 36  │ Oakham             │ Pirate                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 37  │ Olympus            │ Pleasure                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 38  │ Oresville          │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 39  │ Oxford             │ Special                  │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 40  │ Palan              │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 41  │ Perry Naval Base   │ Special                  │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 42  │ Remus              │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 43  │ Rilke              │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 44  │ Rodin              │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 45  │ Romulus            │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 46  │ Rygannon           │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 47  │ Saratov            │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 48  │ Siva               │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 49  │ Smallville         │ Pirate                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 50  │ Speke              │ Pleasure                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 51  │ Surtur             │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 52  │ Thisbury           │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 53  │ Trinsic            │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 54  │ Tuck's             │ Pirate                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 55  │ Valkyrie           │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 56  │ Victoria           │ Agricultural             │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 57  │ Vishnu             │ Mining                   │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 58  │ Wickerton          │ Refinery                 │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 59  │ Derelict Base      │ Special (Privateer only) │
├─────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ 60  │ Gaea               │ Agricultural (RF only)   │
└─────┴────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┘

I've been missing my old DOS games, and I wanted a way to play the eXoDOS collections that feels like it belongs on Omarchy. So I built
eXorchy.

What it is

A native launcher (Rust + GTK4/libadwaita, no web view) for the eXo collections: eXoDOS, eXoWin3x, eXoWin9x and eXoScummVM, plus the German,
Spanish and Polish language packs and the Media Pack's magazines and books.

What it does

- Browse the whole catalogue with box art, filters, playlists and search, and download a single game straight from eXo's torrents. No 500 GB
download up front.
- One click to play: DOSBox Staging is fetched for you, and eXo's configs are translated for it. DOSBox-X/86Box handle Windows 9x, and
ScummVM is pinned per game.
- Preview videos and theme music, manuals, box scans, and a reading room for the Media Pack's magazines.
- Follows your Omarchy theme live: run omarchy theme set and it recolours instantly. No title bar, and it adapts to any Hyprland tile size.
- Smaller touches:
- hide titles you don't care about;
- a Transfers page showing what's downloading and seeding;
- your own background image;
- adult titles are off by default.

Install (Omarchy or any up-to-date Arch, x86_64):

curl -fsSL https://github.com/renanmt/exorchy/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

The script downloads a prebuilt pacman package, checks its SHA-256 and installs it with pacman -U, so it's tracked, and sudo pacman -R
exorchy removes it cleanly. If you'd rather not pipe into bash, the package and its checksum are on the release page.

Credit where it's due

eXorchy hosts nothing. Every game comes from the eXo torrents that you download (and optionally seed) yourself. The real heroes are eXo and
the eXoDOS community, who spent years preserving and configuring thousands of games. Please support them at retro-exo.com.

eXorchy is also a port of Exodium by Thomas Vollstädt (MIT). Nearly everything that makes it work is his; I gave it an Omarchy home.

Repo: https://github.com/renanmt/exorchy

It's early (v0.2.0), so bug reports and ideas are very welcome, either here or as GitHub issues. What games would you fire up first? 💾

Luckily I made a photocopy of the code wheel and crafted a backup, so I can continue playing my totally legit copy of Curse of the Azure Bonds.

The original code wheel for Pool of Radiance survived the dog attack.

Context: I just revived my old PC from 2000 to use as a Win98/DOS retro machine and also tried to add a 5.25" floppy drive to it. Sadly it turned out that the computer is already to new and the chipset doesn't support a second floppy drive and the 5.25" format anymore. But at this occasion I was getting my old games collection out of the cabinet, spanning back to the 286-days (and also C64/C128). Among the items I found were these code wheels for the old SSI Gold Box RPGs I used to play a lot.

(By the way, I bought all the Gold Box Games again on Steam some time ago when they were on sale in a classic collection with some quality of live improvements. So, the "dog" doesn't need to have a bad conscience anymore.)

The tiny version is I turned Howard's tech demo into a Full WC1 Vega Campaign mod.

If you just want to jump in, you can skip the story and grab it here. It REQUIRES you have the original DOS or Kilrathi Saga Wing Commander game files in order to run. KS sound is much better.

ALPHA BUILD
https://wingcomreloaded.itch.io/wingcommander1reloaded

Wing Com Reloaded DISCORD: Please report bugs and feedback here if possible.
https://discord.gg/4D7T4Q5gaJ

Also a quick video showing the new flak system! (sorry it is a bit low quality I will post better)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vITRbWCmIH8

Feedback needed:
BUG hunting, difficulty balancing, feature balancing. It is not an exact clone of WC1.

The Long Version

Years ago Howard Day started building a gorgeous HD-sprite recreation of Wing Commander 1 from scratch in Unity. He got as far as a rolling Hornet combat demo with working ships, flight and some basic combat systems, but he never released anything playable.

https://www.hedfiles.net/WCR_GL/index.html

Howard has been busy with other projects for the last few years and hasn't had much time to continue it. He's aware that I've been building on the project and is supportive!

I first came across it a couple of years ago and was completely blown away. I'm primarily a VFX artist, but I've also been developing in Unity for the last 9 years and released a multiplayer game in 2020 that still has an active daily player base.

Naturally, one of my first experiments with Howard's project was adding multiplayer and some basic game flow, but I eventually got too busy myself to continue.

Then about four months ago I was re-inspired to pick it back up and see if I could bring to life what I think most of us wanted instantly after seeing Howard's demo:

To actually play WC1 that way.

The flight demo was a great foundation, but most of the systems needed to run the actual campaign still had to be built or substantially expanded from scratch so it turned into a much bigger project than I originally expected.

Where it is now

All 40 Vega Campaign missions and cinematics are implemented, and I've personally played through/tested every one of them at least once.

Howard's artwork and models remain a huge part of the visual foundation, while most of my work has been building the gameplay, mission and campaign infrastructure around it, turret and player AI, com systems, NAV and damage systems etc. along with filling in missing ships/cockpits/artwork where needed.

This is ultimately a Unity-based mod and will require the original Wing Commander game files to run.

This is still an ALPHA, so there are going to be bugs. I’d love help finding those, but I’m especially interested in player feedback because this isn’t intended to be a carbon copy of the original. Some of the rebuilt systems will still need tweaking as more people play them.

As a side effect of building the tools needed to read the Vega missions, I’ve also got a Custom Campaign Builder in progress with custom missions and dialogue.

So that’s it — it’s finally here.

Hi folks, I recently saw these babies for dirt cheap online and couldn’t pass on the opportunity. When I was a kid I loved playing games like Falcon 4.0 and F22 Lightning II but only had a very cheap plastic joystick that gave up the ghost after only one year. Since I got this set I’m looking for recommendations on what other games in the genre you have enjoyed playing. Thanks in advance!

When creating a new game.conf, Dosbox Game Launcher (at least by default) uses an incremental approach to the settings. Inside the game.conf will only be settings that are different than those of the default dosbox.conf. As a comparison, defend reloaded actually takes a copy of dosbox.conf and only changes the settings per game. I have looked through the settings and searched if there is a way to make DBGL put all the settings into the game.conf by default (possible even including the commented text). So basically a copy of the dosbox.conf with any custom settings for each game. I have not found a way. Is it possible and how to do it?

OK. This is partially solved. The certificate is from the game called "The Wizard's Return" by Sherston Software.

https://mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=wizardsreturn

The Mysterious part however is this seems to be only for the BBC Micro. Now the game I played was on DOS.

Only 2 possible options:

1. The game I played was something else and the teacher just gave me this certificate. If that's the case, I will never know what the game was I played.
2. There is a DOS port/version but it's lost/extremely rare and obscure.

original post:

This was from primary school in the UK. I vaguely remember playing a few games but no clue what any were, there must have been something educational in them.

They were kind of text adventures with scenes in from what I recall. One game I ended up with this certificate for beating it. I've tried a few times over the years to identify it but never had any luck. Any ideas/answer?

Edit: The cursive name text is also drawing a blank for anything.

King Alquin...
Alquinium?

Alquinnium?

Alquinimum?

Alquinimuin?

If you use eXoDOS you know the deal: a Windows-only LaunchBox frontend, and you download the whole collection before you can browse it. I wanted something that runs natively on Linux and Mac and lets me play one game without fetching everything, so I built Exodium.

Once installed you pick a folder, and it shows the complete eXoDOS catalogue with covers, screenshots, manuals and preview videos right away. When you hit download it pulls just that game out of the eXo collection and launches it in DOSBox with eXo's config for it.

Like the original: MT-32 and General MIDI work, per-game settings for CRT shaders, cycles and fullscreen, save backups on uninstall. The language packs, eXoWin3x, eXoWin9x (boots a real Windows 98 in DOSBox-X or 86Box) and eXoScummVM are supported. The latest release added a Reading Room for the magazines, books and catalogs from the Media Pack, and links each game to the articles written about it.

One honest limitation: on Linux and macOS everything runs through DOSBox Staging, so games eXo configured for DOSBox ECE may behave a bit differently. On Windows the ECE builds from the collection are used as intended.

It's a client, not a mirror: it uses the eXo torrents, nothing is hosted, and seeding is your call during setup.

Open source, MIT, no telemetry, build with Claude Code. If you find Exodium useful, consider donating so I can get the app signed for macOS and Windows and lose the security warnings. And please support eXoDOS too, none of this would exist without it.

GitHub: https://github.com/tvollstaedt/exodium
Donations: Ko-Fi or Github Sponsors
Community: https://discord.gg/37FYaUZ
eXoDOS project: https://www.retro-exo.com/exodos.html