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Interplay Entertainment announced today they're updating many of their classic titles to support Linux. A lot of it of course is thanks to the excellent free and open source DOSBox, which allows thousands of classic to play on modern systems without much hassle.

First of the announcements was that Battle Chess 4000 is now available on Steam, and it comes straight out of the gate with builds setup for Linux too. On their Twitter, Interplay mentioned:

As part of the drive to bring our classic pool of games to an entirely new generation of gamers, we will also update our back catalogue today, providing Tux & Apple support for heavyweight titles such as Earthworm Jim, Stonekeep and Descent!

Tux and Apple being Linux and macOS if that wasn't clear.

Going over their list of games on Steam there's quite a few. Here's some that added Linux builds recently:

Worth noting that Descent 3 already had Linux support, as porter Ryan Gordon did some work back in 2020 to re-port the game along with many tech upgrades for modern Linux gaming.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: DOSBox, Retro, Steam
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Lofty Oct 14, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: foggerYou can already play those games easily on Linux with DOSBox. I don't know why they are selling those games on Steam or GOG when most of those those games can be downloaded for free, legally, at archive.org.
Ha, Archive.org is an interesting situation. There is no legal definition of 'abandonware'. But archive.org also won't listen to dmca take downs from what I've seen.

But let's be fair here. Steam is a click and play set up, and with Boxtron you can even have extras like MIDI autodetected and set up for you. Downloading things from archive.org requires the set up of dosbox, and all the settings that entails, so isn't exactly the easiest thing to do. While most of us on here can do it, for the (hopefully) plethora of new users that'll hop on board via the Steam Deck, they won't want to mess with dosbox.conf.

Great points. DosBox can be hard to setup and funky with displays/resolution/audio and controls, last time i tried it was a less than pretty experience.

I wonder if its possible to use remote-play-together on these old dosbox games via steam for two player?
Purple Library Guy Oct 14, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: foggerYou can already play those games easily on Linux with DOSBox. I don't know why they are selling those games on Steam or GOG when most of those those games can be downloaded for free, legally, at archive.org.
Ha, Archive.org is an interesting situation. There is no legal definition of 'abandonware'. But archive.org also won't listen to dmca take downs from what I've seen.

But let's be fair here. Steam is a click and play set up, and with Boxtron you can even have extras like MIDI autodetected and set up for you.
Be nice if the Steam Deck had Boxtron already installed so you could just pick that option for games using DOSBox. Actually, it'd be nice if my distro had that.
Arten Oct 14, 2021
I think they feel the money of future SteamDeck owners in the water :-)
Lofty Oct 14, 2021
Quoting: ArtenI think they feel the money of future SteamDeck owners in the water :-)

ElectricPrism Oct 15, 2021
Quoting: foggerYou can already play those games easily on Linux with DOSBox. I don't know why they are selling those games on Steam or GOG when most of those those games can be downloaded for free, legally, at archive.org.

Who would win? Free and complicated or one click installs.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 15 October 2021 at 3:55 am UTC
Phlebiac Oct 15, 2021
I loved Stonekeep around 25 years ago, though I don't recall how far I got on it...
M@GOid Oct 15, 2021
Screamer 2 is already available for Linux, huuuuuummmmm. The only arcade rally game to ever come close to the sweet Sega Rally controls, at last in my mind...

Also, MDK is already there, but only for Windows. Lets hope they release it to Linux soon.

But beware: there is plenty of people complaining about the quality of the DOSBox setup, so make sure the game you want was already bug-fixed after the launch.
jarhead_h Oct 15, 2021
Quoting: M@GOidAlso, MDK is already there, but only for Windows. Lets hope they release it to Linux soon.

It has been my understanding that Shiny suffered a catastrophic storage failure with the source code for the original MDK, so there's no fixing or updating it. This is why MDK2 got the HD treatment but not the first game.
fagnerln Oct 15, 2021
Ignition is amazing, but sadly the version available on Steam is the DOS version. The "win32" version is far superior, but if you want to play, need to find it in some yaaarrrr site. It works flawlessly on WINE
CFWhitman Oct 15, 2021
For Descent and Descent 2 you will get a nicer experience extracting the assets and using them with DXX-Rebirth.
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