Infinite emulation

When all content is digitized and free, it might feel a little like this: being able to play PC and Mac games that gripped your attention 10 and 20 years ago on the same platform.

Item 1: DosBox, a limited x86/DOS emulation environment that is focused on the gaming experience. Or more precisely, DosBox plus Thexder, the Sierra Online-published transforming mech warrior shoot-em-up side-scroller. Man, I used to play the Apple II version of this for hours when I was in high school.

Item 2: Abuse, a shooting side scroller published by Bungie in the mid-90s and now available on Unix and Mac platforms. Abuse and Marathon (Bungie’s other early hit, before they got bought by Microsoft and did Halo) together were responsible for many, many lost evenings when Lisa was in grad school.

Both now run on Mac OS X (as well as other platforms), and both are a pretty good nostalgia blast.