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Patches for old DOS games
I really like to play around with old DOS games, especially through DOSBox. Although the DOSBox devs have done an excellent job and yours truly has even submitted a few patches to this wonderful open source product, there are still some games that remain troublesome because of bugs in the games themselves. If I've managed to locate and fix the defective code in the game, you'll find the patch on this page. Just download the patch, place it inside the game directory and run it (only once). Your game will then be patched and should work inside DOSBox.
The patches exist as small binary files (with a large description embedded) or as self-executing files for Windows. If you download the patch files themselves, you'll need to run them through my Patcher tool.
Note: You won't find the actual games here. They are not mine to distribute.
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Fixes a crash at the barfight in 1878.
- patch file for use with Patcher.
- executable version runs directly from Windows.
Delta V - CD version
This game's copy protection routine misfires on NT-based systems (Windows 2000, XP and Vista) even when run under DOSBox. Whether it does so or not depends on your time zone setting. This replacement executable disables that part of the copy protection (but not all -- you still need an original copy of the game). In order to use it, you will need to copy the CD to your hard drive, replace D.EXE with the one in the ZIP file below and and mount the copied CD in DOSBox.
Ghostbusters 2
Fixes a freeze in the intro when digitised sound is enabled.
- patch file for use with Patcher.
- executable version runs directly from Windows.
Omnicron Conspiracy
DOSBox does not properly call INT16/AH=01 (and INT16/AH=00) for a keystroke, which causes Omnicron Conspiracy to freeze at the intro screen. This little wrapper program fixes that. Just place OMNICRON.COM in the game directory and start the game using OMNICRON.COM instead of OMNICRON.EXE.
Note: There are two versions of Omnicron Conspiracy. One is published by Epyx, the other by ImageWorks. The latter requires the fix of INT16/AH=00, while the former doesn't (although it doesn't hurt). This has been added in version 1.1 of the patch. For more information, also check the blog posts:
- wrapper program for use inside DOSBox. Assembly language (DOS Debug) source code is also available.
PC Paint 3.1
This program does some unnecessary checks on the installation of a mouse driver. It could be fixed by relocating DOSBox' mouse driver handler, but that's overkill. You might as well use this simple patch for the executable or the TSR. The TSR is slightly less convenient as you need to run it in your DOSBox session before running PCPaint and it takes up 304 bytes of memory, but it will work for other versions of the program as well as other programs that do the same thing.
- patch file for use with Patcher.
- executable version runs directly from Windows.
- TSR program for use inside DOSBox. Assembly language (DOS Debug) source code is also available.