Every year around Christmas I try to find a piece of retro technology to feature on the channel, and this time I landed on something for fans of 80s and 90s PC games. The eXoDOS project is an attempt to make nearly the entire history of DOS gaming accessible with a single click. With that project largely done, the group is now focusing in on the Windows 95/98 era with eXoWin9X.
In my latest retro video I take a look at both running on a lower end Mini PC.
Similar to projects like Emudeck, the eXo project has its entire library of games preconfigured and ready to run mostly with just a single click to get going. Scripts for each game determine the best emulator (either Dosbox or 86box) along with the best settings for optimal performance.
ExoDOS is downloaded from the Retro-Exo site and can be installed either as a massive full archive or as a much smaller “lite” version that pulls down individual games on demand. The full collection weighs in at well over 600 GB, but the lighter option lets games download as you play them, after which they stay local. Setup is handled through a batch file, and once installation finishes everything runs through LaunchBox. The result is a browsable library of roughly 7,600 DOS games, searchable by title, publisher, or hardware features. This is mostly a Windows-centric project although there are some patches to get it working on Linux.
To see how well this works on modest hardware, I ran everything on a midrange mini PC with a Ryzen 6650H processor and 16 GB of RAM (compensated affiliate link). That turned out to be more than sufficient, even for titles that originally required specialized hardware.
One example is Wing Commander II, which in this setup includes the CD-ROM edition with speech and Roland MT-32 audio. Selecting the MT-32 option recreates a sound experience that was out of reach for many players in the early 1990s, when the Roland synth hardware was expensive and uncommon. For those leaning in on the nostalgia, Soundblaster FM synthesis is also an option.
What stood out immediately is how quickly these games launch. Game controllers work out of the box, manuals are included as PDFs, and supplemental materials like box art and disk images are bundled alongside the games.
The archive also functions as a memory jogger. Games that are half-remembered from BBS downloads or shareware disks tend to be here, including titles like Night Raid, a Paratrooper-style game that circulated widely on BBS’s in the early 1990s. For adventure fans, the collection includes both floppy and CD-ROM versions of games like Space Quest IV and many others from Sierra and Lucasarts.
ExoDOS also organizes games by technical capabilities, including a playlist of DOS titles that supported early glide/3Dfx 3D acceleration. Running something like Battle Arena Toshinden with emulated 3dfx support shows how well these setups scale, even if performance varies slightly depending on host hardware and settings. The important part is that the environment detects and configures the right components automatically.
Alongside ExoDOS is the newer project called ExoWin9x, which applies the same philosophy to Windows 95 and Windows 98 games. These titles run inside carefully optimized virtual machines that avoid duplicating full Windows installations for every game. Instead, system changes are swapped in as needed, saving space and simplifying management. At the moment the collection covers games from the mid-1995 and 1996, with more planned for the future.
Running Windows-era games like Beavis and Butt-Head: Virtual Stupidity or Wing Commander IV highlights how much effort has gone into preservation beyond just making the games start. Virtual CD-ROMs are fully browsable, bonus videos are intact, and even obscure developer easter eggs remain accessible. Different emulators are used depending on what a game needs, and the system quietly selects the appropriate one.
Downloading these projects can only be done over BitTorrent given the huge file sizes involved with each. But once it’s done, it’s done.
What ties all of this together is the focus on removing friction. These projects prioritize playing over configuring, while still preserving the original context of the software. Instead of reconstructing old setups from memory, the experience becomes as simple as browsing, clicking, and playing.