Some DOS programs have compatibility issues on newer operating systems and hardware. Utilities have been arranged into categories to help you play DOS games on almost any computer.

If you're still using DOS (or a version of Windows that has a DOS Mode), the only compatibility issue may be older games running too fast. The earliest DOS programs don't adjust their own speed because the IBM XT only came in one clock speed (4.77 MHz), so they will attempt to run as quickly as possible regardless of the speed of your CPU. Later programs calculated the CPU's clock speed so that they would run at the same speed on any computer, but some programs reserved too little space for the result of the calculation, resulting in an overflow on CPUs faster than 200 MHz. Slowdown utilities can be used to reduce the speed that program instructions are executed until they run at the correct speed.

Windows XP can play some DOS games, though SoundBlaster music and effects are sometimes missing. A SoundBlaster emulator is sometimes all that's needed to run games perfectly in Windows XP. Some games just won't play properly in Windows XP, and Windows Vista and non-Windows operating systems won't play DOS games at all, so DOS must either be emulated, or a real copy of DOS must be loaded in a virtual environment. Emulation/Virtualization software can be used to play DOS games on almost any modern computer.

Some DOS games have had their source code released, so I'm including programming languages that some of those games were written in.