Bringing your DOS games from GOG.com onto your actual DOS pc with the help of Innoextract

So you have bought a DOS game on GOG to play on your awesome 386... only to find out it's packed in a Windows-installer.
In this video, I'll show you how to unpack your game files from the Windows installer, using innoextract. And... you'll get to see some mediocre Wolfenstein 3D gameplay.
Want to try this yourself?
Innoextract can be found at constexpr.org/...
On MacOS, the easies way to get it, is through Homebrew: brew.sh/
Some free games on GOG.com you can try this with:
Jill of the Jungle: www.gog.com/en...
Tyrian 2000: www.gog.com/en...
Bio Menace: www.gog.com/en...

[@sryx]

I had no idea this project existed! Thank you so much for sharing it. I can't wait to transfer some of my gog purchases to the classic systems I've restored :)

[@ex-itguy]

Awesome! I'm glad you got something out of it!

[@Blackcrow911]

Perfect! Thank you for this! As others have said, I cant wait to bring over my Gog games to my classic Windows and Dos systems!

[@skjerk]

368?

[@ex-itguy]

Whahaha thank you for pointing that out! I think you're the first to notice! I'm Dutch, and in Dutch you say three, six-and-eighty. Kinda like old-English. ;)

[@Spacegamejunkie]

Wow, I too have a handheld DOS machine so this will be great! Thank you!

[@ex-itguy]

Awesome! I couldn't show mine on camera (apart from a photo) because it's broken. Really need to fix that thing...

[@Spacegamejunkie]

@@ex-itguy Which device is it, if you don't mind me asking?

[@ex-itguy]

@@Spacegamejunkie I've got a Powkiddy RK2023. After falling a few times, one of the shoulder buttons needs to be re-soldered though.

[@Spacegamejunkie]

@@ex-itguy OH that looks nice. Does it have a touch keyboard should you need one?

[@ex-itguy]

It doesn't have a touchscreen so I'm not using it for mouse driven games. In DOSbox you can push the left stick down to get an onscreen keyboard and access to the key mapper.

[@resilient_echoes]

Awesome idea man! Now I really feel the need to play some dungeon keeper :D

[@ex-itguy]

Do iiiiiiiiiiiit! 😄

[@bondjovi4595]

Definitely gonna play some of these gog games on my Pentium 1's with Win98. Very helpful, sir.

[@ex-itguy]

There are a few links to some free ones in the description, if you want to try it out. :)

[@davidinark]

Great tips and nice tutorial! Thanks!

[@ex-itguy]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@lucascabral6976]

Just two words: Thank you! =)

[@ex-itguy]

Thanks! Now go and have some 320x200 fun! 😄

[@km-xr5im]

More details about your DOS handheld device?

[@ex-itguy]

I've got a Powkiddy RK2023. Runs DOS games up until 1995 or so flawless. For newer stuff like Duke Nukem 3D you might need a source port. I use a source port for Doom as well since there's no weapon rotation key so I would need to map 8 keys just for weapons in DOSbox.

[@km-xr5im]

@@ex-itguy Thanks !

[@joshj88]

That’s very cool. But can’t you copy the files wholesale to a dos machine? The only restriction is you may need to burn a CD if the game has an ISO. I tried with Alone in the Dark and the disk just needed to be renamed from game.whatever to game.iso to make it work.

[@ex-itguy]

To be honest I don't have any DOS games that need that in my library. Duke Nukem 3D used to be a CD-ROM game but I can just copy the files to a DOS machine and run it. Doesn't fit on a floppy though.

[@Hieronymous-gm3vz]

@@ex-itguy If you intend to play Duke Nukem 3D in Dosbox, that game requires the CD-ROM to be inserted or an equivalent image-mounted ISO or CUE file, or else the game will not start. Duke Nukem 3D and its mission packs (Caribbean, Duke It Out in DC, and Nuclear Winter) also have this requirement. It's heavily recommended to play Duke 3D in Eduke32 or other modern source ports, such as Raze, to avoid this issue.

[@ex-itguy]

I've got Duke Nukem 3D Atomic from GOG, and it runs fine in DOSBox without an image mounted.

[@joshj88]

@@ex-itguy Duke never needed the CD rom to play it runs entirely off the hard drive and is a poor example of CD rom software. You should try something like Wing Commander 2 or a LucasArts adventure game released after 1995

[@ex-itguy]

I know, that was a reaction to Hieronymous-gm3vz who said Duke3d had that issue. To test it, I just bought Wing Commander 3 (for sale now). Extracted it and indeed did not get an executable besides DOSBox. There was a very big DATA.DAT file. Guess what? According to the file command, that file contains an iso9660 filesystem. It's way to large to be a CD-ROM, but if I remember correctly, WC3 contained 3 CD's, so I guess they combined the 3 discs into a single image. Mounted it with imgmount, ran wc3 and it worked! Too bad if you'd like to burn that one on CD though. You'd have to figure out yourself which file in the image goes to what disc.

[@antzale]

I tried to run innoextract but nothing happened (windows). Am I supposed to run it in dosbox or what?

[@ex-itguy]

You run it on your OS to extract the files from the installer, just like the unzip command works extract files from a zip file.

[@antzale]

I’m really sorry but I’m a dum dum. I run it from dos prompt or what?

[@ex-itguy]

@antzale it's not a DOS tool, but if you're in Windows then from a cmd prompt indeed

[@GoodOlKuro]

What if you installed Windows in a VM and downloaded from gog over it?

[@ex-itguy]

Sure, that works. That would be quite a bit more work though. ;)

[@GoodOlKuro]

@@ex-itguy Well, you could use the VM for other stuff too. Save the state. Do stuff. If something goes wrong, load the old state. :)

[@ex-itguy]

True, but if you just want to copy the game files it can be a bit much. Perfectly fine solution though, not saying it isn't. ;)

[@scottiepal3029]

Hi. We like links to get stuff so we can look into it. You didn’t even put the price or where to get it

[@ex-itguy]

Innoextract is free, and literally the first hit in Google. I'll add some links to free games on gog.com to test it

[@ex-itguy]

I've updated the description with some links.

[@scottiepal3029]

OK, did you get the full version of Wolfenstein 3-D? I am looking for that version.

[@ex-itguy]

Yes, when you buy it from gog.com you'll get the full version including Spear of Destiny.

[@ex-itguy]

It's on sale now for €1,49 www.gog.com/en/game/wolfenstein_3d