SOME people listen to music while others take a long drive, but if something's really bothering me, I take a trip down memory lane via the magic of disk operating system (DOS)games.

You can still play DOS games like Prince of Persia on current PCs by downloading freeware which emulates the old x86 architecture.

Despite the fact that the old and new x86 architecture are very similar, there are two things which are wrong with the new architecture. Although Intel’s front-side bus dates back 20 years, today’s microprocessors are just too fast to run retro games due to the speed difference.

Take Prince of Persia, for example. Even if you manage to get a retro copy of DOS, say DOS Version 3.01, the music is off beat, the flames are flickering at a wrong pace and your character’s acting like he had too much Red Bull. There’s no finesse, and finesse is the key to winning those type of retro games. It’s hopeless.

Which is why I keep telling my mother I need my old Intel 80286-based PC. I “need” it to play my retro DOS games. If the action’s a bit too fast for you at

12 megahertz, you can “cheat” and slow down your opponents by underclocking it to back to stock 8MHz. Sure the graphics is basically made up of flying polygons, and there’s no eye-candy except from the box or start-up screen. But the storyline is so compelling, it overwhelms you. The problem with today’s games is that it lacks soul. No amount of eye candy can save a game if it doesn’t have a soul.

There is still hope if you don’t have an old PC lying around. And hope is in the form of a software called DOSBox (http://www.dosbox.com/). What this little piece of software does is that it emulates the old x86 architecture and if you find the command line a little odd, you can even have a front-end like DOSShell (http://www.loonies.narod.ru/) take over the trivial part for you.

While these two software may be freeware, most of those retro DOS games aren’t. Now I’m going to assume you actually owned a copy, but which is now lost somewhere in your parent’s home. You can download a copy by searching for it online.

Once you get the nits and grits out of the way, turn off the lights, reduce your screen resolution and play the game in full VGA (video graphics array) glory!

Of course, this little tip only applies if you have had actually experienced playing DOS games in your youth. Unlike most newer games, experience means everything to retro DOS games.