New versions of dosbox usually figure out what how fast the computer they are emulating needs to be. Sometimes it breaks down and reverts to the default, though, which is 386/16 I think. One of them is Elder Scrolls: Arena, which most emphatically does not run on a 386. Here’s how to fix it.

Start two terminal windows. In the first one start dosbox in windowed mode and then Arena. In the other start top -R -o cpu. dosbox should be the first entry because the list is sorted by CPU use. Now press Ctrl-F12 until (1) the game runs smoothly enough or (2) CPU use reaches 100%. Then switch into full-screen mode using Alt-Return.

Notes:

• If the game still is running too slow and your CPU use was at 100% windowed, try Ctrl-F12 a few more times in full-screen. Descent, at least, seems to run at different speeds windowed and full-screen. The downside is that you can’t see precisely when you’re maxing out your CPU.
• These instructions work on a Mac with a link to the dosbox executable on the search path. They should work in Linux too.
• To adapt for Windows, press Ctrl-Alt-Del instead of top -R -o cpu. Then switch to the tab with the CPU graphs on them. Like I said, I think dosbox is single-threaded, so you probably will only be able to max out one CPU on your machine.

And now for something completely different.

I was going to post something about the long tail, but pretty much everybody has already said it. I’ll just say that Amazon still carries my favourite mouse ever, and Best Buy doesn’t.