That honestly sounds amazing. Imagine booting into something like a grub menu that's just a list of classic games.

I basically had this setup back in the day. I don't really know how I ended up with it, I was 7 at the time and none of it was intentional - but my bootloader had two entries: I could boot into Windows 98, or I could boot into Worms.

▲

Dwedit 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's a similar idea, but that's a DOS menu. At the point when the menu appears, MS-DOS 7.1 has already been loaded.

▲

tetrisgm 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Stupid question but... would bundling the binary with an ASM port of something that could run this technically make it possible to run without the OS?

I realize this is basically doing docker for DOS games and incredibly stupid, I'm just curious about the thought experiment

	▲	Xirdus 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well, the "ASM port of something that could run this" would be the OS...

▲

dale_glass 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Probably your parents setting it up?

As far as I know, Worms is a normal DOS game, so the only way for that to happen should be a DOS install configured to just auto-start Worms on boot. Which makes sense as a way to keep a kid away from anything that could cause trouble.

I very vaguely recall that there used to be a very few PC games that worked as boot floppies and possibly didn't use DOS at all, but it was a rarity and Worms definitely wasn't one.

▲

Induane 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I bet it wasn't actually the bootloader but something with autoexec.bat - you could setup choices in it and windows was just one launch option.

	▲	Xirdus 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well, if you treat DOS as a bootloader for Windows 98 - which it was actually - then modifying autoexec.bat would count as setting up the bootloader.

▲

Xirdus 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No, I set it up. My parents were non-technical. I had a CD-ROM re-release of Worms for DOS from one gaming magazine or another. I guess the installer set it up somewhere somehow but I remember it wasn't easy to get it installed and there were further problems trying to launch it. It's possible the installer itself was a DOS program, not a Windows program.

▲

4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

queuebert 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I would guess a modern BIOS chip is as powerful as an NES, right?

▲

snazz 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can do substantially more in UEFI than NES-level games. (See https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.9_A/12_Protocols_Console_Suppo...)

▲

fluoridation 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What do you mean by "BIOS chip"? Like, the flash memory that stores the motherboard's firmware? I don't think that contains any processing elements.

▲

sedatk 6 hours ago | parent [-]

BIOS can only manage VESA which is much much slower than the capabilities of a modern GPU, so they might have meant graphical performance in regards to that.

	▲	jasomill 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		VESA BIOS Extensions support direct framebuffer access in protected mode, and I don't imagine the lack of accelerated 2D operations would be a practical bottleneck when implementing NES-style graphics on modern PCs. UEFI GOP additionally supports accelerated bitblt, but again YAGNI for 2D game performance at reasonable framerates on a modern PC.