Aeon

Aeon is an application that allows you to run old DOS applications in modern versions of Windows. It emulates much of the hardware of a PC with a 386 processor, including a VGA card, SoundBlaster card, General MIDI music device, and keyboard/mouse input. It also provides an implementation of most of the commonly-used DOS functions, mouse driver, and an expanded/extended memory manager.

I wrote Aeon exclusively in C# as an exercise in developing a .NET application with very demanding performance requirements. I have not optimized the performance as much as I could yet, so Aeon's hardware requirements are pretty high if you want to get smooth audio/video performance in a demanding game. Also note that this program is still somewhat experimental - it's entirely possible that Aeon won't run at all on some hardware configuration that I haven't been able to test. Be sure to read the requirements listed on the download page before taking it for a spin.

Aeon will mainly be of interest to .NET developers and classic PC game enthusiasts right now. Its emulation is incomplete and the application isn't as polished as it will be. As of version 0.51, most of the EGA/VGA real-mode games that I've tried work at least somewhat, and many are completely playable. A few 32-bit protected mode games like Doom also work, though performance is not all it could be. There's still problems with the SoundBlaster DSP emulation, so digitized sound may or may not work depending on the application. Check the features page for more about this.

If you're interested but don't want to download it, have a look at some of the screenshots of Aeon in action and check back once in a while. I also have a blog about Aeon/.NET development.