I only use DOSBox to run Wasteland, and so it automatically runs the game when I open the emulator. Boxer seems like a nice program if you don’t have other options.

“I was going to say, drag and drop or batch files were too difficult?

To which my reply is:

“Two buttons?”

Unfortunately, the current OS X release of DOSBox doesn’t support drag and drop, and OS X does not have a direct equivalent to windows shortcuts or batch files – so it’s very difficult to e.g. set up game shortcuts that will run a specific EXE file in DOSBox, like you might do on windows. OS X applications aren’t really set up to be run from the commandline either, so (without adding DOSBox to your unix path) you’re not able to type something like “dosbox game.exe”: you’d have to type “/Applications/DOSBox.app/Contents/MacOS/dosbox game.exe” instead, which is rather more trouble than it’s worth. In short, it’s a pain in the ass to run a specific game with DOSBox in OS X.

Boxer is basically a wrapper for DOSBox which makes it act more neighbourly. It supports drag-and-drop, not just of executable files but also folders and CD-ROM images. It also auto-detects many games that need special emulation settings, and auto-mounts any disc you have in your CD drive (or ISOs you have mounted in OS X), without any user input needed.

Renaming a folder with the “.boxer” extension makes it into a self-contained game package, a bit like an zipfile. The package runs the game in DOSBox when you click on it, and acts a lot like an OS X application. Each game package carries its own specific DOSBox configuration file, so it can be customised with any emulation settings needed for that game. A game package can also contain ISOs or folders that will be mounted as extra drives in DOSBox when the game is run – without the user needing to configure anything besides putting the ISO inside the game folder in the first place.

So, the idea is that it makes it easy to set up games in the first place, and a collection of tidy little self-contained game packages makes it a lot easier to play those games when you want to – instead of digging through folders picking out EXE files or writing batch scripts or entering commands in DOS, you just doubleclick on the game package you want and you’re away. OS X allows files and folders to be individually customised with hi-res icons too, which is a handy way to add box art to each game.

In linux I just type ‘dosbox dosexe.exe’