Celebrating the Golden Age of DOS Gaming

pcmag.com:

I grew up as an Atari computer fan, first with an 800 system that I ran a BBS on, and then with a 16-bit 520ST that became my main system by the start of high school. But by the late 1980s, I knew Atari was headed for trouble again, so I decided to get my first MS-DOS machine. Back then, everyone thought of the IBM PC and its clones as business computers, but the platform’s gaming prowess had risen steadily throughout the decade. With a shiny new 286 slimline desktop PC—a Vendex Headstart III, which no one today will have heard of—I plunged headfirst into all manner of awesome DOS games, many of which had just begun to take advantage of the latest sound cards and VGA graphics. Gaming only got better from there.

I knew I had to write a book about this amazing time, back when the PC found its footing and became the dominant platform for computer gaming. The result of some 18 months of hard work, Starflight: How the PC and DOS Exploded Computer Gaming 1987-1994 narrows in on seven crucial years in the PC’s history. Before the late '80s, gaming on PCs had paled in comparison with the diverse libraries, powerful sound chips, wide color palettes, and hardware sprites and scrolling found in competing computer platforms such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga, the Atari 800 and ST, the Apple IIGS, and even the Macintosh. But by 1990, the PC took the lead and never gave it back. All other competitors either disappeared in the next few years, or they stayed niche forever (in the case of the Mac).

Why did that happen? How did it happen? The first chapter of Starflight steps quickly through the PC’s design, introduction, and first several years on the market amid a sea of clones, including IBM's influential AT and the much-publicized