Getting another classic Hutsell MS-DOS strategy game up and running

Background

Quite some time ago I wrote about W.R. Hutsell’s VGA Civil War Strategy, a wonderful little MS-DOS gem that is available as a free download at Hutsell’s Games. It’s a quick, non-nonsense game — you can jump into and play the whole war in a half an hour. These days we are all kind of spoiled, since we no longer have to monkey around with a bunch of configuration to install programs, so I included a few quick and dirty steps to get the game installed and running.

World War II in Europe is another of W.R. Hutsell’s MS-DOS strategy classics, and it is also available as a free download at Hutsell’s Games. It brings the same game engine used in VGA Civil War Strategy to the European Theater of World War II, with lots of changes and additions to account for the greater complexity involved, such as technology improvements, air, airborne, amphibious and mechanized units, etc. As you can imagine, the learning curve on this one is a little steeper! Anyway, just as I did for Hutsell’s VGA Civil War Strategy, here are the quick and dirty steps to get W.R. Hutsell’s World War II in Europe up and running:

How to install and run the game with DOSBox

1. Download the game installation file (ww2.EXE) from here. Save it in the root directory of your C: drive. (You will need to be logged onto your PC with administrator privileges.) DO NOT create a directory called c:\ww2 and put the installation file in it: if you do this, the installation will fail! (The ww2.EXE installation program will try unsuccessfully to overwrite itself with the game program, which is also named ww2.EXE.)
2. Double-click on the ww2.EXE installation program to run it. It will create a directory named c:\ww2 and unzip all game files into it. Note that there is an MS Word file in the c:\ww2 directory containing the game instructions.
3. You’ll need DOSBox to run the game, an x86 emulator available for download here. Once you’ve downloaded DOSBox, simply run the installer.
4. Launch DOSBox, and at the DOS prompt, type mount c c:\ww2 and press enter.
5. Type c:\ at the next prompt and press enter.
6. Type ww2 at the next prompt to run the game. Here’s a screenshot of these last three steps. They are the last three commands, starting immediately after DOSBox automatically configured your sound card with the SET BLASTER command:

That’s all there is to it! Good luck playing the game!

Hat tip to Mr. Dave Mackey for hosting the Hutsell’s Games website to make these wonderful classics available!