Boxer 4.2.0 Beta

Boxer was always the Mac way to play DOS games. Drag in a game, give it a cover, and open it like an app instead of spending your evening editing configuration files. Alun Bestor made that feel effortless. MaddTheSane carried Boxer into the 64-bit and Apple Silicon years. Boxer 4.2.0 Beta is our turn to keep the gloves moving.

DOS nights, meet modern Macs

This is the first release from our Boxer fork: one universal download for Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, targeting macOS 12 Monterey and newer. It keeps the familiar Boxer app identity, your click-to-play gameboxes, the Finder-friendly games shelf, and the original Epic Pinball, Ultima Underworld, and X-COM demos. Bring your own DOS collection and Boxer still does the part it does best: turning folders, discs, and installers into games you can just open.

The big leap from Alun Bestor’s original 1.4 release came through MaddTheSane’s work: a 64-bit Boxer for the Catalina era and a universal build for Apple Silicon. Our 4.2.0 Beta builds on that foundation rather than pretending we invented it. Here’s what we added:

• Gameboxes that reopen properly. We brought in the upstream saved-path and shell-readiness correction for closing and reopening a gamebox.
• A cleaner modern-Mac experience. Keyboard Preferences now names the right macOS settings pane and opens Accessibility settings instead of showing the infamous (null) Preferences message.
• A fork with its own face. The new two-glove icon puts a small Pi on each cuff. About gives proper credit, and the in-app release and bug-report links now lead to the project maintaining this build.
• The Boxer essentials stay put. The three original demo gameboxes and DOS Toolkit are included. Boxer’s existing sound options, including MT-32 and Gravis Ultrasound, remain available for games that use them; MT-32 still needs your own ROMs.

Which Boxer fits your Mac?

• macOS 12 or newer, Intel or Apple Silicon: Boxer 4.2.0 Beta, our current universal release.
• Apple Silicon on macOS 11, or an earlier Intel Mac: Boxer 4.1 Beta. Its declared Intel minimum is macOS 10.14.4; Apple Silicon starts at macOS 11.
• Intel on OS X 10.10 through macOS 10.14: Boxer 2.0.0 is our older-Mac best-fit archive.
• Intel on OS X 10.6 through 10.11: Alun Bestor’s original Boxer 1.4.0 is preserved. OS X 10.5 users can find the original 1.3.3 security release.

Those older ranges describe the builds’ declared minimums or best-fit eras, not a guarantee for every Mac. The release notes have the details if you’re choosing for an older system.

Ready for round one?

Download Boxer 4.2.0 Beta, browse the release and matching source, or send us a bug report. The beta isn’t notarized yet, so macOS may ask you to approve its first launch with Open Anyway.

Thanks to Alun Bestor for creating Boxer, MaddTheSane for carrying it forward, and the DOSBox and DOSBox Staging teams for the emulation work underneath. I still love this software. This release is our way of making sure there’s an easy place to find a working Boxer for the Mac you have.