This is legitimately nuts! Someone made a collection of over 7000 full release DOS games you can download. It’s called eXoDOS. It comes with the DOS box emulator bundled, and a front end with box art and game descriptions and the whole 9 yards. Even a script to set it all up for you. Very slick!
When I was a kid we had an old Compaq Presario with Windows 3.1/DOS on it, and I played so many of those shareware DOS games. I never did buy a full game – I would just cycle through my different samples again and again and I was perfectly happy with that (sorry Apogee).
My only complaint here is that there’s too many games! I had to go hunt down my old shareware disks so I could find the handful I played as a kid and would love to see again. I have a lot of great memories with Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, The Hugo Trilogy, Duke Nukem 1+2, Rise of the Triad (with the coolest box art of ALL TIME), Monster Bash, Raptor, Pickle Wars, Wacky Wheels, and so many more I can’t remember the titles of.
And if that’s not enough for you, the same person has put together a similar package of Windows 3x games.