The "It just works!" package for Bad Day on the Midway

It won't get any easier than this: A full package of "Bad Day on the Midway" that includes all files you need for Windows and Mac!

(And it also includes "Freak Show"!)

It is completely free and you don't need to be a computer expert in any sense of the word. It's free, easy and its goal is to make "Bad Day on the Midway" accessible to as many people as possible.

This package uses DOSBox to emulate a Windows 3.1 installation containing BDotM and Freak Show.

The package is ready to run BDotM and Freak Show out of the box!

Download

Windows version (RSDNT.zip, 858.3mb)

Mac OS version
MacOS version (RSDNT.dmg, 890.2mb)

Current version: v1.2 (July 2022)
Changes from last version:

MacOS: Changed output method from OpenGL to Overlay (fix for MacOS 12.4)

Added the game's manual to the package (it's too cool to not add)

Fiddled around with the CPU cycles to reduce audio glitch bug (thanks to Moony Moon!)

MacOS: Using Mac Extended FS now instead of APFS, for legacy compatibility reasons

Using the package on Windows

Unzip the downloaded file somewhere on your hard drive
Double-click "START-ON-WINDOWS.bat"
- Windows may tell you that it protected you from danger by preventing an unrecognized app from running. Don't worry, that's normal: Windows is very sceptical of downloaded files nowadays. But this is easy to bypass, and you can do so safely. Just click on "More info", then "Run anyways". See screenshot on the right for more info.
- Have fun :-)

Using the package on Mac OS

Open the .dmg file and put the "RSDNT.app" file somewhere on your hard drive
Double-click "RSDNT.app"
- You may need one additional step, since Mac OS does not trust apps from unknown developers. If you get an error message that apps from unknown developers cannot be opened, hold the CRTL key, right-click the "RSDNT.app" file and click "open". The dialog should now change and display an "open" button next to the "cancel" one. You'll only need to do this once.
Have fun :-)

FAQ

?: How do I quit?

!: Either shut down Windows 3.1 (click "File" in the program manager window and select "Exit Windows". Or just hit ALT+F4 (Windows) or COMMAND+Q (MacOS).

If DOSBox crashes for some reason (unlikely, but everything can happen), remember that you can always CRTL+ALT+DEL (Windows) or CRTL+CMD+ESC (MacOS) out of it, and open Task Manager to quit it!

?: On Mac, the App just closes after opening

!: Make sure that you put the RSDNT.app out of the file container (the DMG-file you downloaded) somewhere on your hard drive. It needs a place on the hard drive to modify its own files, and within the DMG package, it cannot write files (DMG files are read-only). Don't worry, it won't touch any of your other files, it just needs to update its own configuration with your Mac's details.

Since MacOS 12.4 it can also happen that there is a permission issue with launching in fullscreen. To fix this, use this rather cumbersome and annoying workaround (until I find a permanent solution):

Make sure you already tried to run the app and it crashed (so you already did the whole "hold-cmd-while-opening" thing mentioned under "Using the package on Mac OS" above).
Then, right-click on the RSDNT.app and select "Show package contents". Navigate to folders Contents->MacOS
Open "dosbox.txt". In there...
...edit line 3 from "fullscreen=true" to "fullscreen=false"
...edit line 6 from "windowresolution=orginal" to "windowresolution=1920x1200"
Save the file, then close the Finder window and try again.

Downside to this is, that the game now runs in a window instead of fullscreen. But hey, at least it works.

?: I am using a Mac device with a Silicone (e.g. M1) processor, and the game is stuttering

!: This is caused by incompatibility issues between Apple Silicon CPUs and DOSBox. You see, DOSBox basically translates the commands of old software to commands a modern CPU (the brain of your computer) can understand. This is what is actually called emulation, and it's a quite complicated process. Mostly this is due to the sheer number of different commands and some commands having no modern day equivalents, etc.

What happens now with the Silicone processors is that the system itself needs to emulate any software that was made to run on Intel. That happens in the background with lots of software, without you even noticing. Since Silicone processors are still fairly new, emulation for it is still far from perfect.

And here's the issue: DOSBox is also made for Intel infrastructure.

So, a quick rundown on what happens in the background when you run the package:

DOSBox translates Bad Day's old commands to Intel language,
your Mac translates this Intel language to Silicone language,
your Mac handles these Silicone language commands and does all the stuff like it would be an Intel machine.

All of that in realtime, or at least as fast as possible.

And that takes a lot of processing power - basically, it's emulating the game twice! No matter how high-end your Mac is, it will hit a bottleneck with the emulation Intel->Silicone.

At this point in time, I cannot really do anything about it, really. We'll see if the DOSBox authors plan on releasing a Silicone-native version of DOSBox. If so, I'll make sure to update the package as soon as possible.

System requirements

Windows: Windows XP or newer, tested up to Windows 11
Mac OS: 10.x or newer, tested up to 12.2.1
About 1.2gb of hard drive space

If things don't work, you can get in touch with me at badday@forspamonly.com (yes, this email address exists, don't worry!).

Thank you!

Many thanks go out to Maarten Ijff, who created the basic package. He got in touch with me an suggested that he had found an easier solution than using VirtualBox: DOSBox is able to emulate Windows 3.x so why not use a DOSBox with Windows 3.1 to run the games? He then created the basic config file and the file structure for the C: drive. He was kind enough to supply these files to me so I could create this automated package.

Another big thanks goes to Cryptic Corporation, the current copyright holder of the game and artwork, and former iNSCAPE CEO, Mr Nash, for allowing me to offer this package.

License information

The whole package is "as is" and free of charge. I will not be responsible for any damages done to your computer in case something goes wrong and it catches fire, or something.

It is forbidden to charge money for this package or sell it in any other way. You can do with it what you want, but make sure to credit us and provide a link to this site.

Within this package, some copyrighted files are used. The license agreement for DOSBox can be found in the "Licenses" folder. "Windows" is a trademark of Microsoft Inc., all rights reserved. This setup of Windows, its files as well as all game files are used under the impression that they are abadonware and that the current rights holders have no interest in financial compensation, when the properties are used in a non-profit and free project. All trademarks and properties remain properties of their owners.