There is something special about pulling up an old DOS game and seeing that chunky 320×200 world again. The bright EGA blues, the dithered skies, the tiny sprites that somehow had more personality than half of today’s 4K heroes. And the first thing most of us want to do after beating a level we last saw in 1993 is share it: on Discord, on a retro forum, in a group chat with the friend who used to come over to play it.
Step 1: Take the screenshot
Playing in your browser
If you play right here in the browser, the simplest way is your system’s own screenshot tool. On Windows, press Win+Shift+S and drag a box around the game window. On a Mac, press Cmd+Shift+4 and select the area. Both save a PNG file, which is exactly what you want for pixel art (more on that below). Try to crop tightly to the game picture so you do not include browser tabs or page borders.
Classic DOSBox
In the original DOSBox, press Ctrl+F5 while the game is running. DOSBox saves a PNG into its capture folder and names it after the program, with a running number, so a few screenshots of Commander Keen will end up as something like keen4e_000.png, keen4e_001.png and so on. If you want video instead, Ctrl+Alt+F5 starts and stops recording an AVI file using the lossless ZMBV codec. You can change where captures go with the captures setting in your DOSBox config file.
DOSBox Staging
DOSBox Staging, the actively developed fork, gives you more control. Ctrl+F5 (or Cmd+F5 on a Mac) saves a screenshot in the formats you choose with the default_image_capture_formats setting:
- upscaled (the default) gives an aspect corrected image with sharp pixels, scaled to about 1200 pixels tall. This is the best choice for sharing.
- raw saves the emulated picture at its native resolution with square pixels. Perfect for archiving and for people who want to edit the image.
- rendered saves exactly what you see on screen, including any CRT shader. Alt+F5 takes a rendered shot directly.
Captures go to the capture folder by default (change it with capture_dir), and in version 0.83 Ctrl+F7 starts and stops video recording.
Step 2: Fix the aspect ratio trap
Here is the thing that confuses almost everyone. Most DOS games ran at 320×200, but they were displayed on 4:3 CRT monitors. 320×200 is not a 4:3 shape, so every pixel was stretched to be about 1.2 times taller than it was wide. Artists drew with that in mind.
Step 3: Pick the right format (this matters more than you think)
Most people instinctively convert screenshots to JPG because “JPG is smaller”. For photos, that is true. For pixel art, it is the opposite. We ran a quick test with a typical VGA style platformer screen, upscaled to 1600×1200 with sharp pixels, and saved it in different formats:
- PNG: 95 KB, pixel perfect
- WebP (lossless): 70 KB, pixel perfect
- WebP (lossy, quality 90): 308 KB
- JPG (quality 75): 418 KB, with visible smudging around edges
- JPG (quality 90): 673 KB, still not pixel perfect
The JPG at quality 90 was about seven times bigger than the PNG and looked worse. The reason is simple: JPG was designed for smooth photographic gradients. Big flat areas of colour and hard pixel edges are exactly what PNG and lossless WebP compress best, and exactly what JPG handles worst. You get blocky noise around sprites, fuzzy text in the HUD, and dithering patterns that turn into a muddy blur.
Keep them as PNG, or use lossless WebP if you want them even smaller. Only convert to JPG when a website refuses anything else.
Step 4: Get under upload limits
Single screenshots rarely cause trouble, but a capture folder full of them can. Some rough limits to keep in mind:
- Discord raised the free upload limit to 20 MB per file in August 2026, after two years at 10 MB. That is plenty for screenshots, but not for raw AVI captures, which get huge fast because ZMBV is lossless.
- Retro forums are often much stricter. Attachment limits of a few hundred KB up to a couple of MB are common on older boards.
- Wikis and game databases usually want PNG, and many ask for the native resolution, so keep your raw captures too.
If a file is too big, first check that it is not an accidental JPG or an oversized screenshot of your whole desktop. Crop to the game area, save as PNG or lossless WebP, and you will almost always land well under any limit.
Step 5: Convert a whole folder at once
After a long session you can easily have 50 or 100 screenshots in a capture folder, plus a few you took with the system tool. Converting them one by one is nobody’s idea of fun. We usually drop the whole batch into FileKiwi, a free converter that works right in the browser with no signup and no watermark, switch everything to the format we need, compress the ones that are still too big and download it all as a single ZIP. Any similar batch tool will do the job; the important part is converting in bulk and checking one result at 100% zoom before you post the rest.
- When resizing pixel art, scale by whole numbers (2x, 3x, 4x) whenever possible. Odd sizes force the tool to invent pixels in between, which creates uneven, wobbly lines.
- Never resize a JPG and then save it as JPG again. Every round of lossy saving adds more damage. Work from your original PNG files.
Step 6: Keep your capture folder organised
Screenshots of old games become surprisingly valuable over time, for you and for preservation projects. A little organisation goes a long way:
- Make one subfolder per game, and rename files with the level or moment, for example keen4_level3_secret.png.
- Keep the raw or original PNG files as your archive, and treat compressed or converted copies as disposable.
- If you record video, note the DOSBox version and machine settings in a text file next to it. Future you will thank you when trying to reproduce that perfect run.
Share the nostalgia the right way
Classic DOS games were built by artists who placed every pixel by hand on screens far smaller than the phone in your pocket. The least we can do is share their work without smearing it into JPG soup. Capture in PNG, fix the aspect ratio, keep pixels sharp with whole number scaling, and use lossless formats wherever you can. Your screenshots will look exactly like the game you remember, and they will be smaller than you expect, too.
Now go back to that level you never quite finished in 1994. And this time, take a screenshot when you beat it.
