I remember when getting the sound in the first Mechwarrior to work if you didn't have the sound cards the game was configured for you had to go into dos and edit the config file just to enable, wasn't as easy as it is today editing a file for something to work. Sometimes even installing a dos game took a day and a half and then the game still might not run.
Then Directx came out with Windows 95 made everything so much easier.