So, the other day I was messing around with this thing called “nicosi”. I’d heard about it from some online buddies, and it sounded kinda cool. Basically, it’s a way to get those classic console interfaces, you know, like the old-school DOS screens, running on modern systems.

First, I had to find the darn thing. I did some digging around, eventually stumbled upon some download links, and hoped for the best. It was a compressed file, so naturally, I unzipped that bad boy.
Getting Started
Next step? Figuring out how to actually use it. I’m no tech wizard, so I just started poking around, double-clicking on stuff, seeing what would happen. There was this executable file – I clicked it, and boom! A command prompt window popped up, looking all retro and stuff.
Now, I wanted to see if I could make it do something, anything. I typed in some basic commands I remembered from back in the day, like “dir” to list files, and “cd” to change directories. It worked! I was pretty stoked, felt like I was back in the 90s or something.
- I found some old text-based games online.
- I downloaded them.
- I copied the files into the nicosi folder.
- I typed the game’s filename into the nicosi prompt, and bam!
I was playing this ancient game, all in glorious ASCII characters. Good time!
Customizing It
But then I thought, can I make it even more retro? Turns out, yeah! There was this configuration file, I opened it up in Notepad (yeah, Notepad!), and started messing with the settings. I changed the colors, tweaked the font, adjusted the screen size – it was like customizing my own little time machine.

Finally get a look I like.
It’s not gonna change the world or anything, but it was a fun little project. I showed it to my kids, and they were like, “What is that?” It was a good way to waste an afternoon, and hey, I learned something new. Or, well, re-learned something old. Whatever, it was cool!