Out of the Dark Ages
It looks like we've survived the PC games dark ages relatively unscathed. For a number of years, from the introduction of Windows NT, through Windows 2000 to Windows XP, numerous DOS games were lost to the world. Abandonware web sites sprang up to provide the software where the original publishers had disappeared, but unless you had an old DOS/Win95/Win98/WinME machine to play them on, they were just bits on a disk.
For a few years PC emulators have been in development, allowing modern PCs running Windows 2000/XP to behave like an old DOS PC. And now, finally, the emulators are sufficiently advanced, and the computers are sufficiently fast, that even the most demanding of the DOS games are playable. The years of Z sitting on my bookshelf, gathering dust are over. The renaissance has begun.