In 2023, IBM PCs do not really exist anymore. For emulators, I can not find a working emulator online that works or have easy documentation on how to make it work. Can you please add links to working emulators that have good and easy instructions on how to make it work.

Also, I have a game I made that I could recreate into a DOS COM game and I want to know if remaking games for DOS COM is allowed for the jam as well as putting the COM file into an existing game page?

Tough for me to comment on what emulators are easy or difficult. I've been using DOS since it was relevant and so I have a slightly warped sense of easy of use for it. I'll try and get some perspective and add links accordingly.

As for your question about remaking a game you already have as a .COM file, that's absolutely okay! I might suggest creating a separate page for the .COM version for the sake of the jam tho, so as to keep it clear that it conforms to the restrictions set by the jam.

Pretty much every PC in 2023 is still an IBM PC… well most of them at least that haven’t dropped the “legacy BIOS boot” option for “UEFI-only”.

You can install FreeDOS on any PC which supports legacy boot (or boot FreeDOS from USB). The hardware is still compatible, the processor still starts in 16bit real mode, all the IBM PC I/O devices are hardware-emulated by your chipset; timers, keyboard controllers, DMA controlers, interrupt controllers. And your nvidia/AMD/intel graphics card is still compatible at a hardware level with the original VGA, and provide VESA BIOS extensions calls for SVGA modes.

The only thing which isn’t compatible at the hardware level any more with 90s PC hardware, are sound cards. So you can’t test soundblaster code on modern hardware. But everything else should work fine.

Also you may have seen the recent Book8088 laptops, which are new(!) laptops running an 8088 CPU and so probably a good target for games from this jam. So not only do they still exist, they're still being manufactured!

I think the general consensus is: use DoxBox  (or DosBox-Staging) for development and/or testing, and at the end make sure that your program also runs fine in 86box on a real DOS 3.x or 5.x

Regarding 86Box: get disk images from WinWorldPC, and use Linux-y mtools to fake floppies. E.g. "mformat -C -f 1440 -v MYFLOP -i myflop.img ::" to create a 1.44 MB file and "mcopy -i myflop.img program.exe ::" to put stuff on it. "::" acts as the fake drive letter. You will have to eject / re-mount in 86box if you update the file.

Full disclosure: my 30 KB-ish executable is not yet a proper COM file. Currently trying to exorcise some "segment relocation" nonsense.