Jake
2015-01-10 12:33:39
Games like Duke Nukem, Oregon Trail, Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego, Prince of Persia, Scorched Earth and many more games have been released for free by the Internet Archive.
If you're a 90's kid or older, you'll remember this :p
http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2015/01/90s-kids-rejoice-as-internet-archive-releases-2300-ms-dos-games-for-free.html
If you're a 90's kid or older, you'll remember this :p
http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2015/01/90s-kids-rejoice-as-internet-archive-releases-2300-ms-dos-games-for-free.html
By today's standards, classic MS-DOS games like Castle Wolfenstein and Lemmings seem rather rudimentary in terms of how they look on-screen.
A young Xbox One player today might scoff at the pixelating stylings of Prince of Persia for the Apple II, but computer games from the late '80s and '90s hold a special place in the hearts of anyone who grew up in or discovered PC gaming around that time.
If you can remember playing Commander Keen in your school's computer lab on rainy days, trying to avoid dying of dysentery while travelling along The Oregon Trail on a Commodore 64, or purposely trying to become friends with that kid in your class whose dad had Maniac Mansion on his Mac, you'll understand what I mean.
You might also be thrilled to learn that you can re-live all of these adventures right now, for free, without downloading a thing.
Just months after making 900 coin-operated arcade games from the ‘70s and ‘80s available on its website, The Internet Archive has released more than 2,300 classic MS-DOS games — all of them playable right within your browser.
Cbc
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"Software for MS-DOS machines that represent entertainment and games," reads the collection's description — one of thousands compiled and hosted by The Internet Archive, a non-profit dedicated to preserving as much of the web as possible for future generations.
"The collection includes action, strategy, adventure and other unique genres of game and entertainment software," the description for Software Library: MS-DOS Showcase continues. "Through the use of the EM-DOSBOX in-browser emulator, these programs are bootable and playable."
As the collection's curator warns on his personal blog, however, players can't actually save games while playing them in a browser.
That hasn't stopped rabid '90s gaming fans from flocking to the site for a hit (or 50) of nostalgia in recent days as news of the collection spreads though.
Others are pointing out the best games available as they find them in the archive, and sharing their pics for those who might not be as familiar with the '90s gaming landscape.
Sadly, as Ars Technica reports, some of the most popular games in the collection — like Duke Nukem 3D, King's Quest, and The Incredible Machine — were taken offline yesterday.
"As we were preparing this report… the number of playable games dipped from an original count of over 2,370," wrote the publication's Sam Machkovech Tuesday evening. "In Giant Bomb's report on the collection, reporter Alex Navarro pointed to the Internet Archive's DMCA Exemption, which has been applied to much of this hosted software—even if it represents playable games that are still on sale—due to that specific code's rarity and need for preservation. Thus, we figure games have mostly been removed for not meeting the standards Scott established for the playable collection, a fact he hinted at in the aforementioned blog post."
This is, of course, a bummer — but perhaps it's for the best in terms of workplace productivity and people actually leaving their houses again