The Internet Archive, a non-profit repository of millions of digital artefacts and all things web, has brought to the gaming community a late Christmas gift this month by adding it latest collection of over 2300 MS-DOS games.
This adds to the already considerable compilation of old arcade machine and console games, collected from various sources across the web and recorded in their archives for posterity.
All of the games can be downloaded and occasionally some of the older, pre-PC games can be run via emulators directly in the browser. However you may find that downloading these games and playing them through DOS-Box on your PC or compatibility mode gives you a better playing experience.
There’s some really great old stuff in there which anybody out there like me and over the age of 35 will probably remember quite fondly.
See if you can avoid the dreaded dysentery in Oregon Trail or fall repeatedly into pit traps in the original Prince of Persia.
Or just try and remember why any of us played Leisure Suit Larry at all, when our parents weren’t watching of course.
I cracked on with a game of Fellowship of the Ring: Part 1, a game which I remember broke me repeatedly when I was a child and, once again, I was killed by a Black Rider about 5 screens in. Nostalgia!
The Classic PC games collection which, with the latest additions, now range across an impressive 35 year time period; you can find most games from classic Tetris to Lemmings, to Quake, to Halo: Combat Evolved. Although many of the post-2000 games do tend to only be demos, they are still just enough to give you an old-school flavour before you head over to GOG.com and see if you can pick the full game up for cheap.
The archive has also added a review system which means users can finally have their say about these games of yore. My favourite of which was left by user ‘Tharundil’ on the aforementioned Fellowship of the Ring Part 1.
“Can’t romance any of my favourite characters. 0/5.”
Bioware has a lot to answer for these days.
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