2500 MS-DOS games now available for free on the Internet Archive
The already vast collection of Internet Archive retro games expands with 2500 new titles, originally released for MS-DOS.
This is the biggest update since the archive of classic video games of the past was created in 2015. Internet Archive includes an emulator that allows access to selections of games for Commodore 64, Amiga, Apple II, Macintosh and portable devices of the past, to which are added now further 2500 games originally released for MS-DOS.
Among the great classics, unfortunately in many cases forgotten, today replayable we find Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, Princess Maker 2 and Microsoft Adventure, a rebranding of Colossal Caves Adventure, the first textual adventure of history, originally created by Will Crowther, programmer and amateur speleologist. In the database, there are also many incomplete experiments and titles, very fascinating to remember the origins of electronic entertainment.
As always happens on the Internet Archive, not all games will work right away, loading times can be extended and the user manual is not always available. Consider also that these are not necessarily videogame experiences that conform to modern leisure standards.
The main value of this collection concerns the preservation of great classics of the past, very often only available on physical support because they belong to an era before the internet. As technology advances, it is important not to forget how far we have come, just because modernity is more attractive.
Moreover, many of these games offer some still fun mechanics, even if they belong to a logic in creating games different from the modern one: they are brilliant and in some cases offer forgotten cues or in any case never resumed in a captivating way from the subsequent titles.
The curator of the project is Jason Scott, who reworked the eXoDOS project, which aims at preserving applications and video games for MS-DOS and which over the years has seen its library of titles expand considerably. It includes the very first projects for MS-DOS, as well as recent creations designed to run on the old Microsoft operating system.
It is about 7 thousand titles that Scott is patiently recovering and inserting into the Internet Archive emulation system, in order to provide the internet public with a free and almost always enjoyable version of these pearls of the past.
” What makes the collection more than just a collection of old games, is the principle of preserving the history of the software from which the project is born, ” writes Scott on his blog. ” DOS has remained somewhat consistent in the last (almost) 40 years, but at the same time many things have changed, and sometimes programs were only written to work on certain hardware and very specific configurations. They were released, they sold some copies and then disappeared from the shelves, if not finally forgotten “.
The best games on the Internet Archive
Microsoft Adventure is a remake of an enjoyable text adventure originally written by Don Woods and Will Crowther. It starts easily and gives many hours of fun for those who have never played it. It is a very famous game in the past where the player plays a solitary explorer who goes into a cave. It is said that the cave holds treasures, but some who have dared to enter have never returned.
Mr. Blobby is a game of platforms for DOS dating back to 1994 with all the distinctive traits of the genre such as colorful graphics, captivating music and curious protagonist movements. Scott recommends making sure that you have properly configured the keys before you start playing, because in addition to running and jumping you can interact with objects.
Super Munchers: The Challenge Continues is an ” edutainment ” game, available here in a revised version in 1991. Players move their ” muncher ” on a grid in order to select the words similar to the proposed category, as quickly as possible. possible.
Street Rod is a 1989 driving game set in the 1960s. At the beginning, the player has a small amount of money with which to buy the first car and, then, winning the races he can be perfect it to make it faster and faster. It is characterized by a user interface that is easy to understand and use, where inside the garage you can apply car enhancements, with the possibility of selling it and negotiating on the price.
Digger is a 1983 game where you have to go around a quarry, dodge enemies and collect diamonds. Enemies can also be killed but beware, curiously you shoot with the ” F1 ” button.
Floppy Frenzy is suggested by Jason Scott to convey the differences between the first MS-DOS games and the most-recent evolutions. It is a simple game and in some ways more rudimentary than the previous ones, but no less brilliant. The player impersonates a floppy disk, has to avoid the magnets and leave traps around for them, in order to capture them before the time runs out. If this fails, an angel descends from the sky and carries the floppy disk to the floppy disk paradise. Also in this case the key to release the traps is ” F1 “.
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