Free: Play 2,400 Vintage Computer Games in Your Web Browser

Had I known as a grade-school­er that the day would come when I could play all the com­put­er games I then want­ed to, any­where I want­ed to, with­out pay­ing for them, installing them, or even wait­ing any sig­nif­i­cant amount of time for them, I would have sim­ply put myself into cryo­genic sleep, set­ting the year of awak­en­ing to 2015. The Inter­net Archive, which had already made over 900 clas­sic arcade and con­sole games avail­able, has made all this pos­si­ble with their MS-DOS games col­lec­tion, which con­tains much, if not every­thing, you remem­ber from child­hood — if your child­hood, like mine, revolved around com­put­er games released between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. The youth-reliv­ing gamers of Metafil­ter have already descend­ed upon the col­lec­tion, pulling out such acknowl­edged clas­sics as Prince of Per­sia, Lem­mings, Scorched Earth, and Waste­land. (More than a few have also dug up true obscu­ri­ties — Tongue of the Fat­man, any­one?)

Right there at the Inter­net Archive, you can play genre-defin­ing first-per­son shoot­ers like Wolfen­stein 3D, plat­form­ers like Com­man­der Keen, dri­ving games like Lam­borgh­i­ni Amer­i­can Chal­lenge, sim­u­la­tors like Sim­C­i­ty (which played sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle part in mak­ing me into the city-obsessed adult whose words you now read, though I would­n’t mind revis­it­ing it), strat­e­gy games like Dune and its more pop­u­lar sequel, and class­room favorites/cultural touch­stones like The Ore­gon Trail.

At this point, even those not expe­ri­enc­ing a Prous­t­ian onrush of child­hood mem­o­ry may feel a tad over­whelmed, so why not have a look at the Inter­net Archive’s MS-DOS Show­case, “a hand-picked set of selec­tions from the MS-DOS Soft­ware Library of the Inter­net Archive,” cho­sen because “they rep­re­sent major parts of the MS-DOS sto­ry, because they are par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive, and” — in the case of the best of these games, the most legit­i­mate rea­son of all — “because they’re fun.” The games can all be played in your brows­er. If you run into any prob­lems, please read the Inter­net Archive’s FAQ.

h/t to our loy­al read­er Daniel B.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Arcade Lets You Play 900 Vin­tage Video Games in Your Web Brows­er (Free)

Play The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Video Game Free Online, Designed by Dou­glas Adams in 1984

Learn to Write Through a Video Game Inspired by the Roman­tic Poets: Shel­ley, Byron, Keats

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.