Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Classic Video Games… In Your Browser

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 30, 2015

This is old news, but I’m not sure I mentioned it yet. Anyway, apparently some of these can also be played inside of a tweet now, too. So… cool. As if you really needed something else to nuke your free time in your browser!

MS-DOS Games. Arcade games. Classic consoles. If you are old enough, you can relive your childhood without leaving your comfy chair. Oh, and other apps too, though I’m not sure what apps would really be considered useful today.

The Internet Archive Software Collection

The coolest part? You can now share the game directly by tweet, or … embed. You may still need to view it directly at the site to get sound to work, though. I’m not sure.

 

Have fun.


Filed Under: General - Comments: 5 Comments to Read



  • Anon said,

    Think of it what you will but it’s a further warrant of immortality for the old classics.

    However, most modern AAA-titles will be denied eternity because of their DRM systems – perhaps thankfully, given their often unimaginative content and redundant gameplay.

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    I dunno… play some of those old games. Not the ones you know and love, but the ones you’ve never heard of. Play several of them. And then you’ll remember that it was exactly the same problem back then. While you’ll occasionally find a forgotten gem (or maybe a diamond in the rough), much of the time you’ll find out that they are… unimaginative content and redundant gameplay.

    Some things never change.

  • Anon said,

    Of course Sturgeon’s Law also applies to old games but my impression is that there are way less timeless classics being born nowadays.

    Yes, there have been countless Pac Man clones and similar shmups etc. back then but companies didn’t always milk their successful titles to death. They took the money from the successful titles and dared to try out new things.

    This kind of experimentation largely died out in the mid to end of the nineties. Since then we are being very gently spoonfed with innovation from the mainstream studios – which of course only want to maximize audience to increase profit.

    The only significant experimentation I see nowadays is with indie titles – with AAA-titles you are always on firm ground: You get exactly what you expect, in various degrees of quality of course.

    But perhaps I’m too subjective and too pessimistic and the 2017 version of Assassin’s Creed will be like a bottle of 1818 Château Lafite Rothschild and remembered fondly with youtube videos…

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    Heh – Yeah, I know where you are coming from. There are a few differences.

    #1 – In the arcade industry, you didn’t have as many sequels because you had to (of necessity) keep a throughput of quarters. So making something that offered very similar gameplay but would challenge old players would be frustrating to new players… and you didn’t want to alienate those walking wallets.

    #2 – And yeah, it was much cheaper to experiment back then, across all aspects of the industry. I heard that (for example) the “Worlds of Ultima” spin-off games had a budget of $50k. Multiply that by almost 2 for inflation, but that’s still indie budget range. They blew their budget (maybe that’s why we only got two of them that made it to delivery), but that was at least their goal. Those weren’t intended as AAA titles, but they were spin-offs from a major franchise. That wasn’t nothing in terms of budget back then, but it was still small enough that they felt free to experiment.

  • McTeddy said,

    As someone who plays LOTS of forgotten games, I only half agree with you. There is plenty of crap, but the vast majority of even clones had substantial differences.

    This wasn’t really creativity, but a lack of standards both technically and design-wise. Without the widespread internet information, dev toolkits, and the “Correct Controls” it was hard to directly mimic a game.

    NES platformers all look the same at first glance, but each game has slightly different speeds and physics. This fundamental changes the experience even though it was intended to profit off a popular release.

    DOS RPGs tend to have varying control schemes that impact play. Was it a full keyboard of controls like early ultimas? All mouse controlled? Space bar and Arrows? Numberpad for 8 direction movement? All of these influence that final experience.

    The same goes for damage formulas or level up systems. It was much harder to guess what was happening behind the scenes, and the clone would be slightly off.

    Now, we know a shooter will use WASD and the mouse. We have a small selection of accepted “Level Up systems” and plenty of resources on seeing popular damage formulas. Often, clones are even built using the same tool set to ensure that it’s close enough to the original.

    I agree there is plenty of garbage back then too and most “unique” ideas actually sucked. But as someone who explores old games for fun… I can’t agree that they were as same-y as modern games.

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