7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

Dingen 5 years ago |

It's so easy these days to play old DOS games, it's great. Not just because of The Internet Archive's fantastic work in recent years with getting these onto their website, but also the work put in by the Dosbox and ScummVM people.

These old games are more accessible now than they were back in the day, when you had to configure your AUTOEXEC.BAT, get all your IRQs in order and make sure you have enough memory and whatnot.

The accessibility and availability of this stuff is one of the reasons why we started DOS Game Club a few years ago over on https://dosgameclub.com - it's like a book club, but instead of books we focus on a different DOS game every month and discuss it on our forums as we're playing them. At the end of the month we invite some members for a chat and publish it as a podcast.

Turns out there are loads of people interested in playing these old games, some of them quite young too! And with how many games are available all over the place, it looks like we'll have plenty of material to keep us busy for many years to come.

wilsonrocks 5 years ago |

Stunts was so good. Ran it on my 1MB 386. You could record games and play them back from different angles.

You could design your own tracks and I remember finding a glitch if you raced the indycar at top speed towards the biggest ramp where it would fly into the air and be bound only by the top of the coordinate system. Great times (and I don't even like car games...)

fb03 5 years ago | |

I love stunts so much I did a song using only dosbox recorded stunts wave files as samples.

https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/stunts

also check out the song's pixel artwork, a remix of the main game screen.

TonyTrapp 5 years ago | |

What REALLY blew my mind is when I found that there were third-party editors that allowed you to build regular roads on water... but they would break as soon as you tried to open them in the built-in editor. Some custom-made tracks also made the game glitch by only showing some obstacles once you were basically one grid coordinate away (e.g. slalom obstacle would be invisible just until the moment you are about to hit it...). Fun times!

Edit: Also took me YEARS to figure out that you could edit your own terrain with Shift+F1!

arbuge 5 years ago |

This is part of a larger group:

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary

137k+ games for many software platforms including the ones for MS_DOS.

sandworm101 5 years ago |

Woot! Sid Meier's Colonization is there. Hands down one of the best games of all time.

Wing Commander II collection, but no Privateer? That game is why Star Citizen even exists.

thom 5 years ago | |

Frontier: First Encounters but no Fronter: Elite II also puzzling. Not sure I've had a computer in the least 30 years without Wing Commander or Elite II installed (or Wizardry VII, or Civ, or Daggerfall, or, or, or...)

georgeecollins 5 years ago | |

Privateer was very tricky to run because it barely fit in 640k, and took a special config. I wonder if that makes it hard to emulate.

It was the best of the wing commander series by far.

Delk 5 years ago | | |

In my limited experience, it has been easier to get a good bunch of conventional memory available in DOSBox (and out of the box -- no pun intended) than it was in MS-DOS.

A freshly "booted" session seems to show 632k free right now. I can't remember ever getting that much free on MS-DOS, although my configs probably included cd-rom drivers and whatnot.

dwd 5 years ago | | |

Agree wholeheartedly, I recently came across a piece of graph paper in an old box with the systems and price histories for trading. The Righteous Fire add-on storyline was probably the best.

I wrote my own AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS menu to select the right config and sometimes run a different .BAT file again. Still have a version of it and pulled it up for nostalgia: Colonization, Warcraft, Doom2 (single and network modes) and SC 2000 were other options I had setup.

petters 5 years ago | | |

I did the same! Honestly don't remember how I figured all that stuff out without internet and stack overflow.

Also, my friends would call me and ask for the secret code to start Doom. I'd begin: "cd doom2"....

Delk 5 years ago | | |

I can't quite remember how those things were figured out either, but I think it was probably partially word of mouth. Games also had tips for memory configuration in their readme files or manuals. There was also at least one book I had at home that my father had bought that had all kinds of details on the workings of DOS (and PCs of that era in general).

dwd 5 years ago | | |

The good old days of floppy disk swapping!

I used to spend a bit of time browsing Computer & Game magazines at the local newsagency and library. I think some of what I picked up came from the likes of PCMag, C+VG and a lot of trial and error.

unnouinceput 5 years ago | |

I raise you HoMM3

ejolto 5 years ago | | |

Heores of Might and Magic 3 was a windows release, the last game in the series playable on DOS was HoMM2.

unnouinceput 5 years ago | | |

My point was about "best games of all time". While Colonization is a good game, Heroes is the best in TBS games.

ejolto 5 years ago | | |

aha, but this is a thread about DOS games, which is why I got confused.

carrja99 5 years ago | |

Privateer was so great. I also have some fond memories of it being one of the first games I “hacked” by editing the dialog with a hex editor.

aik 5 years ago | |

Agreed! Love Colonization. Wish there was a remake. First game I thought of when seeing this list.

Privateer was amazing too.

vanderZwan 5 years ago | | |

There is a Civ IV-based remake:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_IV:_Colonization

kreddor 5 years ago | | |

It's actually a pretty good remake. I liked both this and the original a lot back in the day.

staz 5 years ago | | |

was not a fan of the gameplay modification they made in the remake, but with the addition of the fan made mod "The Authentic Colonization" it's much close to the original.

bmn__ 5 years ago | | |

http://www.freecol.org/

sandworm101 5 years ago | | |

There is a link between these games that means a faithful update isn't possible. Both involve slavery. In both, the player can actively trade human lives, including the capture of slaves. Even in Colonization, where such depiction may be historically accurate, it is just too sensitive an area.

cowmix 5 years ago |

Back in the 80s, the two programs you ran on a PC clone to confirm if it REALLY was an IBM PC compatible was Lotus 123 and Flight Simulator.

You can now run Flight Simulator in a freakin' browser:

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Microsoft_Flight_Simulator...

s-macke 5 years ago | |

Then you might be interested in

https://github.com/s-macke/FSHistory

There you can play the Flight Simulators 1-4 in the browser. It is even playable on your mobile.

aussieguy1234 5 years ago |

Alot of these games have been rebooted by various startups as mobile and web games with in app purchases and weird business models like "pay to win".

You could just grab an emulator and run the original and get everything for free.

beilabs 5 years ago |

Wonderful. Doesn't look like the mute button is working in Firefox though. I currently have the eggceptional midi sounds through my speakers and I can't turn it down or off. (Magicland Dizzy)

FartyMcFarter 5 years ago | |

Try right clicking the tab and pressing Mute there.

EvanKnowles 5 years ago | |

Yeah, mute button not working in Chrome either.

throwaway7281 5 years ago |

Spent hours playing Apache comanche game back in the days (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLcxgYEBAXA). It ran on a 4MB RAM machine just fine.

I wonder if we ever get back to this kind of efficient use of computers?

rkangel 5 years ago | |

Not for games and other user facing software. Development effort is finite and the extra complexity that users (reasonably) now expect is worth more than another 10% performance.

The places where it has made economic sense for me to optimise has been high volume consumer electronics. In those cases, taking up a bit less code space means you can drop to a smaller sized flash part and save 30 cents on a $20 bill of materials (for example).

Shivetya 5 years ago |

Oh hell, I can run StarFlight (warning you must select EGA)? I haven't had a computer that could do that in years and I still have the original disks and more.

Being a young adult in the 80s and 90s was so magical for all the games that appeared. While seeing some again strips away the illusion I maintained of some of them looking and being better than they were the experience to revisit them again is well worth any slight correction to my memories

justnotworthit 5 years ago |

I wonder if something like this will ever happen to xbox 360, ps4, etc games. Or if they'll be long unplayable either technically or legally.

georgeecollins 5 years ago |

I strongly recommend Bandit Kings of Ancient China. It is a great game.

cletus 5 years ago | |

Everyone has their set of formative games. Mine would probably include:

- Civilization (the original). I can literally remember waking up at noon and just starting to play the game and then looking up and it was dark outside;

- Zork

- Prince of Persia (the original); and

- ... Bandit Kings of Ancient China

I literally had 20+ hour playing sessions of BKoAC. Like I even played this multiplayer (hot chair). I can remember getting to the point where me and my friend had split the map pretty much and he decided to attack me. I basically held a defensive line along a river and used magic to break the offensive line. It was one of my earlier experience with tactics.

I have such fond memories of that game.

fireattack 5 years ago | | |

I'm just curious since many people mentioned BKoAC, are any of Koei's new(er) strategy games popular in Western countries? Like games from the Nobunaga's Ambition series or Romance of the Three Kingdoms series. (Admittedly I don't know if they're translated into Western languages or not.)

User23 5 years ago | |

I saw the title and came here to post this. Here's the direct link[1]. I spent an absurd amount of time playing this game at my brother's house because he had a PC and my family had a Mac. Empire[2] was another one that got plenty of play.

[1] https://archive.org/details/msdos_Bandit_Kings_of_Ancient_Ch...

[2] https://archive.org/details/msdos_Empire_1985

reitzensteinm 5 years ago | | |

Empire is written by our own Walter Bright, more famous these days for the D language. Small world.

georgeecollins 5 years ago | | |

It is amazing how those strategy games hold up.

quickthrower2 5 years ago |

Digger! I found you again!

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 5 years ago |

Technically I played the Macintosh version, but Mavis Beacon[0] was one of the first games I'd played in elementary school. I've recently wanted to try and raise my typing speed to 100+ wpm -- my current speed is ~80 wpm on a good day -- and TypeRacer[1]'s font and color choices sometimes make the practice texts hard to read. I should give good old Mavis Beacon a try...

Ha! I'm immediately thrown off by the double-space-after-period default. Fortunately that can be changed.

[0] https://archive.org/details/msdos_Mavis_Beacon_Teaches_Typin...

[1] https://play.typeracer.com/

jp42 5 years ago |

Dangerous Dave! I vividly remember playing this for hours on Windows 95

mono-bob 5 years ago |

This really made my day! Being able to play "Lode Runner: The Legend Returns"[1] brings back so many memories from the time I played it on a Windows 95 machine.

Amazing how good and smooth The Internet Archive has made this work!

[1] https://archive.org/details/LodeRunnerTheLegendReturns

ArtWomb 5 years ago |

Performance in js-dos is really great. I was actually curious about developing (4K) dos programs in 2020. And the best out there is compile with gcc and pray ;)

MSDOS Development With GCC

https://hackaday.com/2018/05/14/msdos-development-with-gcc/

benibela 5 years ago |

Ascendancy was great, colonizing planets and building a space empire

But you need to get the version with improved AI or it is not challenging

arriu 5 years ago |

Any way to get these working on mobile? The emulator seems to play but no way to type or input text.

chmod775 5 years ago | |

You can download the games directly from archive.org[1], get a DOS emulator from the app store, and run those games slightly more natively than with a browser.

[1] Curiously only some of them, I suppose due to some licensing restrictions?

jandrese 5 years ago | |

Bluetooth keyboard?

Or try this?

https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/28045/is-there-a...

as-j 5 years ago | | |

Tried a real keyboard with no luck on an iPad. :(

Sucks, was excited to try some games. :/

thom 5 years ago | |

Things like Magic DosBox exist on Android, which offers a keyboard overlay.

commonturtle 5 years ago |

Wow, I didn't know this existed. I had the itch to play some of the games of my childhood a while ago (mostly roguelikes and interactive text adventures), but was too lazy to set up Dosbox. To be able to run them from my browser is just great.

moortaube 5 years ago |

Played this one https://archive.org/details/msdos_Wacky_Wheels_1994 over years on Win98 machine.

Lovely game.

marcAKAmarc 5 years ago |

Bummed that a lot of the games I want to play are hidden behind 'Decoders' or special key decoding systems that used to physically ship with the game. Anyone know a way around these kinda things?

AtlasBarfed 5 years ago | |

Almost all of those will have cheat sheets or reproductions or scans or even patches/cracks somewhere if the game had a big enough following.

3np 5 years ago |

This is really really nice, but I see some liabilities waiting to blow up here... How's Nintendo going to react to "Super Mario World DX" (an indie "cover" of SMW) for example?

sumtechguy 5 years ago | |

They did not react well the first time they saw it. This project has been around for awhile. So maybe they just have not seen it yet? If I remember correctly that game was the one that morphed into giana sisters? Which is a cool game in its own right. The remake from a few years ago is decent.

Have to mess with this emu later. eXeDOS the project this thing is based on uses 6 different dosbox branches to get its compat with all the games working. This seems to be using 1? Which gets you most of them but about 200 or so will act oddly.

shmerl 5 years ago |

dosbox-staging is the active fork: https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging

rasz 5 years ago |

    Game File (1 of 1) (3%; 15.1 MiB of 450.2 MiB)

Sadly they are still straight up downloading whole ISOs instead of implementing some kind of virtual file system.