Brighten your November morning: 900 in-browser arcade classics added to the Internet Archive

For all the conflict between console gamers and their PC brethren, kids today have never had it so good. In our day we had to gather in darkened shops to play video games housed in wooden cabinets that mercilessly gobbled quarters. This archaic form of gaming is almost lost to humanity, but survives thanks to a few retro …

[Mr C]

this is cool and also legal, i think?

i spend fortunes on arcade machines back when i was young (and still had hopes, but thats another story)

Today i play MAME from time to time (excellent job those guys do!)

I have to admit to not actually owning any pcb's of games myself, which makes it illegal for me to own those files.

So, this gives a legal alternative i think, does it?

[system11]

Re: this is cool and also legal, i think?

I think it just means they're breaking copyright laws instead of you. Maybe. Perhaps they're a recognised library and therefore exempt?

It's an interesting situation because until recently ROM sites were routinely being smacked with DMCA takedowns, the ones which survive are at providers who ignore notices or are based overseas. The process of releasing new ROMs is still pretty clandestine in itself.

[Anonymous Coward 101]

"Obviously, a lot of people are going to migrate to games they recognize and ones that they may not have played in years. They’ll do a few rounds, probably get their asses kicked, smile, and go back to their news sites,"

Sometimes work may be undertaken in the office as well, for when playing games or reading news becomes dull.

[WraithCadmus]

Sometimes work may be undertaken in the office as well, for when playing games or reading news becomes dull.

[citation needed]

[Hans 1]

Just lost 30 minutes playing those games ... I have firefox 33 and some work, others are a bit flakey, some did not work at all for me ... any, thanks, I will have to leave later, today ...

[Winkypop]

And to think of all those 20 cent bits as a kid

It must be the 21st century!

Free arcade games for all.

[WraithCadmus]

Hooray for the Mighty Bomb Jack!

Icon: Mighty Jill Off

[Mondo the Magnificent]

Sysadmins please don't take any notice...

Damn, how long before the company sysadmin adds this URL to the shitlist?

Make hay whilst the sun shines, then back to the boring old news pages...

[Lee Taylor]

Old games and Old Emulation!

The arcade games come from the MAME emulator.

I had a wry smile as the games are considered old as some of the emulation is as well. If you head over and play Astro Fighter by Deco I added that to MAME in November 1997 the night my daughter was born and she's 17 later this month!

https://archive.org/stream/arcade_astrof/astrof.zip?module=astrof&scale=2&keyboard=arcade

[Mike Taylor]

Re: Old games and Old Emulation!

What's "fire" please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Brief pause playing Commando to confirm

That (a) productivity will go down the drain this morning as mentioned in the article and (b) emulation is very slow in my browser, but that's a good thing because I can actually pass more than one level without getting killed all the time.

[Simon Harris]

A neat trick...

would be to reverse engineer the Javascript to recreate the original (or compatible) hardware.

[Admiral Grace Hopper]

Good news. Bad news.

Thank [DEITY] I can't see Gorf.

I can, however, see Bomb Jack.

[AbelSoul]

Defender!

Never got to play it as much as I wanted to as a kid due to being hopeless at it and running out of money too quickly. Now I get the chance to revisit it, making this old man happy.

Outstanding.

[bonkers]

Re: Defender!

Absolutely - defender is the all-time hardest game. I love it.

Games were different then, they wanted your money, not your time.

[toxicdragon]

Re: Defender!

Most of the "triple A" still do, bet you would be lucky to get 10 hours out of the new CoD for the £50 price, so not much has changed.

Note: I refuse to count online play, there will always be issues like the servers becoming totally deserted the second the new one is released, if you can connect to them at all and so on.

Gimme FF 3 any day, at least 40 odd if not more hours of play and I can get it for a tenner.

[Justin Pasher]

Controls

FYI, for those that are familiar with MAME, you can configure controls the same way.

Press 'P' to pause the emulation, then press the Tab key to bring up the config menu.

[ecofeco]

WOW!

WOW! Just.. WOW!

That is one hell of a collection!

Oh hell. I think I've played at least half of all those games! Damn I miss the arcades when I was, uh, in an altered state.

[Anonymous Coward]

> This archaic form of gaming is almost lost to humanity

No, the arcades just got better! Only grown-up kids allowed :)

http://emporiumchicago.com/

http://hqbeercade.com/lakeview/