Over Two Thousand DOS Games Playable in Your Browser

It is not every day that over two thousand games are made available for gamers. While this is not entirely “legal” that is exactly what happened recently with the Internet Archive. They added 2,500 MS-DOS games to their site. These games are playable in your browser as well, so they are technically is platform independent.

How the magic happens

The Internet Archive achieve this magic through emulators that run in your browser. Everything is done in your browser. I tried out Wizardry VII Crusaders of the Dark Savant but without a keyboard available, I could not get past the start screen. Other than that, the game ran fine on a Samsung Galaxy S7. Same thing for Wolfsbane, another title in the recent update.

Had I used a Bluetooth keyboard I could probably play the game just fine, though I would not want to on such a small screen.

Your mileage will vary greatly

As reported by DSOGaming, the quality of emulation here is hit or miss. Some games run fine while others will not even start. I hope this is just a case of whomever uploaded these not having optimized the emulator and will be corrected soon. I doubt it though as this is a lot of games to adjust the emulator for.

That is true with any general settings with an emulator. That is what I figure happened here. They found a setup online or something that would work for most of the games and used it as default.

I have not messed with this option very much, there may be a way to tweak DOSBox per game after loading it. This might allow for better performance with some games.

What classic DOS game are you most excited to see if it is included in this latest update? I am partial to the Role-Playing Games from the 80’s and 90’s that never made it to consoles myself.

Source: Internet Archive.

This article was originally published on Retro Gaming Magazine, a gaming website I own.