The Internet Archive website has added another 2,500 MS-DOS games

Nice!

I wonder if I can find the exact same DOS chess game I used to play on my primary school's PCs ~20 years ago and get a nostalgia hit from it.

this is awesome,i always use them to get some old magazines i used to read,like compute magazine,the old pc gamers,etc.great place to just get a ton of stuff and store it locally.im really thinking of getting one of my older pc's and just use it as a server to store all those things on.

Hm. Tried a couple of games, and results were....bad.

Princess Maker 2 gave me badly stuttering sound with SoundBlaster mode, and no sound at all with the other two modes.

Wizardry VII had great sound, but I had zero control over the cursor with keyboard or mouse, so couldn't get past the first menu.

Robotron 2084 is apparently just a demo version (it gives an address in Canada for the full version) and has the same stuttering sound as Princess Maker 2. Also, I figured out how to shoot but not move. Arrows and WASD both non-fuctional so I died fast anyway.

The Hidden Below gave me the usual menu to choose SoundBlaster or other sound options, then led me through a series of menus in German which I think was for more sound-related stuff. It's hard to tell. In any case, this time the sound had an echo. More of a crackle than a stutter as well. Still pretty awful. Game actually worked at least, if a bit slow.

Might and Magic 4 - Clouds of Xeen - Sound is great! Animations run smoothly! An absolute joy for the eyes and ears after all those others. Same problem as Wizardry though, as I can't interact with the menus at all. Pity.

So yeah, not exactly a good experience thus far.

Yup, there are minor sound issues... but I played the good old Prince of Persia for a bit and I loved it! :D Cheats don't work, though... :(


Last edited by cprn on 15 October 2019 at 2:47 pm UTC

This project really legal?
I seems, they can't clear copyright problems.

Every game I’ve tried there has been unplayably laggy, so I’m guessing it doesn’t play nice with Firefox.

This project really legal?
I seems, they can't clear copyright problems.

They didn't say in their announcement, but I can't imagine that it's technically legal, at least I can't remotely begin to imagine the manpower and time needed to track down and contact hundreds of copyright holders to get the necessary permission. And even if it's abadonware, you still cannot make it available in such way without permission. Copyright law is really clear about that you cannot do ANYHING with a protected work, unless with explicit permission or when the law explicitly allows it.

OTOH, I can't see anybody suing them over it, either. These games have no commercial value anymore.

[quote=Kimyrielle]

[...] These games have no commercial value anymore.

Not entirely true. Some of them are being sold by GoG still. (Though in the case of Ultima VII, I think I got that on GoG for free at some point.)

Yup, there are minor sound issues... but I played the good old Prince of Persia for a bit and I loved it! :D Cheats don't work, though... :(

Minor sound issues, actively painful to listen to...it's a fine line.

This project really legal?
I seems, they can't clear copyright problems.

They didn't say in their announcement, but I can't imagine that it's technically legal, at least I can't remotely begin to imagine the manpower and time needed to track down and contact hundreds of copyright holders to get the necessary permission. And even if it's abadonware, you still cannot make it available in such way without permission. Copyright law is really clear about that you cannot do ANYHING with a protected work, unless with explicit permission or when the law explicitly allows it.

OTOH, I can't see anybody suing them over it, either. These games have no commercial value anymore.

There are a couple of Elder Scrolls games in there (I saw Daggerfall and Redguard at least), and I dunno if Bethesda are the sort to just look the other way even if they're not still selling the games.

I played a few Commander Keen games yesterday. That was fun. :D

This project really legal?
I seems, they can't clear copyright problems.

They didn't say in their announcement, but I can't imagine that it's technically legal, at least I can't remotely begin to imagine the manpower and time needed to track down and contact hundreds of copyright holders to get the necessary permission. And even if it's abadonware, you still cannot make it available in such way without permission. Copyright law is really clear about that you cannot do ANYHING with a protected work, unless with explicit permission or when the law explicitly allows it.

OTOH, I can't see anybody suing them over it, either. These games have no commercial value anymore.

EDIT: Sorry I overlooked the fact that Jason Scott is already mentioned in the article - in any case, check out his talks on youtube.

The project is led by a somewhat eccentric & absolutely intrepid individual called Jason Scott; he has several talks posted on youtube, where he goes into quite a bit of detail regarding the challenges they face, including the legal.

Unfortunately a great many (most?) of the titles available through the in-browser emulator (mame implemented in webassembly) are broken currently -- they're aware of this; because as Jason Scott explains in one of those talks, their #1 priority nowadays is to digitize stuff, put it on the archive, and make it 'available', not necessarily fully-functional.


Last edited by walther von stolzing on 16 October 2019 at 1:48 am UTC

Great news, especially if you are into vintage games!

Kudos to archive.org!

This project really legal?
I seems, they can't clear copyright problems.

They didn't say in their announcement, but I can't imagine that it's technically legal, at least I can't remotely begin to imagine the manpower and time needed to track down and contact hundreds of copyright holders to get the necessary permission. And even if it's abadonware, you still cannot make it available in such way without permission. Copyright law is really clear about that you cannot do ANYHING with a protected work, unless with explicit permission or when the law explicitly allows it.

OTOH, I can't see anybody suing them over it, either. These games have no commercial value anymore.

There are a couple of Elder Scrolls games in there (I saw Daggerfall and Redguard at least), and I dunno if Bethesda are the sort to just look the other way even if they're not still selling the games.

Bethesda, several years ago, made Arena and Daggerfall free to download and play. I assume, but am not sure, that Redguard is, also.

I feel like this needs the Boxtron touch.

This project really legal?
I seems, they can't clear copyright problems.

OTOH, I can't see anybody suing them over it, either. These games have no commercial value anymore.

There's some pretty big names in there though... LucasArts (now owned by the Walt Disney Company), Sierra (now part of Activision Blizzard), EA (under a dozen different studios, including EA itself), id Software, Ubisoft, Atari (under various studios) and a laundry list of others.

Some of those companies might turn a blind eye - but I highly doubt all of them will.


[quote=Klaus]

[...] These games have no commercial value anymore.

Not entirely true. Some of them are being sold by GoG still. (Though in the case of Ultima VII, I think I got that on GoG for free at some point.)

There's a whole heap of them that are still for sale on GOG.com and / or Steam (mostly the former though)...


Last edited by Cyba.Cowboy on 17 October 2019 at 12:21 pm UTC

There are a couple of Elder Scrolls games in there (I saw Daggerfall and Redguard at least), and I dunno if Bethesda are the sort to just look the other way even if they're not still selling the games.

They're both officially free. :) I just don't know if they allow redistribution or streaming, but they probably won't make a case out of having them in streaming format on archive.org. We'll see.
- The Elder Scrolls: Arena
- The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall