How to play MS-DOS games online
The Internet Archive is a website where you can find snapshots of old and abandoned websites, discontinued software, and outdated/old apps that no longer have a platform to run on. It’s basically Sakaar for the internet but there’s no Grand Master, or fighting. If you want to run Windows Movie Maker, or any other app from Windows Live Essentials, you can get them all from the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive has recently added about 2500 MS-DOS game titles to its database and, it’s also included an emulator that can run in your browser. You can use it to play MS-DOS games online. Here’s how.
All these games are available for free. You don’t have to worry about licenses or whether or not you’re breaking the law by playing the games online.
Play MS-DOS games online
Visit the Internet Archive’s library of MS-DOS games. There are a few search filters that you can use to narrow down the titles you see, and there’s a search bar at the top of the column on the left that you can use to search for a particular title.
Select a game title to play and you’ll be taken to its page. There isn’t much here except for a history of the game and what looks like an over-sized header image but, that’s the emulator. Resize your browser window so that it fits just right around it. You will see a ‘power’ button on the image. Click it, and the game will start.
When the game starts, you will see a welcome screen and the options on the welcome screen will differ based on the game you’ve selected to play. There isn’t going to be anything too complicated since these are MS-DOS games that ran on a very simple interface with basic hardware. At no point will you be forced to configure any controls.
There are loads of titles to choose from but you cannot take the games offline. You can switch over to full screen mode for a better playing experience. The games should run in any modern web browser though you might want to give Opera’s gaming browser a try if you don’t want to play in Chrome or Firefox.
It goes without saying that scores won’t be saved. You will see your current score but it’s highly unlikely that if you close the tab or window that you have the game open in, and come back to it later, your score will still be there. This is a simple emulation of the game and no list of worldwide top scores is maintained for the people who play it.
