The Internet Archive has compiled thousands of movies, books, music, and other media as a resource to the public domain for years. The purpose of the website is much like Wikipedia: it serves as an educational or academic avenue to research things, and it exists as a non-profit organization.
Now, they’ve revealed The Internet Arcade, a collection of all the golden oldies from arcades of yesteryear, all playable straight from your browser. In total, over 900 titles are currently available, featuring some hits such as Crazy Kong, Burger Time, and even Paperboy.
Despite the sheer massive number of games available and their simplicity in nature and visuals, there are some issues they’re still trying to iron out, specifically vector games, scaling of visuals, and some control mechanics not automatically adapting to keyboard and mouse properly.
The veritable mastermind behind the project, Jason Scott, spoke on his blog about the entire process:
“Of the roughly 900 arcade games (yes, nine hundred arcade games) up there, some are in pretty weird shape—vector games are an issue, scaling is broken for some, and some have control mechanisms that are just not going to translate to a keyboard or even a joypad.”
“But damn if so many are good enough. More than good enough. In the right browser, on a speedy machine, it almost feels perfect. The usual debates about the ‘realness’ of emulation come into play, but it works.”
“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.”
“A few more, I hope, will go towards games they’ve never heard of, with rules they have to suss out, and maybe more people will play some of these arcades in the coming months than the games ever saw in their ‘real’ lifetimes.”
“And my hope is that a handful, a probably tiny percentage, will begin plotting out ways to use this stuff in research, in writing, and remixing these old games into understanding their contexts. Time will tell.”
What games are you guys looking to play?
