Internet Archive offers 900 classic arcade games for browser-based play

As part of its continuing mission to catalog and preserve our shared digital history, the Internet Archive has published a collection of more than 900 classic arcade games, playable directly in a Web browser via a Javascript emulator.

The Internet Arcade collects a wide selection of titles, both well-known and obscure, ranging from "bronze age" black-and-white classics like 1976's Sprint 2 up through the dawn of the early '90s fighting game boom in Street Fighter II. In the middle are a few historical oddities, such as foreign Donkey Kong bootleg Crazy Kong and the hacked "Pauline Edition" of Donkey Kong that was created by a doting father just last year.

The site's new arcade offerings are the work of curator Jason Scott, who has previously archived thousands of classic console and PC games as part of the Internet Archive's software collection. Like that previous work, the Arcade collection is built on top of JSMESS, a version of the open-source Multi Emulator Super System project designed to run in Javascript-compatible browsers. Adding MAME-based arcade game support to the Internet Archive's JSMESS environment "turned out to be easy. Very, very easy," Scott writes on his personal blog.

The Archive highlights 300 or so games for their ability to "run at proper speed in a powerful browser," but the collection of 900 ROMs includes hundreds more on offer that are "playable in some form." Scott notes that vector games are particularly tricky, and games that use non-standard controllers, like trackballs, play a bit oddly (though the emulator does support many USB gamepads). No matter how extensive the collection gets, of course, there will be some games that simply can't be emulated on a computer any time soon.

While most of the arcade games on offer are still under copyright, with some still seeing re-releases on modern consoles, the browser-based versions are being offered as part of what the Archive calls "exercising our right to remember." Many users will no doubt briefly tinker with fondly remembered games or explore some quirky looking titles that strike their fancy. But Scott writes that he hopes a few 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."