In the early years of personal computers, when operating systems did not yet have a graphical interface, all games were run from MS-DOS.
The process was not a piece of cake: You had to enter MS-DOS, navigate to the folder directory where the game was installed and execute the .EXE file that allowed the game in question to run. Hard times to be a gamer: in addition to being a bit of a “geek” you also had to know a lot about computers… or take a computer science degree.
Later, with the release of the first versions of Windows, Microsoft continued to maintain the MS-DOS command interface as an important complement to Windows, and many games of that time continued to be published for this terminal and command line environment.
How to play MS-DOS games online from the browser
Today things are much simpler thanks to emulators and digital libraries such as the Internet Archive , which is responsible for documenting and recording elements of digital multimedia culture, cataloging everything from classic black and white movies to music, magazines and even old video games for systems like MS-DOS.
The fun and interesting thing about all this is that the Internet Archive catalog is not limited to recording information on old video games, but also promotes their conservation as cultural heritage, keeping a playable copy of each game that visitors can enjoy through emulation.
All you have to do is enter the library of MS-DOS games from the Internet Archive to be able to play them directly from your browser, without the need to install anything. All this for free and legally.
Classics of yesterday and today: from Doom to Prince of Persia or the legendary PC Fútbol
The Internet Archive’s MS-DOS Games Library started with a “modest” collection of about 2,500 games, but today the list has grown to over 7,000 titles. Here, you can find authentic nostalgic gems from the 80s and 90s like the first Tomb Raider, Quake, Microsoft Flight Simulator, the first The Need for Speed, Sid Meyer’s Civilization or the mythical PC Fútbol 5.0 with a smiling Michael Robinson on the cover.
To play any of the titles available in the collection, you just have to click on one of them. A page will load where you will see documentary information about the game, as well as a window with a huge green power button. Simply click on this button to start the game.
Some games do not have very intuitive controls, so you have to guess which button to press to do this or that action. In any case, some games also include the instruction manual that you can open by clicking on the book-shaped icon that you will see below the title.
In addition to that, the games can also be played in full screen by clicking on the enlarge icon you will see next to the game window. Although more than half of the collection is only available via streaming, some games like Wolfenstein 3D , Sim City Classic or Space Invaders can be downloaded to play offline from PC .
