The Internet Archive has just released one hell of a late Xmas present for pretty much anyone with a working computer. Nearly 2,400 MS-DOS games are now available on the website to be downloaded or played directly from your browser. Everything from the shock-shooter Duke Nukem 3D to nostalgia fuel like Oregon Trail (and everything in between) are now up and running on the web site for the entirely reasonable price of–wait for it–$0! Find them all here.
Being billed as “the MS-DOS project”, this public service was prefaced by an announcement from Jason Scott, the software curator for the project:
I really worked hard to have only fully-functioning programs up, or at least, programs that gave viable, useful feedback. Some of them will still fall over and die, and many of them might be weird to play in a browser window, and of course you can’t really save things off for later, and that will limit things too. But on the whole, you will experience some analogue of the MS-DOS program, in your browser, instantly.
With the spending excesses of Black Friday, Christmas, and Boxing Day firmly in the rear-view mirror, this is the perfect time of year for a little bit of free gaming.