2,500 free DOS games added to Internet Archive's web player

(Image credit: Internet Archive)

It’s the Internet Archive’s mission to preserve as much of the internet as possible in a monolithic digital library in order for both researchers and the general public to have free access to the wealth of knowledge and other miscellany found online.

One neat byproduct of this is the preservation of MS-DOS based games, with the current collection weighing in at just under 7,000 titles, thanks to the recent addition of another 2,500 games. And who doesn't love free games?

Thousands of games

As is the case with all other material found on the Internet Archive, these titles are free to access and play due to the legal nature of the not-for-profit archiving organization. 

Of the fresh 2,500 titles, we’ve listed some of the more popular games below, which join the likes of Pac-Man, Prince of Persia, Oregon Trail, and SimCity.

  • Street Fighter II 
  • WipEout 
  • The Secret of Monkey Island 
  • Night Trap 
  • Microsoft Flight Simulator 
  • Loom 
  • The Elder Scrolls - Daggerfall 
  • The Need for Speed 
  • Descent 
  • Ultima Underworld 1 & 2

You can browse the titles by searching for them directly in the Internet Archive's Software Library or sort them by the date they were archived, their title, name of the creator, or number of views each game has. 

Although you can't download the games themselves, they can be run in-browser via the provided DOSBOX emulator, either scaling to fit your browser window or expanding to full screen, and can be played with or without sound.

Harry Domanski
Harry is an Australian Journalist for TechRadar with an ear to the ground for future tech, and the other in front of a vintage amplifier. He likes stories told in charming ways, and content consumed through massive screens. He also likes to get his hands dirty with the ethics of the tech.