Internet archive puts classic 70 and 80s games online

[nanochess]

Hi.

 

I'm in awe with these news http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25527786

 

Apparently archive.org put online a collection of old games https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom, including a lot of software from Atari 2600, Colecovision and Astrocade, playable online with browser though still without sound.

 

Given the prestige of archive.org I expected to see support from the original copyright owners, but apparently they simply published things.

 

The idea looks great for me, but given how it was done there is a chance that some of these games will disappear soon.

 

[jhd]

I wonder why they chose to include the Astrocade. The Intellivision seems like a more logical choice, given that it is much better known.

 

As for copyright, sigh. There may be a few games here for which the rights holder no longer cares (e.g. some of the obscure 2600 titles, most/all of the Astrocade and O2 games). This will not last very long in its current form.

 

I just looked closely at the Colecovision list of games, and somebody was being careful -- most of the licensed arcade titles are not there, including Donkey Kong. Oddly, the 2600 version is included.

[ls650]

Does JSMESS support the Intellivision?

[Rex Dart]

Wait... I can play Ninja Golf at work now?

 

 

I'm ruined!

Edited December 31, 2013 by Rex Dart

[+wongojack]

This has continued to improve through the year. I dunno about 2600 stuff, but I just got around to really checking out the arcade titles and was impressed with how good it is. The sound isn't that great, but they are real versions of the games and you don't have to download any BS spyware to get to the games. Organizing the list is a little rough so someone created a browser interface for that. I just used the advanced search and produced an alpha list of the arcade titles like this:

 

Query: internetarcade

(optional) Sort results by: titleSorter asc

HTML table: [check radio button]

Direct link to my search results:

https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php?q=internetarcade&fl[]=identifier&sort[]=titleSorter+asc&sort[]=&sort[]=&rows=5000&page=1&callback=callback&save=yes&output=tables

The same thing works for the 2600 titles if you use

Query: Atari_2600

Just scroll down a bit past all the manuals and you'll see the games returned by the search in alphabetical order.