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Internet Archive Posted 10,000 Browser-Playable Amiga Titles (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fun-games dept.

The folks behind the Internet Archive have added a huge trove of Amiga games and programs to the site, bringing the total to more than 10,000. All these games can be played on your web browser. The non-profit library first began adding Amiga software to its catalog in 2013. TechCrunch adds: We can't vouch for the quality of all of the Amiga titles that were recently posted up on Archive.org, but there sure as heck are a lot of them -- 10,000+, by the site's count, including favorites as Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, King's Quest and Double Dragon, along with what looks to be a fair amount of redundancy. I'm not really sure what the difference is between Deluxe Pac Man v1.1 and Deluxe Pac Man v1.7a, but I suspect it's fairly minor, even for completists.

83 comments

  1. can somebody explain by s122604 · · Score: 2

    How playing these games in browsers work:

    Level set: I work as a developer, mostly on the backend with Java and Java-like languages (groovy, scala, etc..), occasionally .NET, but I actually do some front end work using Angular and EXT-JS... so I'm not a complete buffoon went it comes to front end development..

    Still I wouldn't even know how to start emulating games in the browser.

    1. Re:can somebody explain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Emulators written in JavaScript.

    2. Re:can somebody explain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Write an emulator in Javascript.

    3. Re:can somebody explain by red_dragon · · Score: 3, Informative

      It can't be that much different from emulating the games in some other language or platform. You'd have to emulate the CPU and chipset, collect input from the user (keyboard and mouse at least, and holy shit joysticks too!), and output the graphics (HTML5 Canvas) and sound (HTML5 audio) to the browser. Given that the MC68000 family of processors and the Amiga chipset have been emulated many times before already, plenty of inspiration exists to get you started.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
    4. Re:can somebody explain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      In fact this is the very emulator they are using.

      SAE (possibly based off of UAE?)

    5. Re:can somebody explain by DrXym · · Score: 3, Informative
      It appears to use an emulator called SAE which is an Amiga emulator implemented in Javascript against the canvas API. Another way of doing the same would be to take an existing C/C++ emulator and run it through Emscripten compiler to produce asm.js (a subset of JS).

      But web browsers desperately need a better way to run code than turning it into JS - something like LLVM bitcode that can be compiled and run at near-native speeds instead of the crappy 2-10x slower JS. Chrome did something called PNaCl along those lines but it would have to be adopted across all browsers.

    6. Re:can somebody explain by red_dragon · · Score: 2

      Thanks! Very cool. It does say "heavily based on WinUAE" right there on the front page.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
    7. Re:can somebody explain by Kiwikwi · · Score: 2

      Without knowing anything about the particulars of this solution, a likely approach nowadays would be to take an existing emulator writen in C/C++ and compile it to JavaScript using Emscripten.

      Emscripten produces JavaScript compliant with the asm.js profile, which is a subet of JavaScript that is easily optimized by the browser JS engine, allowing in-browser performance on the order of half of native speed. Given the age of the emulated hardware, this slowdown is not a problem.

      You still have to emulate actual I/O devices in plain HTML+JavaScript, which for these presumably amounts to mapping JavaScript input events to a virtual keyboard, and using a HTML Canvas element to emulate the display. Even joysticks and gamepads can be supported in bleeding edge browsers.

      TL;DR: By standing on the shoulders of giants, and adding a bunch of glue code. :-)

    8. Re:can somebody explain by NotInHere · · Score: 3, Informative

      something like LLVM bitcode that can be compiled and run at near-native speeds instead of the crappy 2-10x slower JS

      First, there is asm.js, which is a subset of js that runs in almost every browser, which can be easily compiled into assembly. It has been the alternate proposal to PNaCl by mozilla, and has won against the google idea. Its basically the same as PNaCl performance wise, the sole difference is that PNaCl is bytecode while asm.js is in textual representation (and a valid subset of js, so it works even in browsers without direct support for asm.js).

      Of course, the textual representation takes up more space than the bytecode, and even though gzip transport compression (which is usually deployed for http connections) gives a similar end product as pnacl, it takes a little overhead computation wise to decompress and in the end its a redundant step. Therefore, the browser vendors (including microsoft, which in fact really liked asm.js, it used it in its office 356 products) are now working on a native binary successor to PNaCl and asm.js which will get a proper standard. Its called web assembly.

    9. Re:can somebody explain by freeze128 · · Score: 2

      A noble spirit emscriptens the smallest man.

    10. Re:can somebody explain by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      I'd worry more about how to save games between sessions. How can they do that? Without leaving a browser window open forever? These Amiga games...there are a few shoot-em-up arcade style games, but most of them are in-depth experiences that take weeks or months to finish. You need to save your game and come back later.

      I think they don't/won't/can't implement this functionality and thus this playable Amiga archive is worthless. BUT someone got to spend months accomplishing something with all the grant money they got, which is the real reason IMO.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    11. Re:can somebody explain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1) It's javascript
      2) It's AROS, which is more like WINE than actual hardware emulation

      The problem is that 100% of these "in-browser" emulations don't run anywhere at native speed in the browser and in fact you're lucky if you get past the loader. You're better off using UAE.

      As a proof-of-concept, yeah maybe it's good enough, but in a practical sense you wouldn't use the browser to play the games for more than a minute just to make sure it's the game you think it is.

    12. Re:can somebody explain by tbuskey · · Score: 1

      I'd worry more about how to save games between sessions. How can they do that? Without leaving a browser window open forever? These Amiga games...there are a few shoot-em-up arcade style games, but most of them are in-depth experiences that take weeks or months to finish. You need to save your game and come back later.

      I think they don't/won't/can't implement this functionality and thus this playable Amiga archive is worthless.

      The dosbox emulator they use does save games. http://ascii.textfiles.com/arc.... It might be possible (or is already done!) for SAE

    13. Re:can somebody explain by Unordained · · Score: 1

      The javascript emulator would have access to https://www.w3.org/TR/webstora...

    14. Re:can somebody explain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Using HTML storage.

    15. Re:can somebody explain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your second point isn't entirely correct.
      It is still emulated. It's just that while the games that are released have the licensing sorted out the OS and ROM is still protected.
      AROS have done a compatible/portable replacement for those but the AROS version can be compiled for both 68k and x86.
      It is common for Amiga emulators to ship with the AROS ROM since it works for all games that followed Commodores programming guidelines and doesn't have the licensing issues.
      If you really want to run "Wayne Gretzky Hockey" you will have to configure the emulator to run with a memory dump of the original ROM.
      Turns out that Bethesda wrote crappy code that crashes on any system but the developers hardware back in the 80's too. They have used the same "It compiles, ship it" strategy for 30 years now.

    16. Re:can somebody explain by DrXym · · Score: 1
      I said asm.js in the line before. I'm aware what it is, and no it doesn't even approach near-native speeds. If you are in doubt over this I suggest you load up some of the QT demos or CPython in a browser and run a few benchmarks. Performance is appalling and the reason for that is self-evident - Javascript is not designed to model a processor architecture and things like canvas interaction and the browser's event loop have hamstrung performance. Even along optimized paths with specilized objects that mimic memory buffers it is still appalling. And that's even before considering subjects like multi-threading and so on.

      And no, PNaCl is not bytecode in some JVM sense. It uses LLVM bitcode which means it can be translated into native instructions and cached. PNaCl's performance is ~30% more than native but that's primarily due to software fault isolation instrumentation and other sandboxing mechanisms. It's still vastly better than asm.js.

    17. Re:can somebody explain by Schnapple · · Score: 1

      (including microsoft, which in fact really liked asm.js, it used it in its office 356 products)

      Slight point of clarification, the product Microsoft used it in is Office Online (formerly Office Web Apps), which is their web-based implementation of Office products. They're not as full featured or as supported as their desktop counterparts but they are free.

      What they are not, however, is part of Office 365 (or at least not the versions available to the public). Office 365 is Microsoft's term for their subscription-based Office suite. When you're an Office 365 subscriber you have access to the latest desktop versions of Office and you get all the features in the mobile app versions as well.

      This confuses people all the time since people think that Office 365 is Office Online but that's not the case.

      --

      Schnapple

    18. Re:can somebody explain by myrdos2 · · Score: 1

      But web browsers desperately need a better way to run code than turning it into JS - something like LLVM bitcode that can be compiled and run at near-native speeds instead of the crappy 2-10x slower JS.

      All I know is my cutting edge desktop doesn't have the horsepower to run their Kings Quest II. Judging by the roughly 1 frame per 5 seconds, I'd say my machine needs to be about 150 times faster. Maybe I'll try again in 20 years or so?

    19. Re:can somebody explain by DrXym · · Score: 1

      Try UAE - it's a native Amiga emulator that should have no trouble emulating any Amiga at the correct clock from A1000 all the way to A4000. Perhaps this Amiga emulator isn't as optimal / mature but running over an event driven browser in JS certainly doesn't help. One neat thing about the browser version is how they're using AROS to replace the standard Kickstart / Workbench.

    20. Re:can somebody explain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Works fine for me. Your computer must be a potato.

    21. Re:can somebody explain by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      Ah sorry, thanks for the clarification.

    22. Re:can somebody explain by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      Well asm.js is about 50% more than native [1], maybe slower on browsers that don't have asm.js optimisations (the analogon for PNaCl would result in it not working at all). So yes, its 20% difference, but its not considerably far away, unless you say that PNaCl is far away from native speeds.

      Javascript is not designed to model a processor architecture

      No it isn't. But asm.js is. The only thing it doesn't have that "normal" assembly has is gotos, its done via manual loops instead.

      It uses LLVM bitcode which means it can be translated into native instructions and cached.

      Its the same for asm.js, it gets translated into native instructions as well. At least on browsers that care about asm.js.

      [1]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013...

  2. How do they do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Internet Archive has a ton of copyrighted material available. How do they get away with piracy while IP holders go apeshit over "abandonware" and torrent sites?

    1. Re:How do they do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Internet Archive has a ton of copyrighted material available. How do they get away with piracy while IP holders go apeshit over "abandonware" and torrent sites?

      Because they have a letter of exemption from the library of congress.

    2. Re:How do they do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would only explain how they are able to keep archived copies for themselves, not how they are able to distribute copies to everyone on the internet without getting busted for piracy.

    3. Re:How do they do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jason Scott can't be bargained with. He can't be reasoned with. He doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are archived.

    4. Re:How do they do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They'll eventually have that exemption revoked if they keep going this "ARCHiVE.ORG" warez site route like they've been doing for the past few years. It ain't "preservation" if it's the copies with cractros, 1996 timestamps, etc. and downloading is not "checking out". That Scott guy is really risking jeopardization of actual non-warez cultural history by uploading whatever cool big "collection" torrents from other people he can find and stamp his own "important archivist" ego on it.

    5. Re:How do they do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The United States congress cannot exempt anyone from copyright issued outside of US jurisdiction, such as most Amiga titles.

    6. Re:How do they do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Internet Archive has a ton of copyrighted material available. How do they get away with piracy while IP holders go apeshit over "abandonware" and torrent sites?

      Because they have a letter of marque and reprisal from the library of congress.

      FTFY

    7. Re:How do they do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Internet Archive has a ton of copyrighted material available. How do they get away with piracy while IP holders go apeshit over "abandonware" and torrent sites?

      If they have a good lawyer they should be able to get away with it.
      The publishers doesn't really exist anymore. The names are still around but the original companies have been dismantled and sold several times over.
      It is often unclear if the particular titles and IP rights were part of the deal and figuring out who the real IP holder is can be tricky.
      Most publishers just assume that they are the IP holders because they have the same name, but I doubt they can actually prove it if it is tested in a court.
      If you look at previous cases against copyright infringement the proof has pretty much been "because we say so" and it goes through because the courts doesn't know jack shit and the company representative is dressed in a suit and the "copyright infringer" have slacks and an attitude.

      If actually investigated the IP holder will most likely turn out to be "could not be determined".

      Fun detail regarding that.
      The molds for the C64 plastics were bought by an enthusiast on an auction where random molds were auctioned out.
      He can't put the Commodore sticker on them because the current trademark holder is a troll that waits for someone to use the logo but never answer when someone asks for permission but there is nothing they can do about the new cases being sold because those were never part of the deal when they got the trademark.
      It would be interesting to make new power supplies since the logotype is in the plastic there.
      If the creation of the molds where authorized by Commodore and the mold legally purchased it could make an interesting case if the trademark holder wanted to contest the usage.
      Theoretically they could claim that the PSU can't be sold with the logotype on them and that it has to be removed, but it could be argued that permission to use the logotype was implied when the molds were sold, otherwise the logotype should have been removed from them.

    8. Re:How do they do it? by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      >If you look at previous cases against copyright infringement the proof has pretty much been "because we say so" and it goes through because the courts doesn't know jack shit and the company representative is dressed in a suit and the "copyright infringer" have slacks and an attitude.

      That pattern seems to be changing though - the recent happy birthday case saw the copyright revoked because WB couldn't prove they ever actually owned it.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    9. Re:How do they do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Will you people just stop already. There is no 'justice', as a mundanes understand. This is justice -> $$$. Those who can pay get to write the laws any way they want. They will have judges that interpret it the way the want. And the outcomes will be the way they want. Real cases are this -> $$$ vs $$$$ . Understand!

  3. AMIGA!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AMIGAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

  4. Just between you and me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the web does not need 30 year old 320 x 240 interlaced games.

    1. Re:Just between you and me by Miamicanes · · Score: 2

      Strictly speaking, 320x200 and 320x256 weren't interlaced. They just refreshed half the scanlines twice as often, while totally ignoring the other half. In modern parlance, they were "200p60" and "256p50".

      That's also why a lot of first-generation LCD TVs had problems displaying 320x200 or 320x256 from old computers and videogames. It was technically never an official video mode, and the fact that it worked was just a lucky side-effect of the way CRTs operated.

      Nifty trivia: through clever CPU timing, someone semi-recently discovered that you can coax a c64, Vic-20, or 8-bit Atari into displaying interlaced graphics at double the vertical resolution by manually changing a register (and the video ram pointers) at the right moment to make the display THINK you're about to send it the even scanlines (instead of sending the odd lines again).

    2. Re:Just between you and me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The VIC-20 was able to display interlaced video with a simple POKE36864,133 command.

    3. Re:Just between you and me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Luckily your joyless ass doesn't decide what the web "needs".

      Go be a fucking downer somewhere else.

  5. Re:Link to best of list by Layzej · · Score: 1, Troll

    I recently downloaded the WinUAE emulator to play Super Frog, Worms, Lemmings, Gauntlet, Silkworm, Battle Squadron, and Populous with my kids. Good fun!

  6. Cue lawyers in five... four... by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 2

    Some of the publishers are still in business, or the holding company of those that were acquired are still in business.
    I think we can expect their staff bottom feeders to start making threats pretty soon.

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
    1. Re:Cue lawyers in five... four... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      For a few weeks after Archive.org put up their emulations for coin-op arcade ROMs, you could find the whole Donkey Kong series, the Pac-Man series, Defender/Stargate, Pole Position, and a bunch of other top-tier arcade games in there. Shortly thereafter, the lawyers found out about it and cleared out nearly all of the top-tier games and a good swath of the second-tier ones as well. There are still a few gems that survived (Joust, Gorf, Berzerk), but the collection now is a fraction of what it started as.

    2. Re:Cue lawyers in five... four... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some of the publishers are still in business, or the holding company of those that were acquired are still in business.
      I think we can expect their staff bottom feeders to start making threats pretty soon.

      They can't prove that the game titles were part of the acquisition. Unfortunately you don't need to prove that you are the copyright holder in IP cases.

    3. Re:Cue lawyers in five... four... by Willard+B.+Trophy · · Score: 1

      aaand it's down. A hollow voice says “Cloantoooo”

  7. How is this legal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    How is any of this legal? The listed games "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, King's Quest and Double Dragon" are definitely still copyrighted.

    Even if you're playing them in a browser from someone else's computer, that seems essentially the same as what Aereo was sued for doing with antenna signals.

    1. Re:How is this legal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      they got away with it last time for a while, so they're doing it the same way again.
      basically they take stuff down as they get dmca takedown letters.

      however, there is nothing stopping said copyright holders just from suing the pants off these guys.

      the bad thing is that this leads to some kids thinking this is legal and those kids do end up getting sued for their pants. archive.org banks on their reputation to not get sued like that, but others do get sued like that.

  8. Heck by symes · · Score: 1

    I was supposed to be doing things. Now I'm decades old game and having fun.

  9. what about the kickstart roms? and amaiga os? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    what about the kickstart roms? and Amiga os? looks like they are using aros

  10. their website has serious javascript bugs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the search is seriously broken
    - can't clear search filters
    - it appends to the url rather than edit every time you change the search text
    - it hides the letter search sometimes even when there is a letter filter applied

  11. Hey, anybody remember this Amiga BBS Door? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It was a fantasy RPG, you could select your own god from your typical alignment choices, good, evil, neutral, lawful, chaotic, and well, various rooms to do stuff in, and some such shit. Might have had some Sci-Fi elements too. One option was the Christian God, but they had others like some Cthulhu like ones.

    Or was that a different game where you could play like a robot and fight?

    1. Re:Hey, anybody remember this Amiga BBS Door? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Darude - Sandstorm

  12. Of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Jason Scott, piracy provocateur "my hat makes me invinicble" extradordinaire.

  13. Re: Link to best of list by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    One very early Amiga game had generated / algorithmic music... can't recall the name... Anyone?

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  14. Re:Link to best of list by grub · · Score: 2


    Thank you! I didn't know there was a version of Tempest with a pair of hands holding the playing field open. Amazing that they could do that with vector graphics.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  15. Re: Link to best of list by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll take Amiga Titties for $200.

  16. algorithmic music by Layzej · · Score: 1

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ?

    1. Re:algorithmic music by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      Thanks, but no. It was a little pixelated character moving over a vast-ish landscape. Had some very basic, but very spacey and moody, procedural background music. I've been trying to think of it on and off ever since I saw this post. Drawing a blank. Sigh. Old.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    2. Re: algorithmic music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Faery Tale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Faery_Tale_Adventure ?

    3. Re: algorithmic music by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      No, not that one either.

      very early. a1000 time frame.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    4. Re: algorithmic music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MasterBlazer ?

    5. Re: algorithmic music by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      No. It was a spacey mood, run-across-a-landscape thing with background music of slowish notes that constantly mutated.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  17. Mostly junk... by PhantomHarlock · · Score: 3, Informative

    I played with and also searched for various titles. Mostly it is endless demo scene disks, demo versions of games and many of them don't work properly. The ones that do load play sound erratically, the emulator timing ramps up and down like a record with variable speed playback.

    There were some really amazing games on the Amiga, and you're not going to get the sense of what it was like here. No Psygnosis games, and I couldn't get even the Turrican Demo to work properly. Plus no options that I can see for scanline emulation, the line doubling looks pretty bad and doesn't present what it actually looked like on a CRT monitor.

    The fascinating thing which is hard to realize now is that when games like "Shadow of the Beast" came out in 1986, the PC / DOS crowd was still largely on 16 color CGA with no sound beyond beeps and clicks unless you bought an expensive add on sound card like a Turtle beach. The Macintosh was just discovering color. We were enjoying arcade quality graphics and sound as far back as the Amiga 1,000 thanks to a set of discreet graphics and sound chips. (Paula, Agnes, Denise etc.) It was heady times and a great time to be an Amiga user, from the mid-80s till the early 90s.

    1. Re:Mostly junk... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree a LOT of crap!

    2. Re:Mostly junk... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess you can thank the lawyers who forced IA to take down the good ones.

    3. Re:Mostly junk... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SOTB came out in 89. By that time IBM PC compatible computers begin to run circles around amigas. Adlib, SB1 etc sound cards, color VGA monitors. Carmack came out with Catacomb3D in 91 then Amiga's fate was sealed.
      Amiga came out in 86, it was good for 1 or 2 years. You just can't compete with cheap IBM PC compatibles.

    4. Re:Mostly junk... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You had to spend several times the amount of money on IBM PC compatibles, with their cheap performance and costly expansions, to get the same kind of experience the Amiga had out of the box. It wasn't until the release of Windows 95 that the IBM PC had definitely surpassed the Amiga in both software, absolute performance, and performance per price.

    5. Re:Mostly junk... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know how the quote goes: "The Amiga was 15 years ahead of its time... and stayed there for 20 years."

    6. Re:Mostly junk... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >We were enjoying arcade quality graphics and sound as far back as the Amiga 1,000

      Consider even the Commodore 64, the Amiga's older brother. Had very nice sound & music capabilities- and excellent color. Even doing fades quite well.
      Whole Commodore line was a dedicated creative platform... video, graphic design, music, literally all the things Macs became preferred for later. I sincerely believe Apple would not have taken over that role had Commodore not sunk.

  18. Atari ST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Amiga is a poor man's Atari ST.

    1. Re:Atari ST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So the Amiga was not only better, but also cheaper to buy? I never knew that.

    2. Re:Atari ST by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 1

      LMOL....good one :)

  19. B L A Z E M O N G E R! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I haven't looked but bet they don't have Blazemonger.

    1. Re:B L A Z E M O N G E R! by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      Of course they don't. No modern screen can display its awesome 64Kx64K graphics with one color (black).

  20. ugh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    saw that n a book on vc 20s in 82
    t also sad the vic was incapable of sprites which it can do vertically

  21. Can somebody explain how they get away with it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    compiled to javascript through clang or whatever.

    However can somebody explain how they haven't been taken down yet? I always disliked archive.org posting these game dumps because it is trivial and there are a number of warez sites that do the same.

    and it compromises archive.orgs original mission. because these are still under copyright and they don't have licenses!

    these are still under copyright and they don't have licenses! how are they getting away with it? same with their mame dump! it's just a massive copyright infringing dump stepping on copyrights of everything from nintendo to konami to sierra to activision to microsoft(yes! being the current owners of some copyrights)!

  22. Missing some key titles by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 1

    No Marble Madness and no Clown-o-mania. I'll go back to work now.

  23. Re:Link to best of list by hoggoth · · Score: 1

    Are you referring to Goatse-Tempest?

    --
    - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
  24. Don't get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For some stupid reason it will only work in Edge browser on my LOVELY Windows 10 system.

    Fail, Microsoft, Fail.

    1. Re:Don't get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Correction: I can get the titles to load in Edge, but I can't seem to interact with them. One title suggested that I click 'advance' in the 'control panel,' which does not appear anywhere I can see it in the Edge browser.

      Rethinking this, is it a Microsoft Fail or an Internet Archive Fail for not apparently providing Edge compatibility?

      Whatever, wasted enough time with this. Next!

  25. Xenon 2 in browser with music! by MarkH · · Score: 1

    You stars archive.org

  26. Mech Battle ... by Keybounce · · Score: 1

    So I found two different versions of the all-time great game, ... mech battle? Mechforce?

    A little searching showed that it had two different names over time (fasa lawsuit perhaps?): Mechforce, and Battleforce.

    I *really* wanted to play it.

    Sadface; two different versions, and neither would work. One did not give any icons inside the disk window; the other gave the icons, but the main game does not launch.

    This is the game that could have really redefined mech combat games. It showed just how badly designed the FASA mech designs were -- and how much the turn-based heat usage of that game was broken.

    Simple actions on your turn that would not give you any heat problems with FASA's rules were nightmarishly hot when you have real "heat over time" mechanics -- and the techniques for operating your mech had to change.

  27. Late to the party by GunR · · Score: 3, Informative

    Damn.

    "After a beta-testing period, the emulated Amiga programs at the Archive have been taken down for further development. Thanks to everyone for testing the Amiga In-Browser emulation package during the beta period, and especially a thank you to the Scripted Amiga Emulator project, as well as db48x and bai, for all the hard work with this experiment."

    1. Re:Late to the party by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck beta!