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7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

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Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#31

Post by userbinator »

jerry80 wrote: post #29
MegaDeKay wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their DMCA exemption granted by the Copyright Office. https://archive.org/about/dmca.php

That gets them around the "prohibition on circumvention of access controls". I still don't understand how they can then go and distribute the programs without violating copyright. In fact, I'm still pretty certain they are violating copyright. Copyright sucks, and I applaud them for what they are doing, but I don't see how any of this is legal.

They will take down content (and keep it archived meanwhile) if the original rightsholders complain.

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#32

Post by unnouinceput »

justnotworthit wrote: post #7

I wonder if something like this will ever happen to xbox 360, ps4, etc games. Or if they'll be long unplayable either technically or legally.

Currently PS3 emulator is good to go. On latest CPU's like Ryzen 9 you get even better FPS than on an original PS3 system. Also you can play it on 4K. Last of Us (2013) is playable at 50 FPS upscaled to 4K. I suspect in 5 to 7 years a PS4 emulator would do the same.

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#35

Post by umvi »

unnouinceput wrote: post #32
justnotworthit wrote: post #7

I wonder if something like this will ever happen to xbox 360, ps4, etc games. Or if they'll be long unplayable either technically or legally.

Currently PS3 emulator is good to go. On latest CPU's like Ryzen 9 you get even better FPS than on an original PS3 system. Also you can play it on 4K. Last of Us (2013) is playable at 50 FPS upscaled to 4K. I suspect in 5 to 7 years a PS4 emulator would do the same.

Is it really emulating though or just doing some kind of lightweight conversion that can run natively on x86? Because a cycle accurate SNES emulator still lags for me on certain games even on a Ryzen 7.

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#36

Post by dwd »

georgeecollins wrote: post #27
sandworm101 wrote: post #16

Woot! Sid Meier's Colonization is there. Hands down one of the best games of all time. Wing Commander II collection, but no Privateer? That game is why Star Citizen even exists.

Privateer was very tricky to run because it barely fit in 640k, and took a special config. I wonder if that makes it hard to emulate. It was the best of the wing commander series by far.

Agree wholeheartedly, I recently came across a piece of graph paper in an old box with the systems and price histories for trading. The Righteous Fire add-on storyline was probably the best.

I wrote my own AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS menu to select the right config and sometimes run a different .BAT file again. Still have a version of it and pulled it up for nostalgia: Colonization, Warcraft, Doom2 (single and network modes) and SC 2000 were other options I had setup.

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#37

Post by moepstar »

rangibaby wrote: post #11
justnotworthit wrote: post #7

I wonder if something like this will ever happen to xbox 360, ps4, etc games. Or if they'll be long unplayable either technically or legally.

20 years ago I would have considered the idea of being able to play every dos game ever made directly in a browser without waiting science fiction. I guess it will happen eventually; I think the biggest concern with preserving games now is the amount of functionality provided server side that is lost (maybe forever) when the game company switches their servers off.

While that may be true (looking at the history of other games) you can also pretty much count on somebody reversing the server side and putting up a reverse engineered server then.

A great deal of online games of the Dreamcast era (so early 2000s) are being resurrected exactly through this method and people are enjoying them to this day: https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/app.php/page/onlinegame...

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#38

Post by vanderZwan »

aik wrote: post #21
sandworm101 wrote: post #16

Woot! Sid Meier's Colonization is there. Hands down one of the best games of all time. Wing Commander II collection, but no Privateer? That game is why Star Citizen even exists.

Agreed! Love Colonization. Wish there was a remake. First game I thought of when seeing this list. Privateer was amazing too.

There is a Civ IV-based remake:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_IV:_Colonization

Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser

#40

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

Technically I played the Macintosh version, but Mavis Beacon[0] was one of the first games I'd played in elementary school. I've recently wanted to try and raise my typing speed to 100+ wpm -- my current speed is ~80 wpm on a good day -- and TypeRacer[1]'s font and color choices sometimes make the practice texts hard to read. I should give good old Mavis Beacon a try...

Ha! I'm immediately thrown off by the double-space-after-period default. Fortunately that can be changed.

[0] https://archive.org/details/msdos_Mavis_Beacon_Teaches_Typin...

[1] https://play.typeracer.com/

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