900 Arcade Games you can play straight from the Cloud

900 Arcade Games you can play straight from the Cloud

Yes, it is Monday, back to office, but if you have a couple of hours to kill in office, you can play some classic arcade games straight from your browser. There’s over 900 coin-operated arcade games from the ‘70s and ‘80s and they all are free to play right in your browser. No need for messy installs, as they run straight off the cloud.

The Internet Arcade is a web-based library of arcade (coin-operated) video games from the 1970s through to the 1990s, It is hosted by the Internet Archive as part of its quest to preserve computer history. If you ever had an argument on who is the better *insert arcade game* player, now is the perfect time to compete once again to settle the score.

The game collection is extensive, ranges from early “bronze-age” videogames, with black and white screens and simple sounds, through to large-scale games containing digitized voices, images and music. Most games are playable in some form, although some are useful more for verification of behavior or programming due to the intensity and requirements of their systems. Containing hundreds of games ranging through many different genres and styles, the Arcade provides research, comparison, and entertainment in the realm of the Video Game Arcade. The granddaddy of arcade games, at least to me, is Street Fighter 2, and yes, it is available on the Internet Arcade.

The software is termed mess MESS (Multi Emulator Super System), and the Internet Arcade is the culmination of highly impressive coding by Jason Scott and the team behind the multi-platform JSMESS (JavaScript Mess) emulator.

How-Tos:
1) The Internet Arcade works best in Firefox (the latest one). Chrome also works well, but about 20% slower on average.
2) Keyboard instructions can be changed with TAB. Otherwise, the default keys are:

  • 5: Insert Coin
  • 1: Player 1 Start
  • Alt: Button 1
  • Ctrl: Button 2
  • X: Button 3
  • C: Button 4

3) Gamepad. Basically, you need to start a game, i.e. after the MAME logo goes, and you see the game booting, and then you hit keys on your joypad until it says “joypad detected”, and then you need to refresh the browser. It’s totally not intuitive at the moment but hey, its working in a browser!

Woo hoo. Arcade gaming in a browser. Have fun and it might just clear those Monday Blues away.