Archive Vintage Games Collection Enhanced: Holiday Blues Defeated!

This week the folks at the Internet Archive have released a new collection of in-browser emulated games, a whole mess of vintage titles released recently into the public domain. This collection runs on an emulator based on MESS software, working with JSMESS (Javascript MESS) allowing most modern browsers to play immediately. Most games work with a simple tapping of your space bar and arrow keys on your average keyboard.

At the moment you'll have to suffer through the lack of sound on this collection of games, but messing with them yourself in your own software environment is not out of the question. The IA collection is optimized for their own super-simple environment so that users can enjoy these ultra-tiny games as quickly as possible.

The current collection consists of games from the Atari 2600, the Atari 7800 ProSystem, the original ColecoVision, the Magnavox Odyssey2 – aka the Philips Videopac G7000, and the Astrocade. Users will be able to browse through each system or by subject or keyword.

Just this week a new wave of games has made this vintage collection burst at the seams, with a load of Atari 2600 games coming up fully prepared to be played instantly. Each game works as a download – if you're logged in – or as an in-browser emulation.

Let us know if you're jumping in to have a go, and be sure to note which games you're finding most entertaining! It's a strange, strange world we're living in when the oldest games can turn out to be the most enticing in an odd situation like this.