Xbox one emulator for PC Archives

I bet it’s been a while since you played DOS games, right? The Internet Archive is a digital library that keeps old things alive, such as software, audiovisual content, games, books, and more. The best part about the website is that the access to all this information is free.

For gamers who want to relive retro games, it’s quite difficult to find the right PC emulator that actually works. Well, the Internet Archive added another important part of computing history and gaming to the platform: the DOS games.

Gaming before the modern computing era

PC gaming before was very different than what it has become today. In the early years of Widows OS, computer video games had to run on MS-DOS, Microsoft’s terminal operating system.

Related story: Voxon Z3D Is Your Own Holographic Gaming Arcade

DOS games have been very important in the gaming industry. They have given shape to today’s video games, evolving into the modern games we play today.

Predict the #election result: set up your own Trump versus Clinton campaign with this 1987 game in our MSDOS archive https://t.co/Fj02R7jUxT

— Internet Archive (@internetarchive) September 29, 2016

The problem with these old games is that finding, downloading, and playing them can become very hard work. They fall into oblivion, and in a few years, they could even disappear completely.

Emulate MS-DOS games directly from your browser

Thankfully, the Internet Archive provides MD-DOS games that don’t require an emulator. Instead, it uses EM-DOSBOX, an in-browser emulator, to boot and play these games. This also removes the need to download anything else besides the game files into the browser.

Also interesting: Retro-Gaming and the Polymega Modular Console

Once you are in its Software Library, you will find a huge list containing thousands of MS-DOS games. You can even arrange this list by year, title, or any available criteria to make your search easier. Some of the more popular titles there are The Oregon Trail, Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3D, Pac-Man, SimCity, SimAnt, The Settlers 2, Disney’s Aladdin, Golden Axe, and many more.

Once you find the game you want to play, just click on it and you will be redirected to a new page where you can launch it. Hitting the ‘begin’ button on top of the page, you will have two buttons to go full-screen and to mute/un-mute the game. After it launches, you will have to use the keyboard to control the game.

Each game also has all the information you need to know about it. Just in case you’re a bit skeptical of how it runs, you also have user reviews to read through.

Keep in mind it’s beta

First of all, you need to know that this is still in beta. However, you can contact directly with the software curator, Jason Scott, in case you want to report any issue or just ask him questions.

Another thing is that some games may take significant time to download all the game data to the browser before it starts. This depends on your internet connection and the size of the game you’re loading. Playstation-era titles can be a few hundred megabytes for sure. With that being said, you can have your own nostalgia fest by playing through your favorite MS-DOS games in the Internet Archive.

Photo credits: The feature image is a collage of several game screenshots and covers. The screenshot of the website has been taken by Danielle Ordonez for TechAcute and is owned by the Internet Archive.

I will begin this guide by asking you to check your internet law degree at the door. Yes, emulation software is entirely legal. Yes, "backing up" games is entirely legal and downloading other people's backups of games you already own might be legal (but nobody has tested it in court). No, downloading other people’s copies of games you don't own is definitely not legal. Are we all clear on that? Great.

If you are a scared baby and cannot handle some gray market hi-jinx, I will direct you towards your local smile.amazon.com where you can purchase a variety of Classic or Mini consoles and game compilations. If you’d like to live your life within the confines of the PlayStation Store, Nintendo Switch Online, or the Google Play or Apple App Store, I cannot stop you. Go forth, rich person, and pay for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the twelfth time in your life. You are morally superior to us all and can close this tab.

Okay, now that the narcs are gone, let’s play some damn video games.

To start off, let’s assume you don’t know anything about emulation. An emulator is a piece of software that mimics the console hardware of game systems past, allowing other hardware to run games that were specifically built for another machine. The files of these games are pulled off of retail release copies and are mostly called ROMs or ISOs depending on the console’s software medium. TL;DR: The emulator is a copy of the console and the ROM is a copy of the game.

I cannot legally tell you where to find ROMs or ISOs for games you do not own. Perhaps you should Google "[Game Title] + ROM + download" and see what you find. Perhaps you should ask our friends over at Archive.org for some help. Perhaps there are subreddits dedicated to this. Legally, I cannot say.

The emulator is a copy of the console and the ROM is a copy of the game

Now once you have a copy of a game, there are different places one can run an emulator, such as an Android device, PC, or Mac. At the moment Apple does not allow emulation on its iOS platform but if you’re interested I shall direct you to the geniuses behind AltStore.io.

When you’ve decided which platform you prefer, each OS will have a variety of apps one can run for each console—but the universal solution for nearly every legacy console on nearly every piece of hardware is an open-source app called RetroArch. RetroArch is very powerful and versatile, but confusing enough that we shall set it aside for today. (I can hear the hardcore emulation enthusiasts groaning in the back but, I’m sorry, if you can work RetroArch, you do not need this guide. Please go argue with the aforementioned narcs.)

Below I will break down the piece of dedicated software I recommend that you use for each major retro console, depending on whether you use a Mac, PC, or Android device. Because each app has a specific interface and its own approach to controllers, graphics, and audio settings, we suggest you use YouTube to find a tutorial on each app.

Without further ado, here are the emulators you will need to play the vast majority of retro games:

Nintendo

Nintendo games are by far the easiest to emulate, thanks to their popularity and straightforward design. If you’d like to emulate the NES, you can do that in your browser, but for the best experience, we suggest traveling to the Mushroom Kingdom via higan, a multi-system emulator for Windows, OpenEmu, a gorgeous multi-system emulator for Mac, and NES.emu for Android.

To step things up to the 16-bit SNES, you can use the same Mac and PC apps, but we’d recommend Snes9x EX+ for Android. For N64, there’s Project64 for Windows, trusty old OpenEmu for Mac, and Mupen64Plus FZ on Android.

By the time you get to the GameCube or Wii, your main option is Dolphin for all platforms. It’s very good! For the entire Game Boy and Game Boy Advance libraries, we’d use mGBA on Windows, OpenEmu again on the Mac, and GBA.emu on Android. For Wii U, use Cemu.

DS emulation has come a long way recently and you can use DeSmuME on Windows, our old pal OpenEmu on Mac, and DraStic DS on Android. If you’re really ambitious, you can get into 3DS emulation with Citra for Windows and Mac and its unofficial port for Android. Phew!

Sega

Sega does what Nintendon’t! Sega systems are a bit harder to emulate than Nintendo systems, largely thanks to their architecture. When systems are harder to emulate, you’re going to see scattered differences between what plays on the emulator and what you’d get from an official console experience. For Sega systems, these are most often sound problems. However, if you’d like to emulate the Sega Master System or Game Gear you can once again use higan for Windows, OpenEmu for Mac, and MD.emu or Nostalgia.GG for Android.

For the giant library of Sega Genesis/Mega Drive/CD/32x (never change, Sega) games, we’d use Kega Fusion on the Mac and PC and MD.emu on Android. Sega Saturn is a bit harder to emulate than other consoles, both due to a lack of public interest in the library and its overly complex architecture. However, if you need some Panzer Dragoon, we’d use Yabause on Windows and Mac and Yaba Sanshiro on Android.

Finally, to play Dreamcast’s phenomenal library of classics, download the excellent Redream which is compatible with all three platforms. SEGA!

Sony

Sony’s PlayStation consoles each have enormous libraries, but after the PSX it gets a bit harder to run each of them. To play Crash Team Racing on PSX, use ePSXe for Windows and Android or OpenEmu for Mac.

For PS2, you can use PCSX2 on Windows with mixed results, or DamonPS2 on Android for very, very bad results. Mac users are left out in the cold here. Similarly, the PS3 can only be emulated on Windows with RPCS3. You won’t be running PS3 games on your MacBook. (Sorry, babe, but why did you think that would be possible?) Finally, for all your PSP needs, there is PPSSPP available for all platforms.

SNK

Neo Geo and Neo Geo Pocket Color games like the King of Fighters series can be played using Mednafen on Windows, OpenEmu on Mac (you’ll need to enable "experimental" cores in the settings menu and then download the MAME core), or either NEO.emu or NGP.emu on Android.

NEC

Though it goes by many names, the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine/CoreGrafx platform is home to some spectacular titles (like Ys I & II) you might have missed out on in your youth. To play these games, use Mednafen on your PC, OpenEmu once again on the Mac, and PCE.emu on Android.

Arcade

Save your quarters and get your old school arcade fix using Mednafen on Windows, OpenEmu on Mac (you’ll need to enable "experimental" cores in the settings menu and then download the MAME core), or the appropriately titled Mame4droid on Android.

Microsoft

And not to end on a sour note but, for a variety of reasons, there are no good options for emulating Xbox or Xbox 360 games. The good news is that many Xbox exclusives are also available for Windows because... ya know… Microsoft. All hail Master Chief (at least for the first two games.)

And with that, we leave you to go get your feet wet with emulation. There are so many games scattered throughout the history of this glorious industry that you will likely never run out of retro titles to explore. But, once more for legal reasons: Don't pirate games. 😉

It’s the Internet Archive’s mission to preserve as much of the internet as possible in a monolithic digital library in order for both researchers and the general public to have free access to the wealth of knowledge and other miscellany found online.

One neat byproduct of this is the preservation of MS-DOS based games, with the current collection weighing in at just under 7,000 titles, thanks to the recent addition of another 2,500 games. And who doesn't love free games?

Thousands of games

As is the case with all other material found on the Internet Archive, these titles are free to access and play due to the legal nature of the not-for-profit archiving organization. 

Of the fresh 2,500 titles, we’ve listed some of the more popular games below, which join the likes of Pac-Man, Prince of Persia, Oregon Trail, and SimCity.

• Street Fighter II 
• WipEout 
• The Secret of Monkey Island 
• Night Trap 
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 
• Loom 
• The Elder Scrolls - Daggerfall 
• The Need for Speed 
• Descent 
• Ultima Underworld 1 & 2

You can browse the titles by searching for them directly in the Internet Archive's Software Library or sort them by the date they were archived, their title, name of the creator, or number of views each game has. 

Although you can't download the games themselves, they can be run in-browser via the provided DOSBOX emulator, either scaling to fit your browser window or expanding to full screen, and can be played with or without sound.