It’s an unfortunate truth to face these days for the social video game fan of the 80s and 90s: the arcade is dead. The days of traversing the soda-stained carpets of dark rooms made labyrinthine by packs of towering video cabinets and the accompanying cacophony of digitized noise and the pungent smell of nacho cheese are long gone. However, thanks to the Internet Archive, a large portion of the arcade experience has been preserved for a new generation to enjoy, hot cheese snacks excepted. You’ll have to provide that yourself.
The Internet Archive is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization, established in 1996, that seeks to archive the entirety of the digital world. They’re perhaps known most famously for the “Wayback Machine” a service that allows users to explore Internet history by archiving websites of across time. Outside of allowing users to revisit the eyesore of ancient web design, the Internet Archive’s library consists of free access to millions of digital texts, audio, video, and, now more recently, video games.
The Internet Arcade
In December of last year, The Internet Archive launched the “Console Living Room,” a collection of browser-based video game console emulators meant to preserve these early entertainment experiences for all generations. This November, they’ve done the same with arcade games with a collection called “The Internet Arcade.” This digital library consists of more than 900 arcade titles from the 1970s to the 1990s. You’ll find classics ranging from the original Bionic Commando to Frogger and Yie-ar Kung Fu, all playable right in your Internet browser.
Both of these game preservation projects are a result of the JSMESS project. MESS is an emulation platform that virtually recreates the software experience of a number of home computer systems, including the Apple II and Commodore 64, as well as numerous game consoles, like the Atari 2600 and Sega Genesis. JSMESS seeks to port MESS to the cross-platform Javascript language, which allows them convert these historical computer experiences to embeddable objects on a web page. Their goal states, “Imagine every computer that ever existed, in your browser.”
The Internet Arcade specifically runs a Javascript version of MAME, the arcade emulation sister project of MESS. The browser implementation of MAME is a far cry from “arcade perfect.” Sound is often missing or out of sync, and performance can vary based on your browser and computer setup, but the fact that it runs in a browser is still impressive. Recent builds of Firefox tend to work best, but it also runs in Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer with varying levels of performance.
The browser-based emulator even supports traditional gamepads, like a wired Xbox 360 controller, if you don’t feel like playing these games on a keyboard. I was even able to plug in a PlayStation 3 arcade stick for a few rounds of Street Fighter II, making for a more authentic arcade experience (but without the threat of getting physically beat up by a salty real life opponent).
A Tool for Research and Design
Jason Scott, one of the developers on the JSMESS project, is excited about the prospects of introducing these arcade classics to new audiences. He said, “Obviously, a lot of people are going to migrate to games they recognize and ones that they may not have played in years…A few more, I hope, will go towards games they’ve never heard of… and maybe more people will play some of these arcades in the coming months than the games ever saw in their ‘real’ lifetimes.”
Even more exciting to him is the Internet Arcade as a tool for research and design. “My hope is that a handful, a probably tiny percentage, will begin plotting out ways to use this stuff in research, in writing, and remixing these old games into understanding their contexts. Time will tell.”
The Preservation of a Digital Culture
In software, emulation is necessary to preserve historical computer experiences, but it’s often seen in a “legal grey” area. Many people see all forms of emulation simply as a means of software piracy, obtaining and using software without intent to pay for it. In some cases, the software is so old and obsolete that companies don’t seem to care enough to take legal action against it. However, some companies, like Nintendo and Namco, still put out versions of their legacy software on modern systems for consumer consumption, including game consoles and smart phones. Despite that, you can find numerous titles from the aforementioned companies on the Internet Arcade and Console Living Room collections.
The Internet Archive, which is recognized as an official library by the state of California, is likely able to get away with it by keeping these emulated titles around for educational purposes. It’s efforts like these and services like the Way Back Machine that help immensely in preserving this digital culture for generations to come, lest they become lost in the sea of time.
You can check out the Internet Arcade yourself by visiting The Internet Archive here.
By Alfredo Dizon, eParisExtra