You can play Classic MS-DOS video games on Twitter now
Twitter, everyone’s favorite micro-blogging platform has come up with a new Twitter feature. It is something fans of classic games will be really happy to know about, since it allows you to embed your tweets with MS-DOS titles. Thanks to Internet Archive and Twitter, you can now send out tweets with MS-DOS games embedded within them. Let your followers indulge in games like Prince of Persia, Aladdin, DuckTales, Street Fighter, Doom and Metal Gear, among others.
Twitter’s embedding function is a pretty clean way for users to share stuff like images, videos, vines and more. This discovery has come about due to the efforts made by American historian of technology and activist, Jason Scott. Whether you want to play them yourself or tweet them to your followers, there is an abundance of games that are on offer to play with.
It is extremely simple to do too. The games have to be from the Internet Archive’s vast library of classic titles for them to be inserted into your tweets. You can either click on a game and share its link in your tweet or just hit the ‘Share’ button and select the Twitter option to write the required tweet. However, it should noted that this works properly only when done via Twitter in a standard browser. It does not work if you use programs like Tweetdeck or the mobile apps.
Now Embed MS-DOS games into your tweets https://t.co/hWzR8RxXHs
— Abhishek kumar jha (@abhishekmdb) April 30, 2015
The system uses the open source MS-DOS emulator DOSBox and javascript to run the games straight in the browser. It follows the Internet Archive’s 2013 release of early arcade and console games that are as early as the 1970s and its Console Living Room collection last year.
The Internet Archive’s aim is to design an internet library of sites, texts, images, movies and digital content, archived for all future generations. But many of the games here are actively being sold by their creators, including Duke Nukem 3D, which was originally available through the Internet Archive but were later removed due to “issues with the item’s content.”
In January, the Internet Archive brought over 2,000 MS-DOS games over to browsers, the ability to quickly increase social media platforms with classic games just makes its entire endeavor a lot more cooler. Also, it is definitely a good way to spread and promote the awesomeness of these titles to the generations who have not experienced them.
