Console Living Room: Free-To-Play Classic Video Games

People have been using the Internet Archive for years. It is a great place to look back at various websites that are no longer with us. As we get older we notice that certain things we use to visit are look at have vanished by the wayside. Tis the law of technology and the interwebs, it is always changing. The wayback machine helped us uncover and read those again, but now they have taken it a step further. 

On Thursday, Jason Scott made a blog post, Called “The Second Christmas Morning“. In this post he unveiled perhaps one of the greatest archives ever released, legally, on the vast information database that we call the internet.

“The Console Living Room” is an archive of console video games from the 70s and 80s. 

The consoles currently available are:

• Atari 2600
• Atari 7800 Pro System
• The ColecoVision
• The Magnavox Odyssey²
• The Astrocade

Though perhaps what makes this amazing is that it uses JSMESS (Javascript MESS) emulator system. This will allow visitors to simply click a console. Scroll down to the games, pick a game. Then “Run an in-browser emulation of the program,” and you are up and playing a classic game. 

This is both a great educational experience for a younger generation of gamers and a wonderful chance for older gamers to enjoy a bit of nostalgia.

While the archive of games may seem rather small, Mr. Scott says the following in his blog:

Access drives preservation – making these vintage games available to the world, instantly, allows for commentary, education, enjoyment and memory for the history they are a part of. In coming months, the playable software collection will expand greatly. Until then, game on!

I took the time to give all of this a shot. I’m impressed to say the least. It was rather enjoyable to sit down and play some of the classics that helped set the pace for the current generation of consoles. As time move forward, video games will be viewed more and more as art. This is a really great step to keep some of the older cartridges that are starting to fail.

What are your thoughts on “The Console Living Room”? Do you think that the internet has already done this by creating various ROMs?

Atari photo courtesy of Reddit User: Kimbleator.