Welcome to the first installment of "It Came From the Internet" for 2015. With each blog post, the intrepid crew of the H-PCAACA will venture boldly into the farthest reaches of the internet to find interesting and offbeat sites relating to American, world, and popular culture.
If you have been disappointed by 2015's lack of hoverboards or giant cyborgs defending Tokyo 3, take a trip to retro-yesteryear with the Internet Arcade.
Quoting from the web site:
"The Internet Arcade is a web-based library of arcade (coin-operated) video games from the 1970s through to the 1990s, emulated in JSMAME, part of the JSMESS software package. Containing hundreds of games ranging through many different genres and styles, the Arcade provides research, comparison, and entertainment in the realm of the Video Game Arcade."
The collection of games is part of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco based digital library which offers free access to a large (and ever-growing) digitized collection. Along with games, books, and music, the library also archives web sites, including a terrific collection of Geocities pages.
The Internet Archive's collection of old games are not just fun--although most users will focus on just playing the games--but provides historians and researchers looking into the development of gaming an opportunity to see games long vanished from arcades. It is also an extension of the growing effort to archive and preserve the often ephemeral internet and the artifacts of digital culture and make them available to the public.
As a nostalgic trip through the arcades of yesterday and a repository of gaming history, the Internet Arcade is worth bookmarking.
Browse the Internet Arcade and relive the days of smoky gaming arcades gone by.
https://archive.org/details/internetarcade
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Dan Fandino is the editor of H-PCAACA and the Q*Bert champion of South Florida. He has fond memories of the first time he beat Dragon's Lair and dumping his entire allowance on Gauntlet.
It Came From the Internet is an H-PCAACA feature on interesting web sites relating to American, world, and popular culture. Feel free to comment by clicking on “Discussions” in the right side panel. If you are interested in contributing a post or if you would like to create your own blog or feature, let us know through the email link.
Content reflects the views and opinions of the author and not necessarily that of H-Net.
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