The Internet Archive has been updated with more than 2,500 DOS games, marking the most significant addition of games to the archive since 2015.
New additions include forgotten classics like Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, Princess Maker 2, and Microsoft Adventure, a rebranding of Colossal Caves Adventure. They also include a whole lot of weird, early experiments and dead ends that should be fascinating to explore for historians, technologists, game designers, and players alike.
The blog post announcing the additions includes some disclaimers: not all games will run as speedily as one might like, not all games have manuals available (though some do), and frankly, not all games from these bygone areas are enjoyable by modern standards.
But given that many of the games from this era were distributed via floppy disks in plastic bags, preservation seems both an admirable and necessary undertaking. There's as much value in the fact that these games are hosted somewhere safe as there is in the fact that they're playable. As technology marches forward, it's important to remember not to discard the old permanently just because the new is more expedient.
Many of these games were added to the Internet Archive as a result of the eXoDOS game preservation and restoration project. Internet Archive curator Jason Scott had this to say about that project: