5 Sites For Old-School Gaming in Your Browser -Time Waster

 by Lee Mathews

Enough of this practical advice and useful downloads! I know you've been working hard, and you're probably itching for some fun and excitement. If you've read some of my previous Time Wasters, you'll know that I've got a soft spot for old school gaming.

Grab your browser, and get ready for some classic, low-fi action!

Neave Games specializes in making flash remakes of classic games, and has a few tasty selections for you. Among them are Frogger, Space Invaders, Tetris, and the old Nokia cellphone game Snake (pictured). Rad.

c64s.com is dedicated to my first computer and gaming system, the Commodore 64. It's been on DS before, but they've added a lot of great new games over the years. Packacuda, Wizard's Lair, Crystal Castles. It's hard to believe how good some of the games were for the trusty old c64.



Nethack made the roundup last time, but it was a downloadable version. If you're not familiar with it, it's a dungeon exploration game with pure ASCII graphics, and it's weirdly addictive. The folks over at alt.org have a live server that you can sign onto via telnet, using alt.org's Java-based client.

Before you jump in, you can choose to watch a game in progress and see what other intrepid adventurers are up to.

Virtual Apple gives you browser-based access to my favorite Apple product ever, the Apple ][. So many awesome low-color games to play, but I can't tear myself away from Lemonade Stand and Oregon Trail. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got bears to shoot and party members to drown in a river crossing.

Gametap's classic arcade section will take you right back to the midway. Rampage, Tapper, Joust, Defender, 1942, and 1943 have been keeping me from getting anything productive done. Thankfully, my change mug is still full of quarters. You'll need to use IE or at least have IEtab installed in Firefox for their games to work in your browser.