You Can Now Play Old Sports Arcade Games Thanks to the Internet Archive

by
November 4, 2014

Feeling nostalgic for video games of the 1990’s? How about the 80’s? Maybe even the original 70’s games? If so, then good news everyone! The Internet Archive (IA) just expanded their Arcade section and added a wide variety of games from previous decades. The Arcade boasts over 900 different games, ranging from SEGA Champion Boxing to Champion Baseball to both Hyper Sports as well as Hyper Olympics.

Rather than requiring a download and setup of an emulator, IA runs games within your browser. The website suggests Firefox, though I didn’t come across any issues using Chrome. My fondness of baseball is no secret around these digital pages, so the first game I loaded up was Curve Ball, published three years prior to my existence.

There is a brief loading screen, but at least there aren’t any cartridges to blow into.

CB2

And it is worth the wait. Those graphics are glorious.

CB3

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

Each game will have different buttons on your keyboard — or use a controller, unfortunately my joystick wasn’t allowed to be used — to accomplish different things. Bunting, swinging and pitching inside or out are all various options and if using your keyboard, can be changed at will.

CB4

I didn’t come across an error in the games I explored, but IA provides the email address of their primary Operator, Jason Scott, on their website. In a blog post that went up yesterday, Scott outlines any known issues as well as thanks for every who has helped get the site up and running. Head over there and show your support by putting up a triple bogey while on the first hole of Birdie King 3. Failing that, you could always grab a Shasta, your all-Rush mix-tape and play on Saturday night.





 

You can catch David spouting off about baseball, soccer, esports and other things by following him on twitter, @davidwiers.

Comments are closed.