Excavation: Five Forgotten Games You Can Play in Your Browser
I’ve excavated some old games you can play in your browser. The perfect place for them!
Skyroads
(and Skyroads Xmas Special Edition)
Skyroads was a perennial game on any shareware compilation you could find in the 90s and was always fun to play.
The controls in this version are:
Left and Right Arrows to Move
Up and Down Arrows to Change Speed
Space to Jump
Getting all the dots next to the levels you finish is a great little motivator. For a while they stayed there even after I left the browser. Maybe I forgot to allow cookies and lost them… not that it bothers me.
Ping-Pong King
This MAME emulated classic is really fun and really hard! Honestly, comment if you got your serving rhythm right in the first game. I’m still dropping the ball every time I serve. It’s much easier when you are returning the serve.
It says a lot that I can’t beat the first match but I’m still having fun.
The controls in this version are:
5 to Insert Coin (you’ll need to do this first on the start screen)
1 to Start
Left and Right Arrows to Move
Up and Down Arrows to Change between Forehand and Backhand
Ctrl to Hit
A great little game from 1985 by Taito (probably most famous for developing Space Invaders). If you get far into it, leave a comment and let me know how you did it.
Jungle Hunt
There’s a number of versions of Jungle Hunt on Archive.org, this Atari 2600 version feels like the most fast-paced one to me.
The controls in this version are:
Arrows are move
Ctrl is action (usually jump)
Originally this game was called Jungle King and was renamed after a dispute over the likeness being too similar to Tarzan, so they changed the character to the unproblematic British colonist, complete with pith helmet, Sir Dudley.
This game is really fun but the difficulty gets ramped up a lot in the third stage so be ready for a speed-up. Tell us how you go!
1869
I always tell people when I was growing up I exclusively loved games that felt like homework. Though that might not necessarily be true, 1869 is a great example of what I mean.
You’ll definitely need this manaul if you’re going to play it properly.
This game is an old sailing and trading simulator. It isn’t user friendly by today’s standards but it is surprisingly deep and is a fascinating document of games in that era. Little things that just weren’t possible in that time would make this so much better. All of the little icons on the main screen lead you to data that could easily exist on the main screen if you had higher resolution, for instance.
I can’t imagine anyone would stick to this for long. I certainly didn’t. However, see if you can get anywhere and let me know if you did.
Obitus
Obitus is a pretty cool little adventure game that has all of the frustration and some of the fun, you’d expect from this genre.
Controls for this version (if you picked keyboard):
Space is Fire
Mouse does everything else (as far as I can tell).
Like with all DOS games, set up is quite important. When you get to this screen press number 2 for VGA graphics:
It’s the difference between this (VGA 16 Colours):
this (EGA 16 colours):
and this (CGA 4 colours):
Make sure you press ‘1’ to use keyboard controls and select English as your language (unless you don’t speak it, of course).
Anyway, this gets quite good if you give it a chance. There’s even a walkthrough online that you can use to get past anything too obtuse.
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