Archive.org Adds Windows 3.1 to Its Emulation List
In their ongoing quest to make a backup of every single thing that has ever been on the internet or indeed a computer, the Internet Archive has announced that they have added Windows 3.1 to their list of emulated platforms.
The site, probably best known for their web-scraping “Wayback Machine“, has also accumulated a considerable amount of audio and video files, texts, and — more recently — software. They have previously released a wide collection of MS-DOS games running a browser-based version of the popular DOSBox emulator. Now, they’ve updated their archive to run hundreds of Windows 3.1 game using the same emulator.
The selection is mostly shareware, games rather outnumbering utilities. The selection is a bit pot luck, but those who spent hours clicking away in the sixteen color world will almost certainly find an old friend here. As with most offerings on hand at the Archive, titles may be downloaded for those who do not wish to run them through the browser.
Founded in 1996, the Internet Archive has been methodically archiving and digitizing our collective culture for nearly twenty years. Their collections run the gamut from live concert recordings to vintage films to scanned microfilm of old newspapers.
(Kelly Luck thinks the Prelinger Archives are a bigger time sink than TVTropes. Her other SciFi4Me work can be read here.)
