Internet Arcade
A 900+ cabinet collection of classic coin-op arcade games, browser-playable via MAME running on Emscripten.
Tune in
Play Internet Arcade →Opens in a new tab on the original host.
Controls: Per-cabinet — check each game's listing. Usually arrow keys + Ctrl/Alt/Space for buttons. '5' inserts a credit; '1' starts a 1-player game.
The Internet Arcade is the most ambitious browser-gaming project ever shipped. Jason Scott and collaborators at the Internet Archive compiled MAME — the open-source arcade emulator — to JavaScript via Emscripten, then wrapped a curated, in-browser front-end around hundreds of arcade ROMs the Archive holds under its preservation mandate.
The result is the closest thing to a 1983 arcade you can get without a roll of quarters: Defender, Robotron 2084, Sinistar, Qbert*, Crystal Castles, the original Star Wars vector cabinet, Tapper, Joust. Some are unplayable now, in a way that is itself historically interesting (the original arcade Star Wars was meant for a yoke, not arrow keys). Others — Robotron especially — hold up so completely they make modern twin-stick shooters look thin.
This is a sampler channel: pick three cabinets at random, play each for ten minutes, and you’ll have a better feel for the medium’s grammar than most game-history books deliver.
Why it’s on the guide: preservation under a credible institution, free-to-public browser play, no install. The MAME stack is GPL-2.0. Individual cabinet copyrights vary; Joyantenna does not host any ROMs and links only to the curated Internet Archive collection page.