Twitter Cards are cool for watching videos or listening to tunes without leaving Twitter. But now the Internet Archive has the best use for Twitter’s rich media feature yet: old-school MS-DOS games that can be played right inside a tweet.
Yep, you read that right. Instead of sharing links to news stories or commenting on the latest episode of Game of Thrones, you can now share classic games with your followers.
Those games can then be played directly in Twitter—at least on a PC. In my tests on Android, the Twitter app sent you to the Internet Archive’s website. You probably don’t want to play these games on mobile anyway, since they were built for a mouse and keyboard interface rather than a touchscreen.
Try it for yourself in the embedded tweet below.
Is this thing on? https://t.co/qRBPJOQekD
— Ian Paul (@ianpaul) April 30, 2015
Sharing a game on Twitter is no different than posting anything else. You just throw the link in your tweet and Twitter takes care of the rest. The feature works whether you’re viewing a tweet on Twitter’s website or embedded in another site.
The new Twitter feature is the latest addition from the Internet Archive, which first introduced its catalog of more than 2,000 free MS-DOS games back in January. Games in the catalog are playable in the browser, and now Twitter, courtesy of the JSMESS and DOSBox emulators. You can find a full list of supported games here.
The impact on you at home: The Internet Archive’s catalog isn’t perfect, since not every game is playable and you can’t save game progress for later. Nevertheless, when you’re looking to share a little gaming history including Pac-Man, Street Fighter II, or Wolfenstein 3D you can now do it all on Twitter.