Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?
The Internet Archive unveiled its MS-DOS games collection featuring close to 4,000 titles on Monday. Internet Archive/Screenshot

Remember how much time you spent playing "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?" or "The Oregon Trail" on an ancient PC? Well, get ready to relive that experience, and frustration, thanks to the Internet Archive. On Monday, the archive released a collection of 2,386 MS-DOS games that are free to play in your browser.

The Internet Archive has been a gamer's best friend for years. With its Console Living Room, gamers can revisit classic games on the Atari 2600, the ColecoVision, the Magnavox Odyssey 2, the Sega Master System, Sega Genesis and many other consoles of the past that may be completely new to younger players. And the Archive's Internet Arcade has brought the iconic experience to the PC with games like "Defender," "Paperboy," "Joust" and "Q*bert." The new collection of MS-DOS games is sure to delight countless people who grew up playing these games.

Jason Scott, Internet Archive software curator, explains why the three-year project was so personal to him on his blog at Textfiles.com. "With a computer program – especially one designed to be sold for a good amount of money, or which represents a lot of work by someone, there’s a depth in there, and an intensity of the product, that can’t be ignored," Scott writes. "A strategy game that doesn’t care how long you take to enter the next move, or a simulator that carefully gives you dozens of knobs to twiddle or points to tweak ... that’s the harbinger of the computer experience. Not to mention the applications, those tools of productivity that have permeated computers since the beginning. It’s rich and lovely, and it’s my favorite thing."

The question for most people is not if you should spend hours playing MS-DOS games on your PC, but which games. The Washington Post has a few recommendations, including "Master of Orion," sort of like "Civilization" in space, and "The Lion King."

For many, "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (Deluxe Edition)" and "The Oregon Trail" will be the first games to play in the Internet Archive's MS-DOS collection. "Bust-a-Move," "Boulder Dash," "Cannon Fodder 2," "Street Fighter 2," "Duke Nukem 3D" and "Lemmings 2: The Tribes" are just a few highlights.