You no longer need to install DOSBox to play Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3D or The Oregon Trail. A browser tab will do. There are hundreds of sites offering DOS games online, but they work very differently. Some only carry what can legally be shared, some put up commercial games and call it abandonware, and some hang an ad that looks like a download button right above the game. I went through the main ones on November 2 and launched a game on each. This is part two of our series on old systems and games in the browser, after Windows 95, 98 and XP in a tab.
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Internet Archive: 8,943 DOS games and DOSBox in a tab
This is the biggest library and the calmest one. The Software Library: MS-DOS Games collection opened in December 2014, and as of November 2, 2026 it holds 8,943 games, out of 23,258 items in the whole MS-DOS software section. They run on EM-DOSBox, which is DOSBox compiled for the browser. You click the button on the screenshot, about ten seconds later the tab title changes to "DOSBox SVN, CPU speed: 3000 cycles", and the game is running. That is exactly how Prince of Persia went for me.
Many games are marked Stream only: you can play them but not download them. The Internet Archive keeps these games as a library preserving software rather than as a store, and the collection is curated by Jason Scott, a veteran archivist. There are no ads. Every game lists publisher, year and genre, and often comes with a scanned manual, which half the games of that era can't be finished without.
What people play the most
The Internet Archive's view counter is public, so you can see what people open. The Oregon Trail from 1990 leads by a mile with nearly 14 million views. In the US it was a classroom staple for several generations, and people search for it by name. Next come Prince of Persia with 2.2 million, Oregon Trail Deluxe, Wolfenstein 3D, Pac-Man and SimCity, and even the German Die Siedler II made the top seven. These counts have been building since 2014, and a page view doesn't always mean a launch, so read it as a ranking of interest rather than time played.
The legal archives: DOS Games Archive and DOSGames.com
If you want to stay out of the grey zone entirely, two long-running archives only carry shareware, freeware and demos. DOS Games Archive has 1,672 games, and most of them run right on the page through js-dos. The site states plainly that it is not an abandonware site. DOSGames.com has 2,366 free games, has been around since January 1999, and follows the same rule: no warez, no abandonware.
The catch is the ads. Above the game window on DOS Games Archive I had a big "Start Download (Free)" block with an arrow button. That is an ad for a third-party app, not the game download. The game itself starts from the Full screen button or by clicking the window below. DOSGames.com greets you with a data consent pop-up where only "Consent" and "Manage options" are visible up front. You can refuse, but only through the options, and I didn't consent.
PrinceJS: Prince of Persia without an emulator
You can also skip DOSBox for Prince of Persia. PrinceJS is the 1990 DOS version rewritten in HTML5 and JavaScript. The first version came from a developer going by ultrabolido in 2015, and princejs.com is run by Oliver Klemenz, whose version has about a thousand stars on GitHub and was last updated in May 2026. It looks identical: the same torches, gates and "60 MINUTES LEFT" at the bottom, since you get an hour for the whole game.
The conveniences are new, though. Keyboard, gamepad and touch all work, and on a phone you can add it to your home screen and play in landscape. The address bar lets you pick level, time and difficulty directly: ?strength=50, for example, halves the difficulty. It starts in a couple of seconds, because there's no emulator to boot.
Grey sites, and which one to pick
| Site | Games | What's there | Runs on | Rights |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internet Archive | 8,943 | commercial and free games | EM-DOSBox | library, many stream only |
| DOS Games Archive | 1,672 | shareware, freeware, demos | js-dos | legal, has ads |
| DOSGames.com | 2,366 | shareware, freeware | in browser and as downloads | legal, has ads |
| PrinceJS | 1 | Prince of Persia | its own JavaScript engine | open source code |
| ClassicReload | 6,000+ | abandonware | in-browser emulator | grey zone |
| DOS.Zone | no data | games and ports | js-dos | didn't load on Nov 2 |
Then there are sites like ClassicReload, with more than 6,000 commercial games posted as abandonware "for education and research". Worth knowing: abandonware isn't a legal term. A publisher no longer selling a game doesn't mean the rights have expired, and these sites stay up until someone complains. I'm not linking to them. ClassicReload also asks you to turn off your ad blocker.
A separate note on DOS.Zone. It's the site of the js-dos author, the engine behind DOS games on many sites, DOS Games Archive included. On November 2 it didn't open for me from the browser or directly, just a connection error instead of a page. I'll check again for the next part of the series.
Which one to pick, in short:
- A specific old game: try the Internet Archive first. No ads, manuals included, and nearly everything is there.
- Strictly legal only: DOS Games Archive and DOSGames.com, just don't click the ad buttons.
- Prince of Persia on a phone: PrinceJS.
- Saves in browser DOS games usually live in the site's data. Clear your browser and the progress is gone.
Sources
Internet Archive, Software Library: MS-DOS Games: collection description, EM-DOSBox, game count and view counters via archive.org search as of November 2, 2026; Prince of Persia and The Oregon Trail in the archive. DOS Games Archive: 1,672 games and terms. DOSGames.com: 2,366 games, history since 1999. PrinceJS on GitHub and the original version. js-dos on GitHub. ClassicReload's description from its front page. All sites tested by hand on November 2, 2026. Images: FramesGames screenshots of these sites, FramesGames chart.
