Nearly 1,500 Windows 3.1 Applications Have Been Revived

Because we all get nostalgic about the times when being on a computer felt awfully different, archive.org has made it possible that nearly 1,500 Windows 3.1 applications have been revived. That includes over 1,000 games and about 300 productivity tools or other applications that you may not even remember having but once you set gaze on them will immediately bring back memories.

The hundreds of emulated programs exist thanks to the same people who previously brought us 2,400 MS-DOS games to our browsers and now decided to expand their reach into the Windows 3.1 era. And to make it even better, they’re all free too; although you may get a notification after playing or using some of them to let you know who created them and offer you a donation link.

And it’s not even like all you can find on archive.org is just the mainstream stuff. Sure, you are very likely to find most of the classics here and enjoy them to your heart’s content, but there’s also a great number of games or apps that you may not have had the chance to see back in the day. Browsing may lead you to find fairly interesting things.

And if there’s really no utility you can see in playing these things or witnessing the beginning of 90s software, then think of it as a trip into the past and witnessing a piece of history. But surely, anyone who has used a computer back then will be swift to recognize the familiarity and nostalgic at getting to revisit it once more.

Regardless of how you look at it, there is an unmistakably huge amount of work that has been put into emulating all of these, and not just that as they have all been reduced to small browser window size. Each piece runs a JavaScript version of DosBox, which actually boots up Windows 3.1 then attempts to load the program you selected onto this platform.

So to list some of the things you’ll find should be games such as SkiFree, Wheel of Fortune: Deluxe Edition, RattleRace, Sim Earth, Brickbuster and Hoyle Solitaire and even a preview of the upcoming Windows 95 that interacts with you and teaches you how to use the new Windows and what is so great about it. There is also a Windows 95 stock version that you can launch and play around with to reminisce what those 40 MB operating systems were all about back then.

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Michael Turner

Remember that strange guy from high-school who never seems to be paying any attention to classes and is completely absorbed by his doodles and sketches? That’s was me 14 years ago. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember - according to my mom, since I was in diapers - and that has never changed - except for the diaper part. For a very long time I thought that animations and graphic design are my calling, but two years ago I got side-tracked and started building an interactive website with a couple of friends. It received instant gratification from fellow internet users, and that’s when I realized that the virtual medium is where I belong. I can freely share my passions with others, work on ingenious new projects and find the most fascinating information about, well, everything. I spend most of my free time writing reviews for crazy gadgets on ArgyllFreePress, I work as an interactive designer for an independent firm and I also received my Fine Arts degree from the University of Oxford.