Hot Air is a delightful action game with irresistible pixel graphics reminiscent of an old-school Mario game. Navigate a hot air balloon from its green starting platform to the red landing platform within each level. To succeed you will need to maneuver around obstacles and onto platforms, collecting keys to open gates while avoiding just about everything that will make the balloon pop. Much easier said than done.

Another one for the classic games section, I made a reference to this game when reviewing Swarm due to the way the enemies swarmed onto the play field. Galaca is a Java applet 'clone' of the classic action arcade game Galaga. Originally created by Namco and released as a coin-op amusement...

Let Swarm take you back to the golden days of classic arcade shooters with this fast-paced and addictive DHTML action game from Brent Silby. Like its name implies, bugs swarm onto the play field single-file, as in the classic arcade game Galaga, and begin infecting solar cells. Protect the cells by shooting the bugs to kill them off. You may also shoot the cells to disinfect them and earn additional points.

Pong was an amazing and innovative game in its time. Unfortunately, after the novelty wore off there just wasn't much gameplay left to hold our interest. And by today's standards, it's just too simple a game to be much fun anymore. GameLab leverages the simplicity of Pong, as well as that...

From Sony Pictures comes these three (3) Flash games from the Kung Fu Hustle movie website, each featuring classic-style videogame pixel graphics and gameplay. Kung Fu Fighter is a simple old-school fighting game that offers special moves and opponents to unlock. You must defeat the opponents the game pits you up...

As a tribute to the classic Atari Centipede arcade game from 1980, Emil Korngold has attempted to recreate the game in Flash. The game is still in beta form, and yet his attempt seems to capture much of the action and addictive gameplay of the original. Other than using the mouse...

A Worm's Life redefines the classic game of Snake and turns it into a fresh new experience. The game features an array of elements that change-up the gameplay formula of the simple arcade game and transforms it into even more addictive, fast action fun.

While on the topic of Snake, here is a variation of the game for all those who believe snakes should appear, and move in paths, with round edges.

This version of the classic game of Snake is remarkable in that it comes with source code and a complete tutorial explaining the code by its author, Strille of Sweden. Available on his website, the tutorial is a great way for anyone to get started programming games in Flash. The...

Brent Silby has created one of the coolest arcade games I have played in a very long time. Think retro-cool as in Galaga, Defender, Centipede and Robotron, and you'll be close to what the action is like in surely one of his best games to date. Replicator captures the essence of arcade action fun and delivers it lovingly in a browser window.

It shouldn't be surprising that from the world's smallest website comes the world's smallest games. From British game and Web designer Alan Outten comes this very tiny website, only 18 pixels wide by 18 pixels high, yet it is packed full with games such as Pong, Pacman, Footy, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pinball, and others. Everything old is new again.

This Mr. Driller clone, created in Flash by Max K., is a decent version of the original game by Namco. Driller uses the arrow keys for movement, and the space bar for drilling. The object is to drill down through the blocks as far as you can without running out of air, or getting crushed. The level of difficulty determines how many rows of blocks y...

The 1982 classic arcade game of Q*bert, re-created in Shockwave for online play over the Web. The object of the game is to move your Q*bert around the play field, hopping onto each square to turn it to the target color shown. While the default keys to use for movement are U, K, H, and M, the game does allow you to change them to suit your preferenc...

The classic game of Qix, released by Taito in the arcades back in 1981, and brilliantly reproduced in Flash by Drunk Men Work Here. The objective is to claim portions of the play field by drawing Stix, or block areas, with the cursor marker. This Flash version of the classic game is very close to the original design and captures the essence of the game well.

XGen Studios is behind this Flash game that is reminiscent of the old-school arcade games Dig Dug and Boulder Dash. Hired to mine the dangerous planet of Mars, you are given a robotic mining pod and sent off on a mission to bring home the Motherload, a fabled cache of rare and valuable minerals. Dig far below the surface of the Earth to earn money for upgrades and find treasure.

The Curse of Sylvaniah is an action adventure platformer game created in Flash that has a decidedly old-school feel to it. Stylish pixel graphics, sampled sound effects, multiple weapons and a simple targeting system—just point-and-click with the mouse—make this game unique and fun to play. Coding by Mattias Stridsman, graphics by Cyril...

VirtualApple is a website that boasts over 1100 disk images of Apple II, IIe, and IIgs games and other software. Through the use of an ActiveX application and an Apple IIgs emulator, you can now enjoy Apple II software from years gone by, and do it all online using Microsoft IE and Windows—though, ironically, there is no current support for M...

I did a double-take when I first saw this on a French Flash games site. Fighters were the one genre that I had seen very little if anything done in Flash, yet now you can relive those arcade glory days by playing Street Fighter with your friends, on your computer. Julien Philippe has created a version that allows you to play single player against ...

Tino Zijdel of The Netherlands, aka Crisp, has created a remake of the classic game of Lemmings, originally developed by DMA Design, and coded it using JavaScript and DHTML! The game is beautiful and works very nicely if you have a recent browser (Mozilla, Firefox or Opera) and a 500MHz+ CPU.

A version of the original Prince of Persia game recreated in Flash. The original game, created by Jordan Mechner and released in 1989, used an animation technique called rotoscope to give the characters human-like qualities. It was also a lot of fun to play. This special Flash edition isn't quite the whole experience, but you should be able to at least get a taste of what the original was like.

Written in Flash by Johnny Slack, an interactive multimedia technology student at Purdue, this version of Duck Hunt uses the mouse for aiming and shooting. It looks, acts and sounds just like the original (though it offers only one mode of play).

Created by Klas Kroon of Sweden, this little game is one of the tiniest Flash games I've ever seen. The objective of Blockdude is to move the little dude to the exit door by picking up and moving blocks to solve each level. This game is actually a remake of an old TI-83 game originally written by Brandon Sterner.

PsychoPong is not new, as it dates back to 2001; yet it is a worthy game just the same. With gameplay similar to Pong, the granddaddy of all video games, this Shockwave game has a mind of its own. There are five (5) levels of increasing difficulty... though I bet you'll have trouble making it past even the second level. Click. The designer of the ...

I've been having a lot of fun lately playing this old-school style, top-down shmup (shoot-em-up) called Hurricane developed by Nuvorm in the Netherlands. Along the lines of the arcade classic Galaga, this one has power-ups to increase shields and weapons with lots of cool pyro-technic particle effects. There is also a downloadable PC version of the game available.

While on the subject of Pacman, several months ago there was a posting on Slashdot games about a Japanese programmer who re-created Pacman entirely in an Excel spreadsheet. Upon reading the story I was both amazed and curious, so I downloaded the zip file from the site linked-to in the story. And it really was Pacman, right down to the cut scenes b...

Another classic game, and this one needs no introduction. Arguably the single game that injected the most excitement into arcade video games during their infancy. Original game: copyright Namco, 1980; this version hand-coded in Flash by Paul Neave.

A fantastic Asteroids recreation from Shawn at Hot Flash Games, and boy does it rock! Very authentic classic gameplay with a serious modern soundtrack that just... ROCKS! Shawn did an excellent job designing the sound for the game, as it contains a mix of classic Asteroids samples and some phat rocking beats.

This is simply amazing. Someone that goes only by the name of Voxel, has created a 3D version of the original Metroid game in Director! By taking the Metroid tileset, he built a utility that allows him to convert 2D sprites to 3D sprites, and then he uses those to build the levels of the game.

Back in the day, Space Invaders, by Japanese company Taito, was one of the coolest games to come along as it was one of the first (if not the first) electronic game ever to offer open-ended gameplay. What that means is that it's impossible to 'beat' the game, the aliens just keep coming at you relentlessly.

Another favorite of mine is this game by Squid S O U P. Snake delivers classic-style gameplay in a 3D Shockwave implementation. Very nice indeed.

Bubbels is a strangely addictive Flash game, like Bust-a-Move, from the Netherlands. There are actually five (5) different versions to choose from.