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Screenshot by Claire Reilly/CNET
Update, Monday at 7:05 p.m. PT:Twitter declined to comment on the removal of the playable MS-DOS games feature in its feeds.
However, the company’s developer guidelines indicate that gaming within the Twitter platform is outside what it calls its Rules for the Road.
Twitter warns users on its dev platform, “Do not build end-to-end interactive experiences inside the video or audio player,” specifically naming “gaming” as part of that list of interactive elements.
Update, Monday at 11:30 a.m. PT: Twitter has removed this function.
Twitter has a neat little trick that lets you embed playable versions of classic MS-DOS video games in your tweets, allowing you to play classic platforms directly from your feed.
The social media platform’s new feature piggybacks off the massive collection of MS-DOS games put online by the Internet Archive — joining its Console Living Room and Internet Arcade collections of console and arcade games.
Twitter has proven itself as a go-to platform for modern communication — viral videos, real-time citizen journalism and hyper-local hashtags are its bread and butter.
But if you’re tired of flame wars with strangers or you want some time out from the puppy vines in your ever-updating feed, then you’ll be delighted to know that you can now dabble in a little Tetris between tweets.
All you need to do is head to the Internet Archive’s MS-DOS library, click on your favourite title and copy the URL from that page directly into your tweet, and soon you’ll be playing through classics like Prince of Persia, Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
Spotted by the folks over at Wired, you need to be viewing the tweet from a browser to play. But if you’re after a little playtime, you really do need a bigger screen to do justice to all those pixels anyway.
Embedding MS-DOS games into my tweets?! There is no Dana, only…
https://t.co/EcR77Fc9Rs
— Claire Reilly (@reillystyley) April 30, 2015
