Nostalgia ain’t cheap. You’ll easily pay $5-10 for a classic game on the Wii or Xbox 360, and an old NES will still run you around the same price on eBay. Luckily, Flash game coders have stepped in with their own clones of popular favorites from the arcade, and best of all they’re FREE. I’ve tried my best to make sure these all link to the original creators’ websites, rather than the mooch arcade websites. If I’ve made a mistake on them, leave me a comment.

Frogger is my absolute favorite old arcade game. I would have this sucker on my graphic calculator in high school algebra class. That explains the C-. Regardless, Paul Neave, one of my favorite Brits, put together this clone (and many others) and put it on his website. It’s since become a big hit on mooch websites and forum arcades.

Super Mario Bros. was an instant classic. The Infinite Mario Bros java game builds on the hit by offering you a completely random game. Every time you play, the levels are different, and you can essentially play forever and have a different game every time, hence the title Infinite Mario Bros.

Asteroids is such a sweet and simple game that somehow gets by without needing fancy graphics and explosions. The Xbox Live Arcade version is stunning looking, but this one is free. This is another Neave creation.

Ms. Pac-Man has always been my preference of the two, but maybe it’s just the color pink that influences me. Regardless, this version was apparantly made by a website called “Blobology,” but the entire Blobology website seems to consist entirely of some ads and the game itself.

Donkey Kong is Mario’s first hit. The then-carpenter simply avoid barrels to save the princess. Unfortunately this Flash version isn’t complete and simply repeats the first level. There seems to be a more complete Java version available at 1980-Games.

Solomon’s Key is regarded as one of the most difficult games to appear on the original Nintendo, starring a character that looks oddly similar to Link from the Zelda Series. Now you can re-live that frustration in this Flash clone by Bitshifter. Granted, it’s not a complete remake. It only features the first few levels, but it should still kill a lot of time if you’re new to the game.

Excitebike is a classic from the NES. This port by Psy-City doesn’t have the level editor that I loved in the original, but it’s still a fun time-killer.

Enjoy these. I’ll try to have more in the future.