About The Elder Scrolls: Arena
The Elder Scrolls: Arena is the game that began The Elder Scrolls series. Bethesda Softworks developed it and published it in North America, US Gold handled the UK release, and it came out for MS-DOS on March 25, 1994. It is a single-player action role-playing game. Vijay Lakshman directed and produced it and designed it with Ted Peterson, and Eric Heberling wrote the music.
The story follows your character as they uncover a conspiracy against Emperor Uriel Septim VII. DOS.Zone’s description fills in more: you play the Hero, the evil sorcerer Jagar Tharn has imprisoned the Emperor, and it falls to you to defeat him. That sends you across Tamriel, a sandbox full of quests, dungeons and characters to meet, and the description stresses how open-ended the play is.
In 2004, for the series’ 10th anniversary, Bethesda released Arena as a free download. That makes it freeware: anyone can play it without paying, though its code isn’t open source. Bethesda is now a ZeniMax Media company owned by Microsoft.
How it runs in your browser
Play sends you to the game’s page on dos.zone in a new tab. The site starts the original MS-DOS program with js-dos, an open-source version of the DOSBox emulator built for browsers, which recreates an old PC inside the tab. DOS.Zone supplies the files, so you don’t fetch the freeware release yourself or set anything up, and you don’t sign in. There are no ads on DOS.Zone.
The listing files Arena under dungeon crawler and adventure and shows a rating of 5 from 10 player reviews. It says nothing about saving, so work out how your progress is kept before you set off on a long session.
Controls and devices
Arena was designed for a keyboard and mouse. After it loads, click once inside the game window so the emulator takes your input. DOS.Zone doesn’t list the controls, so check the game’s own options as you start out.
On a phone, DOS.Zone can display virtual on-screen controls. We haven’t tried Arena that way, and a game built around a keyboard and mouse is far easier to handle on a desktop or laptop. Chromebooks haven’t been checked.
Who it’s for
Arena is for players who know the later Elder Scrolls games and want to see the first one as it shipped in 1994, and for anyone who likes open-ended RPGs from the DOS years. Because it’s freeware, there’s no copy to buy. The second game in the series, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, followed in 1996, is also freeware and also runs on DOS.Zone, and Ted Peterson and Eric Heberling worked on both. If you want an RPG of a very different kind from the same decade, Interplay’s Fallout from 1997 runs in the browser the same way.
Is The Elder Scrolls: Arena Free, Safe and Official?
Is The Elder Scrolls: Arena free?
Yes. Bethesda made Arena a free download in 2004 to mark the 10th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls, so it is freeware, though not open source. DOS.Zone runs it in a browser tab with no account and nothing to pay.
Do I need to download Arena or set up DOSBox?
No. DOS.Zone loads the game files from its own site and runs them through js-dos, its browser build of DOSBox, so you don’t install an emulator or fetch the freeware release yourself.
Can I play Elder Scrolls Arena on a phone?
DOS.Zone shows virtual on-screen controls on phones, but Arena was made for a keyboard and mouse and we haven’t tested it on a touchscreen. A desktop or laptop is the better choice.
