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For a short time, Twiter resembled a playful trip down memory lane with users embedding retro games such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

But order has now been restored after Twitter withdrew support for embedding the classic MS-DOS titles in tweets.

Twitter refused to comment on why it removed the feature, but The Verge is reporting that it was because it was 'in violation of Twitter's rules'.

Twitter has blocked a function in tweets that had let users embed games. It is not clear how long California-based Twitter had the feature but it worked by pasting a URL from games available on the Internet Archive, which offers thousands of games from Donkey Kong (shown) to Street Fighter

Gaming is banned in its developer guidelines, which read: 'Do not build end-to-end interactive experiences inside the video or audio player unrelated to player card content.' 

With Twitter Cards, developers can attach photos, videos and 'media experience' to tweets designed to drive traffic to another website. 

They consists of lines of HTML to a webpage, and users who tweet links to this content will have a 'Card' added to the tweet that's visible to all of their followers.

The MS-DOS feature was spotted Wired last week, which reported that games could only be played on the desktop version of the social network. 

Users were able to embed the code for a game from their Internet Archive page in a tweet and then use their keyboard to play along.  

It's not known exactly when the feature was enabled in the first place. 

The feature relied on using URLs from the thousands of MS-DOS games available in the Internet Archive (shown) - everything from Wolfenstein 3D to Streetfighter. To embed a game, users could paste the game's URL into a tweet. The games could only be played on the desktop version of the social network

Users were able to embed the code for a game from the Internet Archive in a tweet and then use their keyboard to play. These games now appear as links in tweets that originally used the tool (pictured). Twitter refused to comment on why it removed the feature, but it was reportedly because it violated the site's rules

It relied on using URLs from the thousands of MS-DOS games available in the Internet Archive - everything from Wolfenstein 3D to Streetfighter.

The Internet Archive contains more than 2,000 MS-DOS games in an attempt to make sure they are not lost to time.

To embed a game, users could paste the URL to one of the games on the site in a tweet.

Then, with their keyboard, players could control the game using the arrow keys and the number pad. 

Although the games have been banned, Twitter still lets users embed YouTube videos and Instagram images.