In light of present day data-parallel computers, an appraisal of molecular dynamics simulations of large N-particle systems, isolated or in contact with a heat-bath, is given. Special attention is focused 011 the Connection Machine CM-2. Particularly the cases of long-range potentials and impulsive hard-core interactions are discussed in detail. Data-parallel strategies including data distribution, communications and computation are presented and compared with well-known sequential approaches. The conclusion offered is that the methods described here are easy to design and offer the possibility of reasonably fast implementations for the reliable simulation of macroscopic samples of matter.