Alternatives
Products that do what I recreated 90s Mode X demoscene effects in JavaScript and Canvas does
After 25 years of writing software, I was feeling nostalgic for the kinds of things that got me into programming in the first place: the old DOS demoscene. I spent a weekend seeing if I could recapture some of that INT 13H VGA magic using today's web tech, but with the old-school constraints of doing it from scratch. The result is this portfolio of ten classic effects running in a single HTML file. It's all vanilla JavaScript writing to a element, with no external libraries. It was a fun challenge to implement things like: * The color palette cycling and smooth fading in the Plasma demo. *…
- 1IM
I sometimes pick up random projects just because I can, this was one of those times. I made it as a week long project a while back this year but never shared here, so thought to go for it haha. I created a game inspired by Doom and the backrooms called The Backdooms under 2.4kb in minified html. (for reference, this entire post would be around 1.8kB haha) I had to use a not popular way of using GZip with Zlib headers (had to write my own script for compressing it, also in the repo) to eventually convert it a size 40 QR code that works right in your browser using Decompressionstream API. This…
2025 · github.com
- 2IV
2019 · github.com
- 3IM
Hi, As a 8-bit C64 game coder in eaarly 90ties and currently mostly FE-focused dev, decided to give a go to a simple retro game archive. This is purely fun project - so i decided to post it to HN, mayne it'll resonate :)
2023 · polishpixels.com
- 4AR
My background project for the last two years has been re-implementing my 2004 C++ shoot'em up game in TypeScript + WebGL, and it's finally done (just in time for the 20th anniversary!) Play the game online: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/darklaga.html Technical article about the remake: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/remake.html I have tested Firefox, Chrome and Edge on desktop and mobile (no access to a device capable of running Safari). It's amazing how much difference 20 years makes: the hardware is so much more powerful, the web…
2024 · nicollet.net
- 5IR
May 2026 · github.com
- 6RR
RetroTick parses PE/NE/MZ binaries, emulates an x86 CPU, and stubs enough Win32/Win16/DOS APIs to run classics like FreeCell, Minesweeper, Solitaire and QBasic, entirely in the browser. Built with Preact + Vite + TypeScript. Demo: https://retrotick.com GitHub: https://github.com/lqs/retrotick
Feb 2026 · retrotick.com
- 7AP
So, after years of abandoning Rust after the hello world stage, I finally decided to do something substantial. It started with simple line rendering, but I liked how it was progressing so I figured I could make a reasonably complete PSX style renderer and a game with it. My only dependency is SDL2; I treat it as my "platform", so it handles windowing, input and audio. This means my Cargo.toml is as simple as: [dependencies.sdl2] version = "0.35" default-features = false features = ["mixer"] this pulls around 6-7 other dependencies. I am doing actual true color 3D rendering (with Z buffer,…
Sep 2025 · totenarctanz.itch.io
- 8RY
Hi HN, I recently noticed a recurring visual artifact in the "Most Replayed" heatmap on the YouTube player. The highest peaks were always surrounded by two dips. I got curious about why they were there, so I decided to reverse engineer the feature to find out. This post documents the deep dive. It starts with a system design recreation, reverse engineering the rendering code, and ends with the mathematics. This is also my first attempt at writing an interactive article. I would love to hear your thoughts on the investigation and the format.
Jan 2026 · priyavr.at
- 9IR
Recently, I managed to recover some of my earliest work from the ZX Spectrum era from an old audio cassette. It is a mini-game, that I created as a teen, called "Atomix," written in BASIC with a mix of Z80 assembly — some of which I coded myself, while other parts were disassembled from existing games. I put the game in an modern emulator and recorded a screencast. See the video in my linkedin post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7288665...
2025
- 10EA
2019 · github.com
- 11BD
2021 · github.com
- 12
- 13AS
Lots of fun to do. I would have not taken the time without the speedup provided by Claude. https://andyrosa.github.io/Sinclaude/simulator.html
2025
- 14RE
Hi HN, When browsers killed NPAPI plugin support, thousands of early 2000s web games were effectively lost to time. Macromedia Shockwave, in particular, was a closed-source, highly complex, and largely undocumented beast. So a few friends and I spent the last two years doing something arguably unhinged: rebuilding the entire Director engine from scratch. Today, we're finally sharing dirplayer-rs. Repo: https://github.com/igorlira/dirplayer-rs We intentionally stayed quiet on this until we had undeniable proof that it was actually possible. With our latest v0.4.1 release,…
Mar 2026 · github.com
- 15AY
2018 · github.com
- 16QA
Hi! This is my little project introducing quasicrystals animations with some parameters. It uses a custom shader to allow higher resolution. Not all combinations look equally good. For example the "Spectrum" color palette IMO makes sense only for low values of "Tempo" and "Pattern Density". If you have VR googles, I recommend trying the WebXR version - it's really nice.
22d ago · hypnagogic-quasicrystals.github.io
- 17WP
This was my recent weekend project, aimed at teaching me JavaScript, a bit of HTML5, and (mostly) WebGL. The orbital data are from NASA JPL. I was inspired in part by this Flash app: http://www.dynamicdiagrams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/orrery_2011_bce.swf, but wanted to do something in 3D. Coming from the games-dev world, this is my first introduction to web coding. The UI is jquery. I mostly used http://learningwebgl.com/blog for the 3D stuff. Being WebGL, it will work mostly on Chrome, Firefox 4 Beta. Forget about IE. I needed to figure out how to render text to the WebGL canvas - I…
2011 · solar-system-explorer.com
- 18IA
2020 · codeguppy.com
- 19AP
Heya, I’m working on a portfolio website simulating a 90’s UNIX style computer using React and ThreeJS. The style is mostly inspired by SerenityOS, macOS and compromised I had to make to get it to work well within a browser. :ˆ) I appreciate any feedback or suggestions.
2024 · joeyderuiter.me
- 20IB
process demo - https://i.redd.it/fbhlwsq1gcmg1.gif render demo - https://i.redd.it/smddwtryhcmg1.gif I love making creative software. I spent a few years making pixel art software but recently have gotten into 3d animation and 2d animation and really wanted a way to realize crazy ideas. Blockbench didn't feel quite right, spline is super well made but felt catered too much to just idle website animations, and I really didn't want to fall down a master class in Blender just to make some silly stuff. While I'm definitely not discounting Blender's literal…
Mar 2026 · app.topomaker.com
- 21RD
Hi There, We’ve all felt the nostalgia for classic DOS games like DOOM, Prince of Persia, and Duke Nukem. Unfortunately, running these games on modern systems is a hassle with often 10+ setup steps. To bridge that gap, I’ve built a platform that leverages DOSBox and JS-DOS to bring these beloved titles directly to the browser. Say goodbye to complex setups! This platform seamlessly emulates DOS games, letting you jump straight into the action. I'm eager for your feedback on emulation performance, game compatibility, and user interface. I’m currently beta testing and plan to integrate a light…
2024 · weplaydos.games
- 22AR
I think it's finally time to lock version 0.2 of my 4d side project. (Since previous Show HN a couple of years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37100760 I scrapped lots of stuff and concentrated on making a javascript "game engine") The sole purpose of this project is to explore whether it's possible to make the human brain spatially aware of four dimensions using Virtual Reality. It’s my first ever game project, my first time using Unity, first time writing C#, and my first anything with WebXR, so please be gentle! To manage expectations, it isn't visually pleasing…
2025 · brainpaingames.com
- 233P
2022 · henryheffernan.com
- 24AH
My wife and I recently submitted to a mobile game jam on Newgrounds (yes, it's still around). What started as a question of whether we could do it somehow morphed into whether we could do without so many of the seemingly needless complications rampant in our respective industries. My wife thus did all the art as traditional frame-by-frame animation (no puppets or tweening) and I preceded without a game engine. I did use a pre-processor that gives JS a Lisp syntax (Parenscript), because C-syntax is gross. We hope the end result, while definitely of small scope, will serve to inspire some…
2022 · github.com
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Refine with a description →