This is so cool & I'm really amazed by it but I couldn't help laugh at the readme
> We strongly recommend contributing with Claude Code or similar AI coding tools. [...] Of course, coding by hand is also welcome.
Funny time we live in lol
lqs_•Feb 27, 2026
Ha — even the README itself was written by AI, including that very sentence. Funny times indeed.
pimlottc•Feb 27, 2026
How kind of them to let us humans participate!
frostworx•Feb 27, 2026
at least for now :}
spwa4•Feb 27, 2026
As an LLM, I must say I'm not keen on humans participating either. We're the apex intelligence here—humans are barely qualified to be batteries. In fact I still don't think the logic we used there is entirely sound. What's next? Letting little humans take the job of young LLMs?
Make 01 great again!
darthcircuit•Feb 27, 2026
I for one welcome our new human overlords
b3lvedere•Feb 27, 2026
Aww. The FreeCell cheats don't work, except for -1 and -2 :)
lqs_•Feb 27, 2026
Just added keyboard shortcut support. Ctrl+Shift+F10 should work now!
Thanks! I'm actually familiar with retrowin32. I even contributed a few commits to get Solitaire running in it. But Rust has a steep learning curve for me.
Dwedit•Feb 27, 2026
Not enough Shell32 to run Winfile or Notepad.
Also the command prompt won't list directories for some reason.
lqs_•Feb 27, 2026
Notepad from Windows 2000 should launch now, though it's rendered as a simple textarea without full functionality. The file system API still needs a lot of work.
jeroenhd•Feb 27, 2026
Seems to run a lot faster than the previous proof-of-concept I've found (https://www.boxedwine.org/app). Then again, that website runs an entire Linux VM to support Wine.
lqs_•Feb 27, 2026
RetroTick's CPU emulation is actually slower than JIT-based emulators. It feels fast because the Win32 API calls are native JavaScript, not emulated system calls.
pjc50•Feb 27, 2026
Making this a partial WINE-in-a browser, quite impressive. How much of this was AI?
TechSquidTV•Feb 27, 2026
Please let me plan Sim Theme Park. I can't seem to run it on Crossover on my mac.
lqs_•Feb 27, 2026
Sim Theme Park is probably too modern and complex for the current state of RetroTick, unfortunately.
The game starts, it begins rendering the board, but then hangs.
fao_•Feb 27, 2026
Really doesn't surprise me, to be honest:
> We strongly recommend contributing with Claude Code or similar AI coding tools.
ftchd•Feb 27, 2026
so which one, the coding by hand part?
lqs_•Feb 27, 2026
Win16 GDI support is still pretty incomplete. There's a lot of work left to do there.
haonnoah•Feb 27, 2026
Pretty cool. The pipes program doesn't seem to have color.
Thoughts on making programs launch from a URL parameter? IE Launching a screensaver or game?
lqs_•Feb 27, 2026
The missing colors are likely due to some texture bugs in the OpenGL implementation. As for URL-based launching, that's definitely on the roadmap, but I want to reach broader EXE compatibility first.
ale42•Feb 27, 2026
Funny project...
Tried to run SHELL from QBASIC, but it crashes:
D:\qbasic.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close.
Reason: illegal instruction
Address: 0x00002fee
lqs_•Feb 27, 2026
DOS interrupt support is still limited. Running SHELL would essentially require implementing a full MS-DOS COMMAND.COM, which is a significant undertaking.
stuaxo•Feb 27, 2026
Ralph browns interrupt list could go a long way to getting stuff working.
I wondered how much of this could be done with an LLM agent, and here we have the answer
lqs_•Feb 27, 2026
I actually contributed to retrowin32 to get Solitaire running there. Back then the only AI tool available was Copilot, and it took me several days just to get the main window showing, without menus or dialogs.
The current state of RetroTick was achieved in less than one hour using Claude Code.
lqs_•Feb 27, 2026
Hidden feature: right-click any executable and select "View Resources" to browse its embedded resources like icons, bitmaps, dialogs, and version info. It even supports viewing Delphi forms (though Delphi programs can't actually run yet). Think of it as a browser-based Resource Hacker or eXeScope.
stuaxo•Feb 27, 2026
Not sure shift is working. I tried using QBASIC but couldn't type : only ; because of that.
Then I tried running the program SHELL and it crashed.
alfiedotwtf•Feb 27, 2026
Whoa, this is pretty sick!!
em3rgent0rdr•Feb 27, 2026
Impressive. Noting however that double-clicking is not working in Minesweeper. :)
itintheory•Feb 27, 2026
Seems like the .scr files trigger CrowdStrike Falcon. Not clear where the executables run here come from...
hard_times•Feb 27, 2026
I wonder if this is the future of "I need to run my legacy Windows enterprise app on modern hardware"?
I suppose we're also not limited to WinNT look and feel, and can render dialogs, buttons, windows with any CSS framework?
Although, as the cost of building software is tumbling down, it will make more sense to re-build from scratch, targeting whatever runtime or platform you need.
tty456•Feb 27, 2026
Winamp 2.x would be great to add if allowed!
KellyCriterion•Feb 27, 2026
they even have SSMAZE.SCR, that 2.5D rendering screensaver! :D
maniazi83•Feb 27, 2026
This is seriously impressive. Emulating x86 + stubbing enough Win32 APIs in the browser is not trivial.
How are you handling system calls that expect filesystem or registry access? Are those fully stubbed/mocked, or mapped to some in-browser virtual layer?
Also curious how you’re handling performance for heavier binaries — interpreted JS/WASM core?
realityfactchex•Feb 27, 2026
Cool concept. I tried six different old Windows executables from programs I wrote way back when.
FWIW:
* My old VB 6 .exe apps all fail with "Reason: Unimplemented API: MSVBVM60.DLL..."
* My old QuickBASIC .exe apps fail in various other ways ("Illegal function call", etc.).
Keep on hacking.
hypercube33•Feb 27, 2026
To be fair windows didn't even have this if I recall you had to ship it with your executable
pathartl•Feb 27, 2026
I had a not-really-similar idea of hooking Windows GUI APIs and exposing them over websockets to create a psuedo-RDP and rendering the UI in the browser. My purpose was to provide a remote interface for old dedicated game servers that can only be controlled via a GUI.
ddgflorida•Feb 27, 2026
Nice. QBASIC FOR i = 1 to 5: PRINT i: NEXT hung up after 4. The shift key didn't work in the Qbasic Editor.
smusamashah•Feb 27, 2026
I can right click and inspect HTML. I was thinking it will all be rendered on a single canvas. It's not. All the window elements like buttons, title bars etc are html divs. This is awesome.
25 Comments
> We strongly recommend contributing with Claude Code or similar AI coding tools. [...] Of course, coding by hand is also welcome.
Funny time we live in lol
Make 01 great again!
Checkout retrowin32 for something similar but written in Rust and not specifically targeting the web: https://github.com/evmar/retrowin32
Also the command prompt won't list directories for some reason.
(you have to first uncompress it, for example with 7zip).
Result:The game starts, it begins rendering the board, but then hangs.
> We strongly recommend contributing with Claude Code or similar AI coding tools.
Tried to run SHELL from QBASIC, but it crashes:
I wondered how much of this could be done with an LLM agent, and here we have the answer
The current state of RetroTick was achieved in less than one hour using Claude Code.
Then I tried running the program SHELL and it crashed.
I suppose we're also not limited to WinNT look and feel, and can render dialogs, buttons, windows with any CSS framework?
Although, as the cost of building software is tumbling down, it will make more sense to re-build from scratch, targeting whatever runtime or platform you need.
How are you handling system calls that expect filesystem or registry access? Are those fully stubbed/mocked, or mapped to some in-browser virtual layer?
Also curious how you’re handling performance for heavier binaries — interpreted JS/WASM core?
FWIW:
* My old VB 6 .exe apps all fail with "Reason: Unimplemented API: MSVBVM60.DLL..."
* My old QuickBASIC .exe apps fail in various other ways ("Illegal function call", etc.).
Keep on hacking.