Have you ever come across something so deeply rooted within your childhood memories, it triggers a physical sensation? I have. It's this playable 3D Maze screensaver project, which allows you to fulfil the fantasy of controlling your way through a nightmarish tangle of Windows 95-era digital brick walls. Or my childhood fantasy, anyway. I was a weird kid.
X user x86matthew originally posted their work back in February of this year, but I've just stumbled across it like a suddenly-remembered fever dream. It's the result of a reverse-engineered binary of the original screensaver, too, so it's not like the browser-based recreations you can find on some websites—this is as close as you'll get to the real deal beyond booting up an older machine yourself.
Another pointless weekend project - a playable version of the old 3DMaze screensaver from Windows 9x.I reverse-engineered the original screensaver binary and added user-input functionality for the controls (and fixed some other minor issues!)https://t.co/1X44ubggB2 pic.twitter.com/bwwkmheyuoFebruary 16, 2025
On their GitHub page, x86matthew reveals that the project wasn't particularly difficult, as the core game logic already existed within the original 3D Maze screensaver executable file, which debuted with Windows 95 in, well, 1995. Rather than being controlled by the computer, though, this version allows keyboard inputs via the injection of an extra DLL.
Which means you can control your jaunt around the computing version of a liminal space yourself, which feels like some sort of violation of the space time continuum. As does the inclusion of the occasional rat sprite, which gave me something of an internal jump scare when I first came across one.
I'd forgotten this brick-walled nightmare had rats running around in it, perhaps out of some sort of childhood trauma. I'm not sure why it provoked such a strong reaction, as I'm not scared of the furry little critters in the slightest. It's the sheer... unknowing-ness of the thing, I guess. I thought I was alone, but nope, rodents. They get everywhere, don't they?
And don't get me started on the occasional jet-black polyhedron you can run into at the end of hallways, either. Bump into one of these, and the universe flips itself upside down, rats and all. What were we all smoking back in those days?
The good stuff, apparently. Anyway, it's a serious dose of nostalgia, and something that's been tickling my neurons for far too long while I was supposed to be working. The lizard brain approves, apparently.
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