Over the past couple of weeks, friends and colleagues have made me aware of multiple ingeniously implemented, browser-based ways to play classic MS-DOS and Windows games with other people on basically any hardware.
The late 1990s and early 2000s were the peak of multiplayer gaming for me. It was the era of real-time strategy games and boomer shooters, and not only did I attend many LAN parties, but I also played online with friends.
That’s still possible today with several old-school games; there are Discord servers that arrange scheduled matches of Starsiege Tribes, for example. But oftentimes, it’s not exactly trivial to get those games running in modern Windows, and as in the old days, you might have some annoying network configuration work ahead of you—to say nothing of the fact that many folks who were on Windows back in those days are now on macOS or Linux instead.
This week, several tech and gaming websites (starting with PC Gamer) have begun circulating a link to Chrono Divide, a fan-made browser version of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. It was first introduced in a nascent state back in 2020, but it has continued to receive updates, and it’s now pretty much feature- and content-complete as far as the multiplayer part of that game goes. (Single-player isn’t there yet.)
Here’s what the website says about it: