[U] Someone turned the Zelda Classic engine into a PWA so you can play right through the web

Update 7:3/22 at 3:28 PM: Connor has reached out to provide a link to his MMORPG, Gridia. If you’d like to support him and try it out, you can do so via his website right now! He’s also clarified something that I should have realized in that the 600+ quests available in Zelda Classic total far, far more than 20 hours, but instead, some of the longest quests equal that much time alone. Happy gaming!

Gridia is a massively customizable multiplayer online game with a persistent world. Gridia is a product that a creative mind will be able to use to create their own world – complete with customizable graphics, items, quests and the like. Worldmasters can build and maintain a world as they see fit, supporting anywhere from dozens to thousands of players. Gridia supports a vast crafting system – everything seen in the game can be created. Players can harvest the landscape for its resources and claim parcels of lands to build on.

Gridia Website

We live in a day and age where virtually anything can run in the web browser. While AAA cloud gaming is taking off, so are retro games and their preservation by hobbyists and professional developers alike. We’ve already spoken about how the Playstation 2 and other retro consoles can run right through Chrome, but today, I wanted to show off a project by a single person.

Connor Clark is a web developer who’s tested and pushed his limits to port Classic Zelda to a web application, and you can play it right now with one click! First released over 20 years ago, Zelda Classic is a game engine made to recreate and modify the original Legend of Zelda game. The community surrounding it has created over 600 quests or custom games from it, totaling in about 20+ hours of content.

Until now, Zelda Classic only worked on Windows, but after putting in over 150 hours (about 2 months) this year on the project, it’s now accessible from a web-based URL alone, and you can even manually load up any one of the aforementioned quests at will.

On his Hoten.cc website, the developer of the PWA documents his entire process, so anyone can learn and grow from it. Progressive web applications are huge, and I believe they’re the future, so seeing someone chronicle their journey in acquiring knowledge surrounding their development is refreshing.

To play, use your keyboard or a gamepad (configure in the Settings menu by clicking the screen to call it up), as it supports both inputs. You may experience the occasional sound hiccup or other bugs, Connor says, but almost everything works well enough to enjoy the experience just as well as you would have on Windows. Click the Quest List at the top left of the screen to jump between custom games and hit play. Your saves are stored on your local browser, not in the cloud!

Default Controls:

A: z
B: x
L: a
R: s
Start: Enter
Map: space

Don’t forget that you can turn any website in Chrome into a standalone experience by creating a shortcut and clicking “Open as Window”! Connor has also been creating his own highly customizable web-based MMORPG called Gridia, and although he’s put a lot of work in so far, it seems he hasn’t been working on it for several years, which is disappointing. If you are interested in supporting unique web-based technology and projects, you should consider checking out Connor’s site and his projects!