The closing weeks of last year saw Command and Conquer reappear as a thing to be considered by players of 2012, with the unveiling of a free-play installment and announcement of a big-budget Generals sequel courtesy of BioWare. If only there were a way to combine “AAA C&C complexity” with “free, browser-based quick-play.” And here is just such a thing (kind of), in the form of the groundbreaking original title squeezed into HTML and Javascript.
As programmer Aditya Ravi Shankar tells it on his humble homepage, Journey to Perfection, he'd successfully created a Breakout clone within HTML and decided he'd like a slightly bigger challenge. Shankar hit upon the idea of rebuilding Westwood's alt-history extravaganza as a browser app. Truth be told, it's still somewhat of a curio, with Shankar himself admitting the “work-in-progress” would benefit from further improvement – but then again, here's this thing that 15 years ago people would upgrade their computers for, and now you can play it in Firefox. Pair it up with Quake, add some Commander Keen, and your browser's really going to be quite the enviable little gaming box by mid-90s standards.
