When I was around ten years old I had my first 3D gaming experience. The game was Wolfenstein 3D and the game play was basically based on being an agent infiltrating and exploring a castle and shooting nazis on the way the to final boss. I remember this first time oh so well because it was also the last time I played this game. My dad was not as keen to see his 10-something-years-old kid playing violent video games so when he saw what me and my older brother actually were playing he was not late to tell us off. The game was deleted never to be seen again. Oh well, that is the official story. ;)

This was around 1994 and just to be able to play these kind of hot games with mosaic-like graphics and jerky movement you had to buy a, with today’s measurements, gigantic computer that looked more like a square box and that cost a smaller fortune. And yet, we were amazed by what this new world had brought us.

The reason why I am really bringing this up is because the other day I stumbled upon the very same game that brought all these memories back to me – implemented in JavaScript! I find it really fascinating that something that was so amazing and demanding just a few years ago now can be run natively on basically any available computer with a modern browser. Especially in a language that man developers still consider to be a toy language.

This also intrigues me in another way, namely how will things change in the next 15 years or so? Even though that is probably very hard, if not impossible, to foresee I still hope I will be just as astonished as this time.