RetroTick
Run classic Windows EXEs in the browser
Details
- External ID
- 47180083
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- RetroTick
- Website domain
- retrotick.com
- Launched
- Feb. 27, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 195
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.9420485175202157
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
RetroTick parses PE/NE/MZ binaries, emulates an x86 CPU, and stubs enough Win32/Win16/DOS APIs to run classics like FreeCell, Minesweeper, Solitaire and QBasic, entirely in the browser. Built with Preact + Vite + TypeScript.Demo: https://retrotick.comGitHub: https://github.com/lqs/retrotick
Enrichment
- Theme
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- run classic windows executables in browser
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Emulating x86 CPU instructions, parsing complex Windows PE/NE/MZ executable formats, and reimplementing core Win16/Win32/DOS APIs in JavaScript/TypeScript requires deep reverse engineering and emulator architecture experience.
What it would actually take: A functional implementation requires writing or integrating a complete x86 cycle-accurate or interpreter CPU emulator, an MMU/paging emulator, binary parsers for PE/NE/MZ headers, and reimplementing hundreds of GDI, User32, Kernel32, and INT 21h API calls in WebAssembly or TypeScript mapped to HTML5 Canvas and Web Audio. This requires specialized domain knowledge in binary analysis, operating system internals, and emulator construction.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: BoxedWine (similar drag and drop concept), Oriel (similar theme)
Concerns raised: Final score disappears after game completion, Game hangs on master skill level after first move, Many old game EXEs don't work or open in broken state, Screen savers (.scr files) not meant to be run directly, CPU emulation performance without WASM or JIT
Feature requests: Can it run Doom?, JIT optimization to improve speed
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 104 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #10 of 105 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 107 days after the earliest competitor.
- NostalgiApp · hn · 2026-05-10 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Retro MP3 Jukebox · ph · 2026-09-23 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Running Win32/DirectX games in the browser via x86 emulation and WebGPU · hn · 2026-07-14 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Game Corner · ph · 2026-09-12 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- go-link · github · 2026-09-28 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Reverse-engineering Shockwave to save early 2000s web games (Rust/WASM) · hn · 2026-03-08 · 16 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- I built a RISC-V emulator that runs DOOM · hn · 2026-05-03 · 50 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- Level · hn · 2026-07-13 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.40
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
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