Repent, Internet sinners! Windows 93 has returned, fulfilling its promise to bring users back to a time that never existed with an operating system that never was. The new site, from online artists Jankenpopp and Zombectro, presents the user with a fictional desktop for their alternative universe OS, using surrealism and nostalgia to make a lot of dumb/awesome jokes about Internet culture of the past and present.
It’s a great distillation of all of the random crap that could accumulate on the desktop of a BBS and Internet savvy teen back in the 20th century: A complete ASCII version of Star Wars (courtesy of http://www.asciimation.co.nz/). A glitched Game Boy emulator running Pokemon Red. And, of course, a boatload of (fake) viruses. Digging even deeper, you can find a collection of meme-ish sound files, a cheesy “Virtual Girl” based on the old Weird Science TV series, and a bunch of random, bizarre glitches that will merrily hijack your virtual screen. (Happily, none of the effects extend out into the rest of your browser, so you can explore Windows 93 without disrupting your other tabs.)
The whole thing is kind of a hallucinatory mess, but in a beautiful way. The only thing that could make it better is if it had Windows 95 Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks built into it as help messages.