Skull Splitter III instruction screen (Source: Wayback Machine) Unless we manage to retro-engineer the files in order to make them connect to private servers, these games won’t be played anymore. Club Marian doesn’t even load anymore because of errors. Technically the shockwaves files are still available and you can still run them if you use Internet Explorer, but there isn’t much you can do except look at the login screen. Today, the servers have shut down for all these games. But because of how easy it was to log in and start playing, it was quite popular, and stayed active for a long time, even though Shockwave was very outdated at that point. The graphics were simplified for performance issues, and there wasn’t much to do aside from walking around, sending messages on the chat, or ride a car. In the early days of The Museum of Screens, I made a thread about one of these games, Moonbase, by far the most popular one, but there were many others, such as Tank Ball, or Club Marian, an online game where you could hang out with people on a tropical island. All of this was possible thanks to Shockwave, the not-quite-as-popular-than-Flash plugin from Macromedia that could render 3D games in real time on the web browser. MaidMarian is a studio mostly known for their free-to-play MMORPG Sherwood, but back in the early 2000s, their business model was to make online games in real time 3D playable through browser, totally free AND with no login required. And a small studio from Vancouver decided to follow the trend with an ambitious idea. The idea of hanging out in a virtual space was not new, online 3D chat existed way before, but this game brought it to a new level, becoming a pop culture sensation. In 2004, Second Life was an exciting novelty.
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