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We get these cheap recreations semi-regularly on here. Why does stuff like this keep being spammed on here, besides the nostalgia factor?

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People have been making these for a while. I used to see them on Flash game sites all the time as a kid. It'd be "Windows 96" or "Windows XD" or whatever else they decided to call it. They all had a start menu, notepad, maybe a calculator, and maybe a Minesweeper clone, and not much else.

Judging by the amount of Windows startup sound compilation videos out there, "the kids yearn for desktop UIs" might just be a little more common than you think.

Maybe this is the "running Doom" of the UI/UX crowd.

Of web UI in particular.

And this game is very old. I remember trying to get native-looking dropdown menus in IE6.

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