Desktop Survivors 98is more than just a retro Windows nostalgia trip

Is it weird to have nostalgia for an operating system? I don't mean missing a particular feature that's been removed from modern versions or a specific productivity setting that's no longer supported. I mean a sense of longing for the vibes of the computer interface you grew up with, an ache for the aesthetics of user interfaces past.

I would have thought I was immune to this particular brand of nostalgia. Then I happened upon Desktop Survivors 98, a new Vampire Survivors-style "bullet heaven" autoshooter that leans hard into the aesthetics of the late '90s Windows machines I grew up with. And while that low-res, 256-color presentation is what drew me in, it was the intriguing mouse-controlled gameplay underneath that has kept me coming back for more retro-styled action all week.

Start me up

When it comes to capturing the feel of the '90s computer environment, Desktop Survivors 98 gets everything just right. This is in large part due to rampant theft of familiar old-school icons; items like My Computer, Calculator, Minesweeper, Search, and more look like they were taken directly from a classic Microsoft tile set. The game's low-res desktop backgrounds and Windows also look like they came out of a years-old Microsoft style book.

But much of the nostalgic appeal of Desktop Survivors is in the little nods to how computers used to work. It's in the faux Start menu in the corner to access various menus and the Settings window that uses old Visual Basic-style sliders and buttons. It's in the way the item shop looks like a teenager's first Geocities page and the "boss mode" icon that can hide the game in an instant. It's even in how the game jumps into the old Mystify screensaver if you leave it idle for too long. This is a game that was obviously made with a lot of love for the old-school versions of Windows that inspired it.