We’ve never played Diablo. We don’t mean we’ve missed out on the series’ most iconic title, Diablo III. We mean we’ve simply never stepped foot into Blizzard’s supposedly epic roguelike series of action RPGs. Until this morning, at least, when we finally picked out our first class (Warrior) and stumbled our way through Tristram.
Where, you ask? On our browser, of course, while we sipped our morning cup of coffee. See, someone just ported over the entirety of 1996’s Diablo to virtually any browser, bringing with it generally excellent performance (even on an Intel-sporting MacBook) and the controls you might remember from yore.
Yup, that’s Diablo
You can blame a GitHub project going by the name Diabloweb for the not-so-subtle reminder that you were there when the game originally released – and Blizzard required a massive chunk of RAM (8MB) and a 60MHz Pentium processor or better to get the game running on your parents’ old clunker.
According to the project’s readme file, Diabloweb is modelled after (and owes its life to) another open-source project – DevilutionX – that’ll be remembered as the basis on which Diablo for browsers was built.
“I’ve modified the code to remove all dependencies and exposed the minimal required interface with JS, allowing the game to be compiled into WebAssembly. Event handling (especially in the menus) had to be modified significantly to fit the JS model,” writes d07RiV, the project’s owner.
It doesn’t matter if none of that made sense or not. The TL;DR of it all is that you can click here (while your boss isn’t looking) to jump straight into Diablo. There are a couple of caveats you’ll contend with, though. This browser version doesn’t include the original game files; you’ll need to supply those yourself.
Read More: Diablo IV review (Xbox Series X) – Sympathy for the devil
If you don’t have a physical copy of the game floating around somewhere, you can purchase a copy from Good Old Games (GOG) for $10 (R180) to grab the necessary DIABDAT.MPQ file from the install directory. That’s if you’re looking to do things the right way by avoiding the high seas, of course. Once you’ve got that – from GOG or your physical copy – just upload it to the game’s opening page and you’re all set.
There is a shareware version available if you can’t be bothered to obtain the DIABDAT.MPQ file. Just hit the ‘Play Shareware’ button when opening up the game, and you’ll be dumped right into an incomplete demo version of Diablo. Be warned. You’ll be restricted to running around the eerie town of Tristram until you sum up the courage (and funds) to buy a copy.
