Play it here! (desktop browsers only)

Or try the “remastered” one! (desktop and mobile)

There used to be an Adobe Flash game where the goal was to pass a driving test, with the instructor being ready to berate you whenever you screwed up. It’s virtually unknown outside of Estonia, but I remember playing it as a child, and it was a lot of fun.

Sadly, Flash is no longer relevant, and the original website has gone offline a long time ago.

For a while, the only way to experience what the game is, was this YouTube video showing its gameplay.

Luckily, backups of the original Flash game exist in the Internet Archive, and I also learned that this website hosts it with a solution that translates the original game, albeit with less than stellar results.

White asphalt is probably better for the environment, but it sure makes seeing the road markings a bit more difficult.
White asphalt is probably better for the environment, but it sure makes seeing the road markings a bit more difficult.

To preserve a piece of media reliably over a long time period, you need to format shift it.

I decided to use a similar idea to preserve this game by putting my responsible vibe coding hat on and turning this into an authentic recreation that runs on modern browsers, including all the tiny details and admittedly horrible key bindings. After all, making old games work on modern browsers is so hot right now.

For this, I relied on my homegrown custom sandbox (Podman and a shell script), Claude Code, and Opus 5.5. The workflow was quite simple, with the main goal being to offload as much of the work as possible, and to ensure that the agent can check its work along the way. By the time it was specced and a few clarifying questions covered, it executed it and the end result was playable the first time.

On a high level, the process was this:

  • find every single possible reference and backup/archive of this game online
  • take the existing YouTube video as a reference point in case assets are missing or broken
  • let Claude Code unpack and go through the assets and code
  • let Claude Code play through the actual game on an actual Adobe Flash installation, using prepared scenario scripts
  • put together a spec document
  • read through it myself for confirmation
  • execute on it
  • let Claude Code play through the whole game itself to validate the results in an actual browser
  • play the game myself

I expected a lot more trouble than that. But no, it just works. Smartphones weren’t a thing back when this game was made, so don’t expect to play the game on those, yet.

Performance is horrible though, all the assets are downloaded separately.

But don’t you worry, this game is now ✨remastered!✨

Now with 30% more bugs!
Now with 30% more bugs!