AI Brings Classics to the Browser: From Mario in a Call of Duty Map to Free Photoshop

A developer has put Mario into a zombie map from Call of Duty: World at War. It's not an official mod or a strange dream: it's the result of using artificial intelligence to port old games to the browser. P.E. Cooper published in late September that, with the help of Opus 5.5 and Astra, he had brought one of the classic zones from the 2008 shooter's zombie mode to the web.

He then went further and turned that map into a testing ground. In one demo, he added the portal gun from Portal, which lets you open passages and walk through them. In another, he incorporated the building system from Fortnite to erect wooden walls and hold back the zombies. As Dexerto reported on October 2, Cooper had already shown videos but had not yet published the mods.

Browser Ports with AI Assistance

Cooper's case is not the only one. Vheissu, another developer, is working on bringing The Simpsons: Hit & Run to the browser. He extracted characters, buildings, textures, sounds, and mission scripts from a PS2 disc image and is rewriting the program that makes them run. In his development log, he says Codex handled rebuilding and converting files, while Claude helped optimize loading, for example by converting image formats or downloading multiple assets at once.

The process has many small pieces. You have to convert the original skeletons and animations, and reconnect the mission scripts so that dialogue, races, deliveries, and mission failures keep working. Vheissu didn't start from scratch: he relied on documentation and tools from the Donut Team community, which has spent years analyzing the game's formats.

In one of his tests, the developer saw that traffic signs appeared upside down. The image file was fine; the problem was that the texture had been flipped when uploading it. He fixed it, but vehicle handling still needs adjustments and he hasn't verified all missions from start to finish.

From GTA to Pro Evolution Soccer, with Copyright Issues

There was also someone who brought Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to the browser. Alexander Guryanov, from the DOS Zone team, published a demo in which a yellow car drove through the streets of the Rockstar classic inside a browser window. But when checking the original page on October 12, the game was no longer there: Take-Two had sent a copyright takedown request.

Another web project for Vice City exists that asks the user to import their own files from the original game and allows loading save games from the PC version. It's not the same one that Take-Two took down. This one uses the DOS Zone browser engine and relies on the work of the reVC community, though its description doesn't clarify whether AI was involved in the development.

Soccer has also joined this trend. A web version of Pro Evolution Soccer 6 ports the PSP edition. When you open it, you can choose England vs. France and see the usual pitch, scoreboard, and game camera. Players respond to controls, and the project includes support for gamepads, touchscreens, and saving matches.

Not Just Games: A Free, Open-Source Photoshop

The craze for reviving software with AI isn't limited to video games. The creator of ArtCraft explained on Reddit that he used Opus 5.5 to rewrite seven applications equivalent to Adobe programs, dedicated to photo retouching, video editing, and layout. They are free, open-source, and subscription-free. He claims to have 15 years of experience in software development and has been using Rust, the language he used to create these tools, for about ten years.

PhotoCraft, his alternative to Photoshop, keeps menus, keyboard shortcuts, and panels similar to the original. It supports layers, masks, brushes, and opening and saving PSD files, with desktop and web versions. However, it's in an early stage: layout, professional workflows, and plugin compatibility still have shortcomings, so it can't replace Photoshop for daily professional use.

A Reddit user, theanine3D, tried it and highlighted how fast it starts. But he ran into a detail that stopped him: pressing Shift+F5 in PhotoCraft fills the selection with the foreground color directly. In Photoshop, that shortcut opens a dialog box that lets you choose, for example, content-aware fill. He also found no way to customize shortcuts. He said that if they fix those two things, he'd be willing to move his daily work to PhotoCraft.

The difference in approaches is curious. While the veteran user wants everything to stay the same, Cooper prefers to use the old Call of Duty map as a base to experiment with mechanics from other games. Both paths are valid, but they raise similar questions.

The Future of These Projects

AI can already handle part of the file conversion and code writing. That opens the door for people without programming knowledge to try modifying an existing project: change an awkward button, adjust a mechanic, or make a classic work on mobile. The process would be to give the instruction to the model, run the result, and check if it works.

But for now, these projects are still led by developers. When a game crashes suddenly or a save game stops working, it's not clear that an inexperienced user can find the error and fix it. And there's a bigger obstacle: sharing the result. The new code may be your own, but the characters, maps, and music usually belong to the original game. The case of Vice City taken down by Take-Two is a reminder that technical fun can't always be published.

Would you try any of these ports in your browser? Tell us in the comments which one you'd like to see revived.