Dan Church was a young boy, just 6 or 7 years old, when he first discovered the game “Hover” on the Windows 95 CD-ROM. A combination of capture the flag and bumper cars, the program was his first glimpse of what gaming would become, with advanced graphics (for the time), music and multiple levels.
“It just kind of drew me in,” Church recalled this week. “It really sparked my imagination.”
And today, thanks largely to his efforts, Microsoft is bringing the game back — with some very modern twists. The Internet Explorer team is releasing a new version of Hover for the web, with modern graphics, a new multiplayer option and touch controls for tablets including Microsoft’s Surface devices.
Developed by Church in collaboration with Seattle’s Pixel Lab, the updated game is a technology showcase for Microsoft, demonstrating the capabilities of Internet Explorer 11 and the web. The new Hover runs on any modern browser, but Microsoft says it will work best on Internet Explorer.
But for Church, it’s a labor of love, and a chance to expose a much broader audience to the game that captivated him as a kid.
Church, whose dad was a software engineer, grew up to become a software developer himself. He works now for a small web consulting firm in Framingham, Mass., and has experience in a wide range of software development technologies as a result. Over the years, he also has picked up a hobby of reverse-engineering games and software. One of the old programs he spent time trying to recreate was his old favorite, Hover.
When he saw the news that Microsoft had decided to implement the WebGL graphics technology in Internet Explorer 11, he realized the pieces were there to bring the game back for the web. He thought: Wouldn’t it be cool if Internet Explorer 11 could demonstrate its capabilities using the same game that demonstrated the technology of Windows 95?
He connected via Reddit with a Microsoft developer who put him in touch with the Internet Explorer team, and the project was born. Church wrote all of the physics code, and did most of the graphics development, and the team from Pixel Lab contributed a significant amount of work to help bring the game into the modern era.
Even with the update, the game is still true to the original. The geometry is the same, as are the levels. And there’s a great Easter Egg that involves the original code name for the Windows 95 Hover project. (I won’t spoil it for you in case you want to discover it yourself.)
For Church, this has been a hobby, not a paid gig. “I was just surprised to get the rights in the first place, let alone the team,” he explained.
“I’ve never worked on a project that would get this level of exposure,” he said, noting that many of the people who will play it now weren’t even around to use a Windows 95 PC. “It’s really exciting that a whole new generation of people are going to try this game.”
The new Hover is available as a free technology demo at hover.ie. Here’s a fun promotional video that Microsoft released in conjunction with the new game.
