Unofficial Windows Version by Klaus Breuer

posted in: Nostalgia | 0

In 2006, Klaus Breuer, a German-Canadian programmer, author and traveler, released his own unofficial Windows version of ChipWits. This was a passion project of his after being inspired by reading this review in Creative Computing (more reviews here). Klaus saved the review for 15 years and finally decided to rewrite the game after finding a still-working copy of the game on eBay and ran it on a still-working original Mac.

Klaus’ Windows 95 version captures the original Mac gameplay quite nicely and still works on modern versions of Windows. Here is a screenshot of Klaus’ amazing work:

ChipWits fan port, running on Windows 95

Klaus’ final aim was to “have ChipWits in several languages, ported to several systems: Windows, Linux, Macs, PDAs, maybe even telephones…”

Our whole team was inspired by Klaus’ work and we were also saddened to hear that he passed away on April 30, 2013 from a brain tumor. Our thoughts are with his family and we hope that highlighting his work here can help his work reach a new generation of fans. You can find his memorial page here.

We also owe a debt of gratitude to a very thoughtful fan and archivist who goes by @vga256@dialup.cafe on Mastodon. @vga256 saw our announcement about ChipWits on Mastodon and recalled Klaus’ work. Though Klaus’ website was already relegated to the Wayback Machine, @vga256 painstakingly restored it, along with Klaus’ other work so that his contributions can continue to entertain and inspire future generations.

You can find @vga256’s restoration of Klaus’ archive site here: https://www.dialup.cafe/~klaus/. Thank you, from all of us!

We are constantly amazed and humbled by fans like Klaus who took the time to create this port and by @vga256 for archiving his work. People like them give us a great deal of hope that we will build a new active and thriving community around ChipWits!

We leave you with a lovely quote from Klaus:

I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code

Klaus Breuer (In Memoriam, 1968-2013)

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