Space Cadet Pinball
The pinball table that shipped with Windows XP, reverse-engineered and ported to the browser. Three flippers, a rank system, and the table you already know.
3D Pinball Space Cadet shipped as a pack-in with Windows 95 and became the default timewaster for a generation of office workers, students, and children who had been told to get off the computer but were waiting for something to load. It was removed in Windows Vista. Its removal was mourned more than many things that actually warranted mourning.
In 2021, a developer named k4zmu2a reverse-engineered the original game from the Windows XP binary using Ghidra. The result is a clean decompilation with a working MIT license that matches the original behavior closely enough that anyone who played the Windows version will recognize every ramp, bumper, and drain. Another developer, alula, compiled it to WebAssembly and put it in a browser.
The table is Space Cadet. You are a cadet trying to earn ranks through mission completions. Each rank requires you to launch a ball, activate deployment bumpers, and complete objectives indicated by flashing lights. It sounds more structured than it plays — in practice it is pinball, and the mission system is mostly something to read during the ball launch animation.
The physics are faithful. The table is the table. The sound is the sound. If you remember this game, you remember it correctly.
Why it’s on the guide: A faithful open-source decompilation of a genuinely beloved piece of computing history. Still the best pinball table that ever shipped with an operating system.