Welcome to CyberTown

Before Meta Horizon Worlds, before VRChat, before Discord, TeamSpeak, and Mumble became household names, there was CyberTown.

CyberTown was a VRML-based social 3D world—a virtual hangout where people could meet, explore, and chat with one another. It was one of the earliest examples of what we would now call a social VR world.

To enter CyberTown, you used a browser plugin called Blaxxun Contact with Internet Explorer. The plugin provided the 3D environment that made CyberTown possible.

Sadly, Blaxxun Contact is no longer supported. You can still find copies of it floating around, but there's really no reason to install it today. The modern web has long since moved on, and virtually no websites use it anymore.

But CyberTown had another trick up its sleeve.

Before Voice Chat

Today, if you want to talk to someone online, you might reach for Discord, Mumble, TeamSpeak, or some other voice-chat program.

Back in the 1990s, though, most people didn't have microphones sitting on their desks.

CyberTown had a clever solution.

Instead of forcing you to hunch over your keyboard and constantly read incoming text, CyberTown could use DECtalk Access32 to speak the chat aloud.

Your avatar's voice depended on its gender and the voice you selected.

Female characters could be given Beautiful Betty's voice.

Male characters could use Perfect Paul or Huge Harry.

And, if you wanted something a little different, there was always Uppity Ursula.

Think about that for a moment.

In the 1990s, you could walk around a virtual 3D world, meet other people, and actually have their text conversations spoken aloud to you.

It wasn't voice chat in the modern sense.

But in a strange way, it was solving the same problem.

And Then It Wasn't Free Anymore...

I remember being genuinely distraught when CyberTown stopped being free and began charging a monthly fee.

For something that had felt like this wonderful little corner of the Internet, suddenly being told that you had to pay to stay there was a pretty big blow.

And it wasn't too long afterward that CyberTown disappeared.

Or so it seemed.

The Ghost Returns

At some point, CyberTown was revived by people who remembered it.

The resurrected CyberTown uses a different VR framework, but its creators deliberately brought back much of that unmistakable 1990s appearance.

The ghost had returned.

Unfortunately, some of the old technology didn't come back with it.

One of the things missing is the old DECtalk Access32 system that CyberTown once used to read chat aloud.

So while today's CyberTown may look remarkably similar to the CyberTown of old, it isn't quite the same creature.

And perhaps that's what makes it a ghost.

The world survived.

The technology changed.

The people moved on.

But somewhere out there, a little piece of the 1990s Internet is still walking around in a 3D world.

And that's why we're here.

More Than Just a 3D Chatroom

One of the things that made CyberTown—and many other Blaxxun Contact-based worlds—so interesting was that you didn't simply log in, wander around, and leave.

You could actually have a life there.

There were neighborhoods. There were homes. And there were jobs.

I was the neighborhood sheriff for the sci-fi neighborhood.

Now, being the sheriff didn't mean I was running around CyberTown with a virtual six-shooter.

Well... not usually.

My job was more like being the neighborhood uncle who occasionally had to walk up to somebody and say:

"Hey, okay, KillerClown360. You can't put that Playboy pin-up in your 2D house. It goes against CyberTown's rules. You're going to have to pick another picture."

Yes.

These were the kinds of problems that required the intervention of the virtual sheriff.

Every resident had a 3D house—the virtual space that people could actually walk into when they were exploring CyberTown.

But there was another side to your home.

You also had a 2D web page representing your house.

And that turned out to be surprisingly important.

A Door for People Who Couldn't Enter the 3D World

One of my friends, Sarah Watts, was totally blind and couldn't use the Blaxxun software.

That could have meant she was simply locked out of CyberTown.

But she wasn't.

Because my house also existed as a 2D web page, Sarah could visit it through her web browser, read the information there, and use the chat interface to talk with me.

She couldn't walk through my virtual living room.

She didn't need to.

The 2D version gave her another way through the door.

And I think that's one of the things I remember most fondly about these old virtual worlds.

They weren't perfect.

They certainly weren't designed with every accessibility need in mind.

But sometimes, almost accidentally, they created multiple ways for people to participate.

There was the 3D world.

There was the 2D web.

And there were the people in between, making the whole strange little community work.

For a while, CyberTown wasn't just somewhere you went.

It was somewhere you lived.