Developer ported Word for Windows 1.1a from 1990 to run natively on Windows 11

Developer ported Word for Windows 1.1a from 1990 to run natively on Windows 11 - Neowin

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Microsoft’s Office Suite, along with its most popular member, Word, has evolved greatly over the years. What started out as Microsoft’s entry into the text and document editor market back in the 80s has now transformed into an AI-powered platform that doesn’t even require you to type your own text.

Although Microsoft Word is now more capable than ever, one can’t help but wonder do we even need all those advanced features. Of course, you could say that if Word is too overwhelming, there’s always Notepad. But even Notepad is a far cry from its roots of being a simple, bare-bones text editor.

So, maybe the solution is to just go back in time to when it was all so simpler? As far as I’m aware, time-travel still isn’t possible, but that doesn’t mean going back to the roots of Word is entirely out of reach.

Developer, and a long-time Neowin reader and forum contributor, Justin Marshall has done exactly that. Justin played with some vintage code and published a working native x64 port of Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a.

Word for Windows 1.1a arrived in 1990 as the second update to Word 1.0, the first version of Word to ever run on Windows after years of being available only on MS-DOS. The project takes the original 1990-era source code, which Microsoft open-sourced in 2014, and gets it running as a proper 64-bit Windows executable. So, this is actual Word 1.1a you can run on your Windows 11 PC, not some emulation or lookalike recreation.

Looking at the program, it brings you right back to the early 90s era of computers. There's no Copilot button, cloud saves, fancy design templates, or most of the advanced features you see in today's iterations of Office apps. There's just a sheet of paper, with a couple of formatting options, and of course, the signature early Windows design language.

Word for Windows 1.1a | Image by Justin Marshall

For anyone who’s used Word in the 90s, or even 00s (although this is where Word started getting in today’s shape, but still), this one will invoke a lot of memories. And it's not just about Word itself, either. If you were part of the early Windows ecosystem in general, this alone could be enough to bring the whole picture flooding back.

This isn't Marshall's first project in this space either. He's become a specialist in reviving old software and games on modern hardware. You can check out his GitHub page, where you'll find projects like Quake4Doom, which merges the Quake 4 SDK with the Doom 3 engine, and Duke Nukem Forever, remade using idTech 4 and leaked assets from the notoriously troubled original release, for some more trips down memory lane.

And if you want to try Word for Windows 1.1a on your computer, you can get it from here.

Developer ported Word for Windows 1.1a from 1990 to run natively on Windows 11

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