vDope Wars — Browser Remake of the Classic Windows Trading Game

A free, single-page tribute to the legendary 1990s shareware game Dope Wars. Buy low, sell high across six New York City boroughs, dodge cops and muggers, and pay off the loan shark before day 31 runs out. No installs. No accounts. No tracking.

About the Game

vDope Wars is a faithful HTML/JavaScript/SVG recreation of the Windows 9x game Dope Wars, which was itself a Windows port of John E. Dell's 1984 TRS-80 game Drug Wars. The aesthetic is meticulously preserved: beveled grey buttons, the Win9x navy title bar, glowing 7-segment LED displays for cash and debt, the classic teal desktop background, and modal dialogs styled like Win98 message boxes — right down to the yellow exclamation icon.

It runs entirely in your browser. There is no backend, no database, no analytics on the gameplay itself, and no downloads. Open the page and play.

How to Play

You start in the Bronx with $2,000 cash and a $5,500 debt to the loan shark. You have 31 in-game days to make as much money as possible.

• Buy and sell drugs at fluctuating market prices in each borough. Profit comes from arbitrage — buy where it's cheap, sell where it's expensive.
• Travel between Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Ghetto, Coney Island and Central Park using the subway. Each trip advances one day.
• Manage your trenchcoat — you only have 100 slots, so you have to choose what's worth carrying.
• Visit the bank and loan shark in the Bronx via the Finances button. Loan interest compounds at 10% per day, bank deposits earn 5% — pay down the debt fast.
• Buy guns to survive shootouts with the cops. With no guns you can only run, and you'll take damage.
• Watch for events — price spikes ("Cops just busted a major dealer!"), muggings, lucky finds, and gun salesmen.

Keyboard Shortcuts

• B — Buy selected drug
• S — Sell selected drug
• F — Open Finances dialog (Bronx only)
• G — Start a new game
• Enter / Esc — Confirm or cancel dialogs

History of Dope Wars

Drug Wars was originally written by John E. Dell in 1984 for the TRS-80 Model 100. It became a cult classic, ported and re-imagined endlessly across BASIC, DOS, graphing calculators, and shareware bulletin boards. In the late 1990s a Windows version called Dope Wars by Matt Lee spread virally through office networks — the screen you see in vDope Wars is a tribute to that exact build, with its LED stat displays and Win9x window chrome.

This browser remake by Dr. Ahmad Faisal Mohamad Ayob exists for one reason: nostalgia. It was a weirdly addictive numbers-and-risk game, and it deserved to live on somewhere that doesn't need a Win9x emulator.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is vDope Wars free?

Yes, completely free. No accounts, no ads, no in-app purchases, no tracking of gameplay.

Does it work on mobile?

It works on tablet and desktop best. The game faithfully recreates a fixed-width Windows dialog, so on small phone screens you may need to scroll or zoom — but it is playable.

Is the source code open?

The entire game is one self-contained HTML file. Right-click → View Source on this page to see how it works.

Why does it have sound? I thought the original was silent.

The original Windows Dope Wars actually had optional WAV sound effects. vDope Wars synthesizes its bleeps live in the browser using the Web Audio API — no audio files needed. Toggle them off from the Sounds menu in the title bar.

Will my game save?

Not currently — each session starts fresh. A 31-day game only takes about 10–15 minutes, so it's designed to be played in one sitting.