Wasn't javascript the main way to get moving elements in webpages? Here they're using css animations, which definitely weren't around in those days. So I guess the style is throwback, not the implementation...
I remember applets as often being fun but also a huge source of instability. On my family’s Mac in the mid-late 90s, any time we started playing Java applet games, Netscape and/or System 7.5 would inevitably seize up and we’d have to reboot. Applets and “Sorry, a system error has occurred” were almost synonymous.
