Experiments  /  Firstborn Nav
Reference archive · Firstborn (firstbornmultimedia.com)

The Text Nav.

The homepage navigation from Firstborn's Flash-era site, pulled from the Wayback Machine and run in-browser through Ruffle (no plug-in needed). Switch eras below. These are the real archived .swf binaries — dynamic content (news feeds, project pages) was served from live backends that no longer exist, so expect the navigation shell to render, not the full site.

2003 · main.swfRuffle · self-hosted
Source
web.archive.org
firstbornmultimedia.com
2003 capture
2007 capture
2010 capture

On the "physics" question

Decompiling the ActionScript in each binary: the nav is text-based and motion-driven, but what reads as "physics" is eased tweening, not a spring/mass simulation. The 2003–2007 builds (AS2) use buildMainNav / textNavAni with ease-in curves; the 2010 fb7 build (AS3) drives an elastic/bounce tween engine — springy feel, scripted keyframes underneath.

No velocity, gravity, friction or drag-constraint code is present in these homepage binaries. If the physics nav you remember was a separate lab/experiment piece, say the word and I'll go dig that specific one out of the archive.