Retro Blog 🕰️

From Al Lowe’s classroom and Chuck Benton’s Softporn to Sierra’s comic adventures, the missing Larry 4, corporate reinventions, and modern revivals: the people and decisions behind Leisure Suit Larry.

A good retro game night leaves everyone wanting another turn. Plan a relaxed Street Fighter II session with warm-ups, fair rotations and friendly rivalry.

Donkey Kong Country makes teamwork part of every run. Rediscover DK and Diddy’s tag-team appeal, with practical ideas for a fresh replay.

Super Metroid turns wrong turns into discoveries. Explore how its world, upgrades and atmosphere make Zebes memorable, with practical tips for returning players.

Super Mario Kart still makes a great excuse for a couch rivalry. Revisit its two-player roots, Battle Mode, and the fan creativity behind Horizons.

Flight simulator. CD-ROM spectacle. First-person shooter. Fighting game. Desktop adventure. In the 1990s, nobody seemed entirely sure what a Star Wars game was supposed to be. That was half the fun. There was a wonderful period when asking “What kind of game is Star Wars?” did not produce a sensible answer. It produced another question. Which year? In 1993, Star Wars became a demanding space-combat simulator that expected players to …

Is it actually illegal to emulate Nintendo games? The answer is more complicated than most gamers realize. We break down the legality of emulators, ROM downloads, personal backups, ROM hacks, BIOS files, decompilation projects, DRM, and video game preservation.

Retro Replay: Pixel Panic has officially made the jump from the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Sega Genesis, and this new 16-bit version is a much bigger, louder, faster, and more complete version of the original homebrew idea. What started as a small NES homebrew experiment has now grown into a full Sega Genesis homebrew release with 50 unique levels, new sprites, updated gameplay ideas, new sound effects, music, breakable …

Retro Replay: Pixel Panic is now playable as a work-in-progress Nintendo Entertainment System homebrew release. Built from Shiru’s open-source Chase demo, the project has grown into a fast-paced arcade maze game starring the Retro Replay skull mascot in a chaotic digital world filled with enemies, glowing pickups, power-ups, and score-chasing action. Heads up: this game has been ported to the Sega Genesis and that is where I update the game. …

When it comes to video game bands, The OneUps have been doing this longer than most. Their official site says they have been performing since their first show in 2002, and over the years they have played events like PAX, MAGFest, and GDC while building one of the most recognizable sounds in live VGM. Their catalog on Bandcamp stretches from Volume 1 all the way to later releases like Volume …

The Architects and the First War Few stories are as beloved, as strange, and as fiercely protected as that of Star Control. It’s a tale that begins with two brilliant, complementary minds, explodes into one of the most revered sci-fi epics of all time, and culminates three decades later in a landmark legal battle settled, bizarrely, by a shared love of bees. This is the story of Star Control and …

At Retro Replay, our passion is digging into the pixels, cartridges, and code of classic gaming. We explore the histories of virtual worlds. But every so often, a true story from that same era emerges from the real world that is so profound it demands our attention. The story of Damien Echols is one such case. It’s a significant departure from our usual retro-tech fare, but his history is a …

How Two Dudes, a Dream, and a Roguelike Built a Funkadelic Classic In 1991, the video game console war was defined by one thing: attitude. The Sega Genesis, with its “Blast Processing” and edgy mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, was in a head-to-head brawl with Nintendo. The landscape was dominated by lightning-fast platformers, brutal brawlers, and arcade-perfect shoot ’em ups. And then… there was ToeJam & Earl. It was a game …

Rip and Tear: The Definitive History of the Original DOOM On December 10, 1993, a file named DOOM1_0.ZIP was uploaded to an FTP server at the University of Wisconsin. There was no multi-million dollar marketing campaign, no flashy Super Bowl commercial, and no coordinated launch event. There was only a 2.39 MB compressed file, unleashed onto the nascent internet and the sprawling network of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). What happened …

If you thought emulation drama ended with Yuzu’s takedown, think again. A brand-new project called Oboromi is shaking up the emulator scene with one bold claim: it’s a proof-of-concept Nintendo Switch 2 emulator built entirely in Rust. Yes, Switch 2 — not the current one. Developed by 0xNikilite, this open-source powerhouse focuses on clarity, correctness, and traceability over raw performance, meaning it’s not here to run games just yet… but …

Nintendo’s Most Recent Alleged Hack Explained: What Happened, What Is Known, And What To Watch Next Flashpoint overview. A hacking crew calling itself Crimson Collective has claimed it breached Nintendo and walked away with a trove of internal material. Reports say the cache could include production assets, developer files, backups, and other folders, with early chatter centering on a headline number of about 570 gigabytes of data. Nintendo has not …

If you grew up tearing through Rainbow Road and tossing banana peels in Mario Kart 64, you probably never imagined that your favorite racing game once flirted with cigarette advertising. But that’s exactly what happened in the early versions of the game. Hidden in plain sight among the trackside billboards was a cheeky parody of Marlboro cigarettes, rebranded as “Marioro.” The red-and-white logo looked unmistakably similar to the real-life tobacco …

The hum of CRT monitors, the click of cartridge locks, the glow of pixelated skies — these are more than memories to those of us who grew up with them. They’re emotional anchors, reminders of simpler days when the biggest challenge was beating the next boss, not managing inboxes or bills. That connection between nostalgia and happiness was at the heart of a thoughtful panel today at RetroGameCon in Syracuse, …

Flashback to the golden age of 16-bit gaming, where pixel art, catchy soundtracks, and side-scrolling adventures defined childhoods everywhere. Nintendo has just dropped three more SNES classics onto the Nintendo Switch Online service, giving fans another reason to dive back into the nostalgia of the Super Nintendo era. Watch Nintendo’s official announcement trailer here on YouTube. This new update for October brings a mix of action, puzzles, and competitive fighting …

When Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! arcade game first emerged in 1984, it introduced a roster of wild, tongue-in-cheek characters. Among them was a hulking Russian fighter whose rough appearance and drinking gag made him especially memorable. In the arcade version of Super Punch-Out!!, he was known as Vodka Drunkenski, and yes — he drank a bottle of vodka between rounds. But when Punch-Out!! was brought to the NES, Nintendo of America made …

Origins and Opening Night The history of Galloping Ghost Arcade begins the way so many great gaming stories begin, with one person’s obsession carried further than anyone else thought possible. In the mid nineteen nineties, Doc Mack was not yet the steward of the largest arcade in the United States, he was just a young Chicago native trying to make a new fighting game. That project, Dark Presence, a digitized …

This tutorial is for the glorious emulator frontend called Pegasus FE, and my goal is to help other android users, more importantly Nvidia Shield users, bask in all its glory. I had to repost this, because the OG post was lost. This is for those who requested it. I had to scrape data from the wayback machine, so it may have lost some formatting. I usually get my info for …

Nintendo tracked down an alleged Switch pirate by following a trail of posts and repair orders, and now it’s asking a court to award $4.5 million in damages. According to court filings, Nintendo of America accuses James “Archbox” Williams of running multiple piracy storefronts, moderating forums that promoted pirated games, and offering paid access to stolen libraries. Investigators tied the Archbox name to email addresses linked to Nintendo repair orders …

Super Mario Kart Horizons is one of the most ambitious ROM hacks in recent years, reimagining the classic SNES racer with twenty brand new tracks, four custom battle maps, an original soundtrack, and presentation elements like a custom manual and box art. The project, available at RomHacking.net and RomHackPlaza, represents the culmination of over a decade of tinkering, iteration, and dedication from its creator, Gridattack. Horizons has also been the …

A casual Mortal Kombat XL player, Legi0n, just pulled off a story that feels straight out of the arcade era: she showed up to a local and won the whole thing while holding her five-day-old newborn. Two posts on X captured the moment and lit up the FGC timeline: 😭😭 Babality! Congratulations to @_Legi0n_ for winning Mortal Kombat XL! 🥈 @KingKaiFL (right)🥉 @Argenrost (left)#Juicymonthly #DHAtlanta #MK pic.twitter.com/22VrWQeT9H — Juicy Game …