Retro Replay Retro Gaming History, Reviews & Emulation

What if Super Mario Kart got the sequel we always dreamed of on the SNES? Horizons delivers 20 new tracks, new music, and pure nostalgia. From grassy plains to abandoned mines, Super Mario Kart – Horizons takes the SNES classic to new places. It feels like Mario Kart 2.0… and you can play it today! Super Mario Kart – Horizons: The Romhack That Feels Like a True Sequel. Watch the video or… Read more

1987–1989: Birth of a Horror Icon If you grew up in the late 80s, you know that arcades were already loud, neon-drenched temples of temptation. Yet every once in a while, a cabinet would appear that felt different-- darker, more dangerous, the sort of thing you’d whisper about with your friends at school. For many of us, that game was Splatterhouse. Developed by Namco on its System One board, Splatterhouse didn’t just… Read more

On September 2, 2025, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company were officially granted U.S. Patent No. 12,403,397 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. What brilliant piece of groundbreaking technology does this cover? A method of summoning a character to fight on behalf of the player. In other words, Nintendo has now patented pressing a button and calling in backup. If you play games, this mechanic should sound familiar. It is Pokémon’s bread… Read more

September 9, 1999, was a date burned into gaming history, but for me it was not about hype or midnight lines. I was seventeen years old, wandering through a Sears on what felt like a normal afternoon. I had forgotten the Dreamcast launch was even happening. And yet, there it was, sitting on the shelf, Sega’s brand-new console ready to be taken home. There were no crowds, no frantic parents clawing over… Read more

When people talk about the greatest ROM hacks ever made, Super Mario Bros. 3Mix almost always comes up. Created by Southbird, this hack was more than just a simple remix of Nintendo’s NES classic... it became a sprawling tribute to Mario’s entire history. 3Mix included new mechanics like gravity flips, Yoshi integration, secret star coins, alternate exits, and even bosses and themes inspired by later entries such as Super Mario World and… Read more

When it comes to fusing heavy metal with the 8-bit sounds of classic gaming, few names resonate louder than VomitroN. The project is the brainchild a Massachusetts-based musician, producer, and lifelong gamer whose work has turned the nostalgic bleeps of the Nintendo Entertainment System into sprawling metal epics. What started as an experiment in the late nineties while playing Contra in a college dorm became a full-blown passion project, and by the… Read more

Nintendo’s Latest Legal Victory Against Modding Nintendo has once again proven that it will aggressively defend its intellectual property from anyone who attempts to undermine it. A federal judge in Washington recently ordered Ryan Michael Daley to pay the company $2 million in damages after he was found guilty of selling modded Nintendo Switch consoles, flash cartridges, and modchips through his site Modded Hardware. The ruling also permanently bans him from engaging… Read more

The Super Mario World hacking scene is filled with passion projects, but few creators have managed to balance accessibility, creativity, and ambition quite like xMANGRAVYx, the driving force behind LetsTalkGames. I first came across his work through Castlemania II, a gothic and atmospheric sequel that brought Castlevania inspired storytelling into the Mario universe. That game opened my eyes to how far a ROM hack could push the SMW engine. The final boss… Read more

The Moon theme from DuckTales already sounds as though it has somewhere wonderful to take you. David Ortiz heard a trumpet carrying that melody, violins chasing the runs, and guitars and bass filling out the rhythm underneath. In 2015, he called in some friends to read the arrangement. That first experiment became Mariachi Entertainment System. The San Antonio ensemble brings familiar game music to a full mariachi lineup: trumpets, violins, flute, guitars… Read more

Interview by David, Retro Replay A boss theme can follow you long after the battle is over. For Console: The VGM Band, those melodies became a reason to pick up instruments, find other musicians, and discover what happens when music written for a game has an audience standing in front of it. A familiar tune is the starting point; the groove, the arrangement, and the energy of a live band are where… Read more

Interview by David, Retro-Replay. Before there was Tiberium, before Kane stepped in front of a camera, and before players began building bases on Arrakis, there were two friends in Las Vegas finding out what they could make together. Louis Castle was working at a computer store when he met Brett Sperry. An invitation to use a printer led to a conversation about computer art, then to a creative partnership. In 1985, that… Read more

That stack of PS2 cases beside the television has a new reason to come off the shelf. Swordpdf’s PS5SX2, a homebrew port of PCSX2, now offers a way to insert a supported PS2 DVD into a jailbroken PlayStation 5, copy the game to storage and launch it through the emulator. The disc supplies the game data, while the PS5 runs the resulting copy. This is a community project for modified consoles, not… Read more

October 5–12, 2026. The week’s clearest emulator releases were a Dolphin hotfix, a substantial SameBoy update, and a new FCEUX version. Igir also expanded the way collections can be named and sorted. Across the four monitored categories, we found 166 notices; most of the console entries were successive development snapshots. The full dated log groups them below.Console and handheld releasesDolphin 2609a fixes the first 2609 releaseDolphin labels 2609a a hotfix for its… Read more

September 28–October 5, 2026. This week brought a substantial shadPS4 release, a fresh DOSBox-X build, and a coordinated set of Gear emulator updates. There are 162 notices, many of them successive development snapshots of the same project. The dated log below groups every notice; the analysis here covers changes confirmed by project releases or source repositories. The releases that matter shadPS4 0.19.0 moves PS4 compatibility forward shadPS4 0.19.0 is a tagged release,… Read more

Week of September 21–28, 2026. This is Retro Replay’s first weekly emulator briefing: one place to follow meaningful releases, nightly builds, arcade work, classic PC changes, and library tools. We reviewed this week’s release notices, then checked the highlighted changes against project release notes and source repositories. A dated build in the log below is a development snapshot, not necessarily a stable release. The week at a glance The four feeds carried… Read more

Eden 0.2.1 is now available as a stability-focused hotfix for the open-source Nintendo Switch emulator. Rather than introducing a huge new collection of features, this release focuses on problems discovered after Eden 0.2.0, including large-library crashes, issues affecting 12th-generation Intel CPUs, Windows updater problems, a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe controller-related freeze, and several smaller stability bugs. If you are looking for general information about Eden rather than this specific release, visit our… Read more

ES-DE 3.4.1 is a substantial update to the popular multi-platform emulation frontend, expanding Android system support, adding experimental Linux AArch64 support, improving multi-user compatibility and adding a long list of new emulator configurations across Android, Linux, macOS and Windows. Android users searching for the ES-DE 3.4.1 APK or EmulationStation APK 3.4.1 should note that ES-DE's Android release is distributed through the project's official Android channels rather than Google Play. If you are… Read more

Sonic is a little blue streak in a world of dead forests, burning streets and monsters that look delighted to see him. The momentum is familiar. The enormous scythe coming his way is considerably less familiar. Hellfire Saga takes the feel of Sonic 3 & Knuckles and throws it into a gothic action game. Castlevania and Ghosts ’n Goblins are obvious neighbours, but this is more than Green Hill with red grass.… Read more

Remember the days of yore, when Double Fine made great games instead of blowing budgets on their latest vanity projects? When Jack Black was more interested in entertaining us than lecturing us? These days, Black and Double Fine's Tim Schafer look like twin gray-bearded hobos arguing over which one smells worse. But the 2000s were simpler times. Back when somebody could pitch a video game that looked like an Iron Maiden album… Read more

When people remember the original PlayStation, they usually remember polygons. Tekken. Ridge Racer. Resident Evil. Tomb Raider. The entire industry was racing toward 3D, and suddenly traditional 2D games were starting to look like something from the past. And then there was Rayman. Released in 1995, the original Rayman completely ignored the rush toward polygons and instead delivered one of the most beautiful hand-drawn platformers of the entire generation. Bright colors. Huge… Read more

Some games take a while to explain. Crazy Taxi is not one of them. You drive a taxi. You pick up passengers. You drive as fast and as recklessly as humanly possible. And somehow, more than twenty-five years later, it's still ridiculously fun. Originally released in arcades before making its way to the Sega Dreamcast, Crazy Taxi is one of those games that perfectly represents Sega during that era. Fast. Loud. Colorful.… Read more

During the 16-bit era, Disney games gave Sega owners several memorable platformers. World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck belongs beside Castle of Illusion, QuackShot, and Aladdin as an example of a licensed game with care behind it. Developed and published by Sega, it builds an adventure around a magic show gone wrong: Mickey and Donald discover a mysterious box, climb inside, and find themselves trapped in a fantastical world.… Read more

The Sega CD is often remembered for full-motion video, but Shining Force CD shows how much stronger its traditional games could be. This tactical RPG rebuilds two Game Gear adventures and adds content made for the CD release. Sega’s official game overview identifies it as a remake of two handheld installments. The result is a generous, battle-focused Shining Force package. Its defining change is the removal of most traditional exploration—a choice that… Read more

Nintendo has announced the boldest, most innovative move in gaming history: charging you up to two hundred dollars for the privilege of replaying a pair of Wii games you already own. Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 are officially coming to the Switch 2, and the bundle clocks in at a cool $150, edging toward $200 once you factor in collector’s editions, amiibo, and whatever random plastic accessory they force… Read more

An Innocent Gesture with a Dark Twist For more than two decades, fans of Super Mario World believed Mario was simply pointing forward when Yoshi stuck out his tongue. It looked playful and harmless. Mario gave the signal, Yoshi obeyed, and the duo worked together as partners. That illusion shattered in 2017, when Nintendo veteran Shigefumi Hino, the designer who created Yoshi, revealed that the original concept was very different. According to… Read more

Every Controller I Have Smashed In Rage, Ranked By The Quality Of The Meltdown There are difficult games, and then there are the ones that melt your brain until the only solution is to weaponize the nearest controller. We tell ourselves it’s just a game, but anyone who has stared down Alma in Ninja Gaiden Black, crawled across spikes in Celeste, or been betrayed by the blue shell in Mario Kart Wii… Read more

A Consistent Cutoff Leonardo DiCaprio has built a reputation for consistency in his personal life, and it appears that this rule now extends to his gaming habits. According to sources close to the Hollywood actor, he has officially stopped playing Final Fantasy IX after the game reached its 25th anniversary. Released in 2000 for the original PlayStation, Final Fantasy IX is widely regarded as one of the greatest entries in Square Enix’s… Read more

A Garage Sale Becomes a Legal Battlefield What began as a quiet Saturday morning in Saratoga, New York quickly escalated into what some neighbors now refer to as “the day Nintendo declared war on suburbia.” Local resident Robby Thompson held a simple garage sale in his driveway, offering old household items, clothing, and a box of retro video games. One of those games happened to be a sealed copy of Super Mario… Read more

A Feature Masquerading as a Flaw Since its release in 2017, the Nintendo Switch has been celebrated as one of the most successful consoles of all time. It blended handheld convenience with home-console performance, revitalized franchises like Zelda and Mario, and sold over 140 million units. But along with this success came something else: the infamous Joy-Con drift. What began as a flood of user complaints, characters walking off cliffs without input,… Read more

Remember the days of yore, when Double Fine made great games instead of blowing budgets on their latest vanity projects? When Jack Black was more interested in entertaining us than lecturing us? These days, Black and Double Fine's Tim Schafer look like twin gray-bearded hobos arguing over which one smells worse. But the 2000s were simpler times. Back when somebody could pitch a video game that looked like an Iron Maiden album… Read more

Interview by David, Retro Replay A boss theme can follow you long after the battle is over. For Console: The VGM Band, those melodies became a reason to pick up instruments, find other musicians, and discover what happens when music written for a game has an audience standing in front of it. A familiar tune is the starting point; the groove, the arrangement, and the energy of a live band are where… Read more

You hear Daytona USA before you see it. Someone is singing the name at full volume. Around the corner, a row of red racing seats is waiting, and your friend is already claiming the one beside you. For years, Sega made the arcade trip worthwhile. You could have a good console at home and still want a go on that enormous motorcycle, the moving flight simulator or the racer linked to seven… Read more

The houses are getting nicer. The treasury is running out. Somebody wants pottery, somebody else wants a temple, and the person carrying the food has taken the wrong turning again. If you played an Impressions city builder, you probably recognise the situation. You arrived with a sensible plan for a Roman settlement or an Egyptian town. A few hours later, you were rearranging roads so a woman with a basket would walk… Read more