NES Punch Out: Mike Tyson ā The Game That Defined an Era The Unstoppable Game In 1987, Nintendo released Punch Out! NES Punch Out, a game that didnāt just raise the bar for boxing titles, it completely redefined what a sports game could be. Players took control of Little Mac, a scrappy 17-year-old from the Bronx, fighting his way up through a roster of colorful and often bizarre opponents. Every character had⦠Read more
Retro Fresh! š¾
Iām Giving Away My Entire Video Game Collection ā Starting With This PS1 Gem
š® Week 1 Giveaway ā Tony Hawkās Pro Skater 2 (PS1) Iām giving away just about ALL of my duplicate gamesEvery last one. No catch, no strings attached. Iām moving to an area where I simply cannot house them, and I have a lot, easily hundreds upon hundreds if I had to guess. Theyāre all going to new homes, one at a time, until theyāre gone. I can try to sell them,⦠Read more
NES Retro Games Top 10 List of Timeless Classics
There is something truly magical about NES retro games. For many of us, the Nintendo Entertainment System was more than just a piece of hardware. It was a portal into new worlds, an after-school escape, and the center of countless family gatherings and late-night sleepovers. NES retro games were the spark that fueled a lifelong passion for gaming. That gray box beneath the television was a gateway to adventures filled with danger,⦠Read more
Top 5 Retro Video Game Emulators for Every Classic Gaming Fan
The Top 5 Retro Video Game Emulators for Every Classic Gaming Fan If you are ready to relive your childhood favorites and unlock the full world of classic gaming, these are the best retro video game emulators you need to try. Here is our countdown from five to oneāwith each emulator, you will find download links, the systems they cover, and reasons they stand out in the retro gaming scene. I have⦠Read more
Punching Through History: The Rise in Value of Mike Tysonās Punch-Out!!
In the world of retro gaming, few titles carry the cultural weight of Mike Tysonās Punch-Out!! Released in 1987 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the game exploded in popularity thanks to the inclusion of boxing legend Mike Tyson. As the unbeatable final boss, Tyson brought credibility and star power that few games could match. What began as a $40 cartridge eventually became one of the most iconic and valuable collectibles in⦠Read more
Vampire Hunter Alert: The OG Castlevania Ported to SNES with Pulse-Pounding Rumble Features!
The dark halls of Draculaās castle have opened once again but this time on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Thanks to the hard work of developer Rumbleminze the original Castlevania has been fully ported to SNES hardware offering a native 16 bit experience that combines classic gameplay with modern enhancements. https://bsky.app/profile/rumbleminze.bsky.social/post/3lufxzd6dbs2a First released as AkumajÅ Dracula for the Famicom Disk System in September 1986 and later brought to the NES in 1987⦠Read more
Lunar Remastered Collection Gets a New Story Trailer
GungHo has released a new story trailer for the upcoming Lunar Remastered Collection ahead of its April 18th launch. This collection brings together two beloved classic RPGs - Lunar Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2 Eternal Blue Complete - to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. The newly released trailer showcases the narratives of both games, giving fans and newcomers alike a glimpse of the adventures that⦠Read more
Kishin DÅji Zenki FX: Vajra Fight [PCFX] Review & Longplay [1995]
Kishin Douji Zenki FX: A Lost PCFX Gem From Japan's Gaming Golden Age Introduction In the mid-1990s, when the console wars between Sega, Sony, and Nintendo dominated the headlines, NECās PC-FX quietly entered the market with an unconventional approach and a library of only a few dozen titles. While it failed to compete commercially, it left behind several forgotten treasures that have since become highly sought after by collectors. Among these rare⦠Read more
Interviews š¤
Mariachi Entertainment System Interview: David Ortiz on Giving Game Music a Mariachi Voice
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
Chris Sawyer Interview: Transport Tycoon, RollerCoaster Tycoon, and the Joy of Simulation
Interview by David, Retro Replay. A little train following a track was enough to suggest a whole game. For Chris Sawyer, the pleasure of watching a system work came before the business figures surrounding it: the acceleration of a locomotive, the movement of a vehicle through an isometric landscape, or a park guest deciding which ride to try next. Those small interactions grew into worlds that players could build, manage, and happily⦠Read more
Console: The VGM Band Interview ā Bringing Game Music to the Stage
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
Chris Beatrice Interview: Impressions Games, Caesar, and the Art of Building Living Cities
Interview by David, Retro Replay. A wheat field had to move inside a tiny tile. A Roman city had to feel alive without burying the player in detail. An aqueduct had to look convincing while being assembled from just a handful of graphics. For Chris Beatrice, the art of those early strategy games was inseparable from finding practical solutions that made a world readable, appealing, and enjoyable to inhabit. Beatrice joined Impressions⦠Read more
Louis Castle Interview: Building Westwood, Command & Conquer, and Blade Runner
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
Philip Oliver Interview: Dizzy, the Oliver Twins, and a New Chapter in Adventure
Interview by David, Retro Replay Dizzy began with a problem small enough to fit inside a sprite: how do you give a game character a face that can actually express something? Philip Oliver's answer became one of the most recognisable figures of the British home-computer era. With his twin brother Andrew, he built a world of enchanted forests, peculiar objects, needy neighbours, and puzzles that could turn a humble bean into a⦠Read more
Emulator News š°
PS5SX2 Lets Jailbroken PS5 Consoles Dump and Play PS2 DVDs
That stack of PS2 cases beside the television has a new reason to come off the shelf. Swordpdfās 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
The Week in Emulation: October 5ā12, 2026
October 5ā12, 2026. The weekās 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
The Week in Emulation: September 28āOctober 5, 2026
September 28āOctober 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
The Week in Emulation: September 21ā28, 2026
Week of September 21ā28, 2026. This is Retro Replayās first weekly emulator briefing: one place to follow meaningful releases, nightly builds, arcade work, classic PC changes, and library tools. We reviewed this weekās 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 Version 0.2.1
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 Version 3.4.1
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
Editorial Reviews š
Hellfire Saga Review: Sonic Goes to Hell on Sega Genesis
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 ān Goblins are obvious neighbours, but this is more than Green Hill with red grass.⦠Read more
Brütal Legend (2009): When Double Fine Was Metal as Hell
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
Rayman Review: Beautiful, Charming and Brutally Hard on PlayStation
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
Crazy Taxi Review: Pure Arcade Chaos on Sega Dreamcast
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
World of Illusion Review: Disney Magic on the Sega Genesis
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
Shining Force CD Review: An Essential Sega CD Tactical RPG
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. Segaās 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 explorationāa choice that⦠Read more
Satire & Humor š¤”
Nintendo Wants You to Spend $150 on Mario Galaxy Again, and You Absolutely Will
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 collectorās editions, amiibo, and whatever random plastic accessory they force⦠Read more
Childhood Ruined: Mario Was Always Punching Yoshi in the Head
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
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 itās 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
Leonardo DiCaprio Refuses to Play Final Fantasy IX After It Turns 25
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 Enixās⦠Read more
Nintendo Threatens Legal Action Over $20 Garage Sale Copy of Super Mario Bros. 3
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 āthe day Nintendo declared war on suburbia.ā 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
Joy-Con Drift Marketed as āImmersive Gameplay Featureā
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
Recent Posts
Brütal Legend (2009): When Double Fine Was Metal as Hell
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
Console: The VGM Band Interview ā Bringing Game Music to the Stage
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
The Complete History of Segaās Arcade Empire: Yu Suzuki, OutRun and the 3D Revolution
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 Complete History of Impressions Games: Caesar, Pharaoh and Lords of the Realm
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
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