Retro Replay Retro Gaming History, Reviews & Emulation

A recent study suggests that children and adolescents play games for various reasons other than just to Gimme GameZ! have fun.  In their interviews,  kids and teenagers reported that they played video games to de-stress, fulfill emotional needs, for the challenge, and used violent games to deal and let go of anger.  Yes you heard that right,  violent video games are being used to help them avoid displaying aggression in their real… Read more

Where to start with Lucienne’s Quest. I was one of the rare kids who had a 3DO, even rarer still I owned this title. I had no idea it was as rare as it was, or I would have never sold it in some red-neck, tractor pull auction with all my other 3DO games and system for a few bucks. I was always a fan of RPG games dating back to Dragon… Read more

Zelda 2 Links Adventure Review: Why This NES Classic Deserves More Love Zelda 2 Links Adventure is one of the most unique and daring titles to ever appear on the NES. I have to say, I love this game. For many players, Zelda 2 Links Adventure is remembered as the black sheep of the Zelda franchise, standing apart from the original and its successors in nearly every way. Yet it is exactly… Read more

You are Kuros, the knight warrior, hero of the Books of Excalibur. Your journey begins deep within the woods of Elrond, where even the wind obeys the Supreme Wizard, Malkil. A wizard so great, Merlin calls him teacher. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk2U4a6GPqE&t=202s (Playthrough video above) Screenshots and related images Audio files Wizards and Warriors Boss Caves Forest Inside Castle Inside the Tree Inside the Tree (2) Inside the Tree (Minibosses Remix) Kuros’ Potion Kuros’ Potion… Read more

A guy by the name of Mario over at ModRetro forums put together a nice little Atari 2600 hand held gaming console. Here are the Specs and what Mario has to say: Specifications: 3.5" Screen Uses an Atari Flashback 2 Hopefully will have room for the cartridge slot 2 GBASP batteries for a total of 3.7v, 1200mAh Uses a GBC 5v step-up to power the screen and FB2 FITS IN A POCKET!… Read more

Pretty cool idea. A group of guys play through 25 years of Mario games in the name of sick children, for charity! QUOTE: "Mario Marathon is an annual fan run fundraiser for Child's Play Charity. Child's Play provides toys, games and books to patients of children's hospitals worldwide. The multi day internet event, broadcast live online, attracts an audience from around the world to watch as the team plays through twenty five… Read more

This video is hilarious. She wants to disable the Pac-Man game from her home page! How does she get rid of it? Arg! It wont go away until tomorrow! Read more

A new retro gaming mag is in the works! Raiders of the Lost Arcades - Battle Plan! Vol. 5 Unfortunately, the arcade is becoming extinct as a gaming platform, so we take a trek back through time - using MAME's random generator - to relive some of the arcades greatest, worst, and indifferent games. Retro Respect - Jill of the Jungle We've all missed a minor classic during our time. we resurrect… 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

Interview by David, Retro-Replay. An adventure game can begin with a painted cityscape, a conversation, or a mystery the player cannot leave alone. Steve Ince has helped shape all three. Across his career, he moved from creating artwork to organising production and then writing and designing the stories players would uncover for themselves. Ince spent eleven years at Revolution Software, moving from artist to producer to writer and designer. His work on… Read more

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 4, Arkadia… 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

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

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

The Super Mario World hacking community has produced everything from sprawling cinematic adventures to bite sized experimental projects. Smoked Fish and Cabbage, created by LetsTalkGames and the coder known as xMANGRAVYx, stands out as a compact yet polished introduction to the Kaizo style. Released in July 2023, the hack is short by design with seven carefully crafted levels, but within that small footprint it manages to deliver challenge, variety, and accessibility in… 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

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

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

Mario’s first job had nothing to do with pipes. When he appeared in Donkey Kong in 1981, he was a carpenter. The game took place on a construction site, so Shigeru Miyamoto gave its little hero a job that fitted the surroundings. The plumber everyone knows came later. There’s a nice reminder in an old Donkey Kong sticker card: underneath Mario, it says “The Brave Carpenter.” He’s got the cap, moustache and… Read more

Some people do their best thinking in the bath. While working on the original Donkey Kong in the early 1980s, Shigeru Miyamoto had a particularly convenient one: Nintendo’s company bath. Its hot water came from the boiler used by the playing-card factory. That’s quite a long way from an arcade cabinet, but apparently a good place to get your thoughts in order. He was staying in Nintendo’s company housing and bathing at… Read more