Retro Blog 🕰️

Switch 2 emulation is already delivering playable commercial games and encouraging speeds. Mario Kart World appears in 60-fps captures, players report smooth sessions in Pokémon Pokopia, and Lichii is making rapid progress with the new Ocarina of Time. Compatibility still varies by build and hardware, but this is well beyond a collection of boot screens. Research snapshot: November 13, 2026. We checked the repositories, release assets, developer documentation, and public reports linked… Read more

In 2010, while PS3 owners were lining up corners in Gran Turismo 5, the U.S. Air Force had a rather different job for Sony's console. Its researchers had assembled a roomful of PlayStations into a supercomputer called the Condor Cluster. The Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate in Rome, New York, announced a December 1 ribbon cutting for a system built around 1,760 PS3 processors. Those black boxes had left the entertainment… Read more

Jovi Vongnaraj was sitting through another orchestra rehearsal when he began wishing the music on his stand came from Super Mario Galaxy or The Legend of Zelda. He had played the Mozart piece before. The new repertoire wasn’t doing much for him, either. That night, he started asking musician friends about playing something different. They asked their friends, and the St. Louis Video Game Music Orchestra began taking shape. As founder and… Read more

A knight is trying to shake off the soldiers behind him. Yuna is calling for her mother, and the queen is trying to keep her calm. That flying chase is one of the first scenes you can now follow in English in Albert Odyssey 2: Jashin no Taidou (Sign of the Devil). Sunsoft released this tactical RPG for the Super Famicom in Japan on December 22, 1994. Originally titled アルバートオデッセイ2 邪神の胎動, it… Read more

Introduction: A Console That Became a Legend The Panasonic 3DO M2 is one of the strangest legends in retro gaming history. Unlike consoles that failed after release, the M2 never even made it to the shelves. It existed in trade shows, development kits, leaked demo discs, and the memories of industry insiders who claimed it could outclass both the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. For many gamers who grew up in the nineties,… Read more

Put a Sega CD disc in the drive and let that boot screen run for a moment. The logo spins, the music starts, and a Genesis that used to swallow cartridges suddenly feels like a different machine. Then the loading begins. The future had arrived, and it occasionally wanted you to sit quietly while it found the next bit of data. That's a more enjoyable way into these machines than another chart… Read more

Every year, around Thanksgiving, I get the same itch. I want to play Skyrim again. Something about the bare trees, chilly weather, and approaching winter makes the world outside feel a little more like Tamriel’s northern province. And suddenly, I’m ready to start another adventure. On 11 November 2011, Bethesda Game Studios released The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. I’d already spent countless hours exploring Morrowind… Read more

In the early 1990s, while American players were enjoying their Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis consoles, Fujitsu was offering Japanese players another fascinating way to spend an afternoon. The FM Towns Marty arrived in 1993 with a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive, and access to part of an impressive computer-game library. It never received an official American release. For most of us on this side of the Pacific, it remained one of… Read more

My father probably will never read this. He has never had much use for the internet. That is all right. I have been meaning to thank him anyway. Our NES arrived at Christmas in 1987. I remember it as the beginning of a very good run for my imagination and, eventually, a rather demanding part-time job for my father. Somewhere along the way, that gray box brought a gold cartridge into our… Read more

A passenger ship crashes by an apartment building, and 50 aliens scatter. You arrive with a camera, but the passengers are invisible. In UFO: A Day in the Life, you choose a room and an hour, watch the residents go about their day, and take a picture when something seems off. Back aboard the UFO, Mother examines the photo to see who you caught. Love-de-Lic built the search around a full day… Read more

Shingo Yabuki has been practicing Kyo’s moves. When he finally asks Kyo to take him on as a pupil, you can tell him to get lost. Shingo, naturally, refuses to go anywhere. That exchange tells you more about The King of Fighters: Kyo than a screenshot of its life bars ever could. SNK released this PlayStation spin-off in Japan in 1998, and it never received an official U.S. release. You play as… Read more

I’m about to commit what some Fallout fans would consider a capital offense. Fallout 4 is my favorite Fallout game. Go ahead, New Vegas fanboys. Tell me I’m wrong. I’ve heard the arguments, and I probably agree with most of them. The dialogue system is pointless, the leveling is uninspired, and the voiced protagonist was a terrible idea. And yet, eleven years later, I still can’t stay away from the Commonwealth. On… Read more

The train pulls into a mountain village, and Grandpa is supposed to be waiting outside. First you have to find your ticket. Then you have to find Grandpa. By the time you meet a girl in a purple yukata near the river, your first summer trip on your own has already gone a little sideways. Famicom Bunko: Hajimari no Mori is a storybook adventure built around looking, talking, and deciding where to… Read more

Asako and Mayuko come to carry some records. There’s a stone figure in the room, and Mayuko thinks it looks almost alive. She’s right. Soon Ushio has his spear pointed at the Stone Eater, and Tora is complaining that the statue is trying to eat someone he called dibs on. That argument is one of the scenes you can now follow in English in Ushio to Tora, Yutaka’s 1993 Super Famicom action… Read more

Pinball Deluxe kept crashing in SameBoy. Lior Halphon checked the timing, simplified the game’s behavior, and tried the same experiments on a real Game Boy. The handheld carried on playing. The emulator did not. The answer, as Lior recounts it, was an interrupt behavior documented by fellow researcher Gekkio. With the game’s timing already so tight, one extra cycle could be enough to bring it down. The real hardware in that story… Read more

Link can already run through Kokiri Forest on a PC in the new Ocarina of Time. In one early test, the forest appears, the grass casts shadows, and the path looks inviting enough. Turn toward a different part of the woods and the scene washes out almost to white. Inside the Great Deku Tree, the same tester records a much cleaner view. That's what the first week of Switch 2 emulation looks… Read more

November 2 to 9, 2026. A Super Scope feels right only when the aim follows your hand. This week, Snes9x GX added USB mouse aiming on Wii and Wii U, while its sister NES and Game Boy Advance emulators rebuilt the menus where players handle controllers and saves. SameBoy 1.0.5 makes another pass at the Game Boy Printer, infrared behavior, and the sound quirks of early Game Boy hardware. Azahar reached its… Read more

The sailors on the Titanic already think something’s off about your group. They have a point. In Gainax’s 1998 PlayStation adventure Silent Möbius: Case: Titanic, Katsumi and the A.M.P. investigate the ship deck by deck. The grand old liner looks familiar until you see the red moon hanging over it. It’s an adventure game about talking to people and poking around the ship. You move from room to room through menus, and… Read more

Snow covers the mountains, but down in the valley it’s warm enough for spring. The villagers say a golden statue keeps the cold away. There’s a dragon nearby, and it has plans for the statue. That’s one of ten adventures Sega created for the 1990 Mega Drive version of Sorcerian, Falcom’s side-scrolling action RPG. You start in Pentawa, where you can build a party of up to four and visit the shops… Read more

Most shooters taught me to jump out of trouble. Gears of War took away my jump button, handed me a rifle with a chainsaw attached, and told me to stay behind cover. And I loved it! On 07 November 2006, Epic Games and Microsoft began releasing Gears of War for the Xbox 360, introducing a brutal third-person shooter that would become one of the console’s defining franchises. I didn’t pick it up… Read more

Beat Larry at the end of Outrageous and Shade Man steps in for the next fight. Get through him and Noise Crush is yours. Mega Man in Super Mario World is available as a public beta, created by dmb062082 of Retro-Replay.com. Watch the trailer, grab the patch, and let me know how it plays. Download the beta and open the browser patcher · Report bugs in the tester thread You will recognize… Read more

If there’s one thing that’s always been true about Nintendo, it’s that the company is incredibly family-friendly. Nintendo routinely produces games for children and their parents, while delivering excellent gaming entertainment along the way. It’s what’s made Nintendo a household name. While it has competed with other big players, including Sega, Atari, Microsoft, and Sony, Nintendo has always carved out a nice niche for itself in the gaming industry. One thing that… Read more

It's a Friday night in 1995, and you've just popped in a brand-new game by Square. It opens with a dramatic soundtrack as an airship flashes across the screen while a red-haired swordwielder defends a castle. The scene shifts, and suddenly three party members fight in space. Akira Toriyama's iconic art style fills your TV screen as your thoughts race. "Who is this giant frog?" "Why is there a volcano on the… Read more

There was a time when you didn’t need a battle pass, a seasonal event, or a dozen daily challenges to enjoy an online shooter. You just needed a controller, a few friends, and a good lobby. And for me, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare represented the absolute peak of that experience on Xbox 360. On 5 November 2007, Infinity Ward released Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, taking the franchise out… Read more

I was trying to upload a homebrew game to ROMhacking.net. As best I remember, I submitted it as a ROM hack by mistake. My account was banned, and more than a decade of comments, reviews, and other contributions I'd made disappeared from view. I spoke with two or three admins and pleaded to come back. Picture me, a 43-year-old man, begging to get back into a ROM hacking website. Anyone who knows… Read more