Retro Blog 🕰️

There are games that stay with us because they were groundbreaking, revolutionary, and unforgettable in the history of the medium. But there are also games that stay with us for a much simpler reason: because of who we played them with. For me, two games stand above all the rest in terms of the bond I shared with my dad. The first was The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link,… Read more

Peach is Christian too? The Mario franchise has always been a cultural touchstone, carefully managed by Nintendo to avoid controversy. For decades, the Mushroom Kingdom has relied on fantasy imagery like mushrooms, stars, and fire flowers rather than religious symbols. Yet in 1987, one of the strangest and rarest pieces of Mario merchandise slipped through: a sticker called Prayer Power, showing Princess Peach clutching a Christian cross to repel a Hammer Bro.… Read more

Link Was Christian, and You Cannot Pretend Otherwise Let’s stop dancing around it. Link was Christian. That is not up for debate. And we are going to cover it all. The original Legend of Zelda on the NES flat-out called one of its items the Bible in Japan. The sprite shows a little book with a cross on the cover. The English manual swapped the name out for “Book of Magic,” but… Read more

Boo is one of Mario’s most beloved enemies, the little ghost that covers its face when you look at it but balloons into something terrifying when you turn your back. Generations of players have laughed and cursed at its strange behavior, but few casual fans know the story of where it came from. Boo wasn’t just pulled out of a sketchbook. It was inspired directly by a real woman: Takashi Tezuka’s wife.… 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 Day Emulation Changed Forever On January 28, 1999, the UltraHLE emulator launched and stunned gamers by running The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time only months after its release, sending shockwaves through the entire industry. Before this, most players assumed that emulation could only cover older consoles like the NES or SNES. Suddenly, the hottest game of the year was running on an everyday PC, and the world of emulation would… Read more

There are guitarists who cover video game music and then there is FamilyJules. For more than fifteen years Jules Conroy has taken the melodies that defined childhoods and pushed them through soaring leads, relentless rhythms, and full scale metal productions that feel as big as any arena show. His journey started in western Massachusetts where he first picked up a guitar after years of dabbling in piano and drums. What began as… Read more

Introduction In the early 1990s a red book sized disc promised to change everything about home gaming. The Sega CD arrived with glossy full motion video, big stereo sound, and enough storage to make cartridges look quaint. It was marketed as the bridge between arcade energy and living room cinema. For a moment it worked. You could spin compact discs in your console, watch grainy actors run through a haunted house, and… Read more

Nintendo’s Weirdest Accessory In 1998 Nintendo released the Game Boy Camera, a chunky little add-on that let players snap grainy black-and-white selfies, edit them with goofy stickers, and even print them using the Game Boy Printer. Marketed as a toy rather than a serious camera, it quickly became a cult favorite for its quirky charm. Kids loved making strange portraits, while collectors today celebrate it as one of Nintendo’s boldest experiments with… Read more

When Nintendo Played Matchmaker Before it revolutionized video games, Nintendo dabbled in toys and novelties. One of the most infamous was the Love Tester, released in 1969. Designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the creator of later classics like the Game Boy, the Love Tester claimed to measure the romantic compatibility of two people through simple electronics. Each person would hold a sensor, clasp hands, and the device would give a score from one… Read more

Atari Crosses the Line In the early 1980s the video game market was booming and the Atari 2600 sat in living rooms everywhere. In 1982 a small publisher called Mystique released Custer’s Revenge for the Atari 2600, pitching it as an adults only title. The premise was crude and simple, and it immediately drew attention for all the wrong reasons. Players guided a caricatured General Custer across a screen while dodging arrows… Read more

The ROM hacking community has produced countless creative projects, but few figures are as consistent and ambitious as pacnsacdave of Pacnsac Games. His library of NES hacks and homebrews stretches across genres, often transforming familiar titles into something entirely new. Dave has done A LOT! I first encountered his work through Mr. Gimmick 2, a fan-made sequel to Sunsoft’s cult platformer. You can read my full review of the game here, where… 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

A World Before Mods Were Mainstream Today modding feels inseparable from gaming. Entire communities thrive on places like Nexus Mods, and Steam Workshop makes adding fan content as simple as clicking a button. Bethesda titles like Skyrim or Fallout 4 are almost defined more by their mods than their base games. But long before modding became normalized and developer-supported, fans were already hacking away at their favorite titles. And they were doing… Read more

A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Forgotten Era of 4-Player NES Gaming Multiplayer on the NES Was Limited When the Nintendo Entertainment System hit North America in 1985, multiplayer usually meant two players taking turns. Titles like Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda were primarily solo adventures, while Contra and Double Dragon II gave you that coveted two-player co-op. Four people on one NES? That was practically science fiction… Read more

A Tribute to Mario’s Origins with a Twist Super Mario Bros. For Lost Players is a standout ROM hack of Super Mario World that reimagines the platforming roots of Nintendo’s mascot while injecting fresh ideas, unexpected mechanics, and nostalgic homages. Developed by Adam, Truxton, beasteye89, lolyoshi, and rextep, the project debuted in 2021 as part of the SMW Central Hackjam contest. What started as a so-called “terrible experiment,” according to its creator,… Read more

The ROM hacking community has a new standout release to celebrate with Celeste Mario’s Zap & Dash DELUXE!, an ambitious NES hack that fuses the familiar platforming of Super Mario Bros. with the style and challenge of Celeste. Created by the legendary developer w7n, this project is more than a simple modification. It expands the original Celeste Mario hack with eleven brand new mini games, a heartfelt farewell course, upgraded graphics, and… Read more

The Game That Broke the Mold and the Law When Wolfenstein 3D dropped in 1992, it ignited a revolution. It was not just a technically slick first person shooter, it was a raw, unapologetic romp through Nazi bunkers that ended in a face off with a cyber fueled Mecha Hitler. Gamers worldwide embraced it as a milestone. But in Germany, the response was silence, because the game was outright banned. Under Section… 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