Retro Blog 🕰️

A Bold but Bizarre Idea In 1995 Nintendo of America faced a challenge. They were preparing to launch EarthBound on the Super Nintendo, a quirky role playing game full of humor, offbeat enemies, and suburban satire. But how could they sell such an unusual RPG to an American audience that was not yet fully invested in the genre? Their answer was one of the strangest campaigns in gaming history. Nintendo rolled out… Read more

For those of us who grew up in the late 1990s, video games were more than just a pastime. They were entire worlds that we could lose ourselves in after long school days or weekend sleepovers. The soundtracks of these games did more than fill silence. They became the background music of our youth. Every time we booted up a game, the music etched itself into our memories, attaching itself to moments… 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

The Mother series has always held a special place in the hearts of retro role-playing game fans. In Japan it was known simply as Mother, while in the United States most people only experienced the second game in the series, which was released on the Super Nintendo under the title EarthBound. That game gained a reputation for its quirky humor, heartfelt storytelling, and unusual modern-day setting. Over time it became one of… Read more

A Marvel in Coin Op Form There are certain machines that instantly capture the imagination of anyone who grew up in the neon glow of the arcade era. The six player X-Men arcade cabinet is one of them. Released by Konami in 1992, this massive, hulking creation became a legend for its sheer size, the chaotic fun of six simultaneous players, and the novelty of its dual screen setup. Unlike the more… Read more

A Platform Built on Freedom For more than a decade, Google’s Android operating system has been the backbone of the handheld emulation scene. Devices like the Retroid Pocket, AYN Odin, and countless other retro handhelds have leaned on Android because of its flexibility. What made the operating system so attractive to both developers and users was not just its adaptability but also its openness. Android allowed sideloading, which meant that users could… Read more

A Colorful Beginning Long before the blue suited hero cemented his place in gaming history, Capcom’s designers toyed with a name that could have changed everything, Rainbow Man. It was not some throwaway title scribbled in a notebook. The choice reflected what made the character unique. Each time he defeated a Robot Master he absorbed their power and his armor blazed with a new color. According to the character’s development history, Capcom… Read more

For decades, the cult following of Nintendo’s quirky RPG series has kept alive the dream of seeing the original Mother (localized as EarthBound Beginnings) fully reimagined for modern audiences. That dream has not only survived but evolved into one of the most ambitious ROM hack projects ever attempted: a complete rebuild of Mother inside the EarthBound engine. What started as a scattered dream among individual fans has now matured into a coordinated,… 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

Mario’s Mustache Was a Hardware Trick Mario’s iconic mustache wasn’t added for style — it was added because the technology of the time demanded it. When Shigeru Miyamoto designed Mario for Donkey Kong in 1981, he was limited to a tiny 16x16 sprite on arcade hardware. There simply weren’t enough pixels to draw a clear mouth and nose. The solution? A bold mustache that visually separated the nose from the rest of… Read more

Boss battles are the moments that define retro gaming. They are the ultimate tests of skill, patience, and determination, pushing players to their limits and rewarding them with some of the most unforgettable victories in video game history. In the days of the NES, SNES, Genesis, and even into the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 era, bosses were designed not only to challenge players but to leave a lasting impression that would be… Read more

Decades ago, when DVD players were still out of reach, Dreamcast fans found a workaround. Thanks to GypPlay by TheGypsy, Sega’s console doubled as a movie player for burned Video CDs, creating a moment of magic that the DCEmulation community — run today by darc — continues to preserve. Read more

Top 10 Retro RPGs Everyone Should Play The world of role playing games is vast and ever evolving, but there is something timeless about the golden age of retro RPGs. Before modern consoles brought cinematic visuals and sprawling open worlds, developers on the NES, SNES, PlayStation, and Sega Saturn were crafting unforgettable adventures that still hold up today. These classics offered players sweeping stories, iconic soundtracks, and innovative mechanics that influenced nearly… Read more

Years of work ended not with a release but with silence because of harassment, licensing wars, and community entitlement. Update 1: The First and Last Update of This Post! So apparently I got Rick Rollbacked, emulation-style. A buddy tells me, “Hey, DuckStation has a secret rollback netplay build, go ask for it in the dev’s Discord.” Like a gullible idiot, I did. What I walked into was less “beta download” and more… Read more

Disclaimer: I am totally joking about piracy. Never would I ever. We do NOT promote that here.  For years I convinced myself that physical media was dead, that shelves stacked with DVDs were nothing more than a relic of the early 2000s, and that streaming would carry us into a brighter, more convenient future. I told myself I didn’t need discs anymore. Everything I wanted would always be a few clicks away,… Read more

The Game Boy Advance remains unusually easy to love on a phone. Its library ranges from quick, pick-up-and-play platformers to long RPGs and strategy games, and its compact original screen maps well to a modern Android display. Metroid Fusion, Advance Wars, Golden Sun, Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow are still worth playing because they were designed around strong controls and clear visual language, not because they need nostalgia to carry… Read more

The Neo Geo Pocket and Neo Geo Pocket Color never had the reach of Nintendo’s handhelds, but SNK’s compact machines earned an unusually devoted audience. Their best games feel built for short sessions without being slight: smart fighting games, excellent arcade conversions, and action titles that make remarkable use of a small screen and a clicky directional control. They are also among the easiest retro systems to enjoy on an Android phone… Read more

The WonderSwan is one of handheld gaming’s most interesting near-misses. Designed under Gunpei Yokoi’s influence and launched by Bandai in Japan in 1999, its compact shape, efficient battery use, and unusual rotating screen gave it an identity all its own. The later WonderSwan Color expanded its visual range, while the SwanCrystal refined the family further. For Android players, it is also a refreshingly uncomplicated system to revisit. WonderSwan emulation is not demanding… Read more

The ZX Spectrum is still one of the easiest old computers to carry in your pocket—and one of the hardest to reduce to a simple “pick an app and press play” recommendation. Its games were built around a distinctive keyboard, joystick standards varied, and many classics assume that you can press more than one key at a time. A good Android setup has to respect those quirks rather than hide them. The… Read more

The MSX is easy to underestimate if you grew up with consoles. It was a family of compatible 8-bit home computers rather than one box, and its strongest footholds were Japan, parts of Europe, and South America. That history produced a library with a distinctive personality: ambitious arcade conversions, text-heavy adventures, computer-style RPGs, and formative Konami work including Metal Gear, Vampire Killer, Gradius, and Penguin Adventure. Android is a particularly comfortable place… Read more

The Amiga is a wonderful fit for Android, but it is not as plug-and-play as an NES or Mega Drive. An Amiga game might expect a joystick in one port, a mouse in another, a keyboard command at the title screen, or several floppy-disk swaps. The payoff is a library with a character all its own: crisp arcade conversions, ambitious platformers, point-and-click adventures, strategy games, demos, and creative software built around the… Read more

The Commodore 64 is not quite like emulating a cartridge console. It was a home computer with a full keyboard, joystick ports, disk drives, tape loading, BASIC, and software that often expected you to type commands before the game began. That extra character is exactly why the C64 remains rewarding on Android—but it also makes the choice of emulator, controls, and game format matter more than they do for most 8-bit consoles.… Read more

The TurboGrafx-16 and its Japanese counterpart, the PC Engine, remain wonderfully distinct machines to revisit on a phone or tablet. Their compact HuCards, vivid arcade-style shooters, inventive platformers, and ambitious CD releases gave NEC and Hudson a library that does not feel like a lesser copy of the 16-bit competition. A good Android setup makes Bonk’s Adventure, Blazing Lazers, R-Type, and Ys Book I & II easy to enjoy without putting original… Read more

Neo Geo on Android is one of the easiest ways to carry a serious arcade library in your pocket—provided you choose the right approach. SNK’s AES home console and MVS arcade hardware shared a famously rich catalogue of fighters, run-and-guns, puzzlers, and shooters, from King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown to Metal Slug and Magical Drop. The hardware was premium in its day; emulation makes the experience far more practical, but it… Read more

Atari emulation is one of Android’s most rewarding retro rabbit holes. The 2600 library is immediate and wonderfully strange, the 5200 and 7800 preserve a particular arcade-at-home moment, the Lynx still feels technically ambitious, and the Jaguar remains fascinating precisely because it is uneven. A phone or tablet is more than powerful enough for most of this history; the real question is choosing a setup that fits the machine and its unusual… Read more