Items tagged with retro gaming
Atari has been resting on its retro gaming laurels for the previous decade or more, it seems, with repeated follow-ups to past games like Rollercoaster Tycoon on mobile devices. However, this may be changing soon as the French company refocuses to develop “higher value-added premium games” on consoles and PCs. Yesterday, the iconic gaming company posted a press release explaining that it would be implementing a new strategy for Atari Gaming, the subdivision for games, the Atari VCS, and licensing under Atari, SA. Atari intends to “shift its video game portfolio to premium games for consoles and PC,” rather than the free-to-play market it has been in. As such, five free-to-play...
Read more...
Although it's still hard for some of us to comprehend the exorbitant prices that some rare game cartridges fetch on the open market, the practice continues unabated. For example, a mint, sealed copy of the original Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) sold for $660,000 earlier this year. Now it's time for the classic Atari 2600 game console to bask in the limelight, although the dollar figure, in this case, doesn't come close to approaching six figures. Alex Juarez, an employee of Goodwill North Texas' e-commerce processing center, began sorting through a stack of video games donated earlier this month. While Juarez likely came across plenty of duds during his search,...
Read more...
The game console previously known as Project Ataribox and later rebranded as the Atari Video Computer Systems (or Atari VCS for short) is finally available at retail, four years after it was first revealed. Its arrival comes after Microsoft and Sony launched their Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 consoles, which is notable because of the price. Therein lies the caveat or the Atari VCS (one of them, anyway). The base model Atari VCS 800 Onyx runs $299.99 without an bundled controllers, while the Atari VCS 800 Black Walnut and Onyx All-In System bundles run $399.99. Buyers who opt for the bundle receive an Atari VCS Classic Joystick and Atari VCS Modern Controller, each of which sells for $59.99...
Read more...
Games are one of the best testbeds for AI as they require problem-solving, forward-thinking, and other skills that normally only humans possess. So far, AI has gotten a handle on games like Go and up to 57 different Atari 2600 titles, but those are not terribly difficult. What if AI was pitted against one of the most notoriously hard games of all time? As it turns out, that is exactly what Facebook wants to do to bring down NetHack. NetHack is an 80s text-based single-player dungeon exploration game with a focus on “discovering the detail of the dungeon and not simply killing everything in sight,” as the NetHack website explains. If you decide to kill everything in sight, or at least...
Read more...
Konami had a hit on its hands when it released a licensed arcade game based on The Simpsons way back in 1991, when arcade dens were still thriving. Now three decades later, Arcade1Up announced at E3 2021 that Bart Simpson and his family are making a glorious return to the arcade scene with an upcoming colorful cabinet. It's pretty remarkable to think that The Simpsons is still relevant. Created by Matt Groening, The Simpsons first aired as a series of shorts in 1987 before being upgraded to a full-fledged standalone cartoon series in 1989. It has gone on to span 32 seasons consisting of more than 700 episodes, and is still being produced. As for the arcade from back in the show's early days,...
Read more...
The 20-year span between 1985 and 2005 saw the release of literally hundreds of classic game titles that were -- and are still -- beloved by millions of people around the world. From Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda, to modern classics like Halo and Metal Gear Solid, most of gaming's biggest franchises spent their formative years on consoles plugged into standard-definition cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions, the warm glow and rounded geometry of which would provide countless hours of fun. If there's one problem with those consoles, however, it's that it can be difficult to get one running -- and more importantly looking good -- on modern HD television sets. Don't worry, though....
Read more...
Battle Royale games are some of the most popular out there right now, with popular titles such as Fortnite and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds. Since these games came out, companies have been trying to twist the genre, and Nintendo is the latest to shake things up. In the new Pac-Man 99, players can show off their “chomping chops” against up to 99 other players simultaneously. When you think of the typical battle royale game, you may think of all the players being in the same lobby and competing in the same location. With Pac-Man 99, however, players play on their Pac-Man maze while trying to mess up opponents via power-ups and be the last Pac-Man standing. You can see how...
Read more...
There has been a lot of interest in the Analogue Pocket, an intriguing retro gaming console that was first announced back in late 2019. The console was supposed to launch in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the date out to May 2021. Now, as we approach May, Analogue has announced another delay. According to the company, the Pocket will now ship in October 2021 due to "sudden and severe electrical component shortages as well as logistical issues leading to a domino effect of challenges for nearly everyone in the industry." While it's only a five-month delay, it's likely disappointing to the lucky few that were able to preorder the handheld. According to Analogue, when preorders went live...
Read more...
Microsoft just made it possible to transform your phone or tablet into a retro gaming handheld of potentially epic proportions, without rooting or fussing with ROMs. How so? Starting today, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members can access over a dozen classic games through Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming (formerly Project xCloud) service. What the company has essentially done is take its backward compatibility efforts to the cloud. To get things started, Microsoft is granting access to 16 original Xbox and Xbox 360 games, all now available to Xbox Pass Pass Ultimate members on Android (still no luck for iPhone users). And over time, Microsoft says it plans to add more Xbox and Xbox 360 games to the mix....
Read more...
Late last year, a copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 for NES went up for auction with a starting bid at $62,500. After 20 different bidders got in on the auction, that price rose to a whopping $156,000, which beat out the previous record of $114,000 for an NES game. Now, a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. is up for auction, and it is currently sitting at $310,000 with seven days left. This auction could beat out the most expensive video game collectible of all time in base value. Though it may be one of the most common video games out there, it is fairly rare to find an NES copy of Super Mario Bros in near-mint condition. Wata Games is a renowned gaming grader who gave this copy of Super Mario...
Read more...
JamHamster is a self-described nerd, tinkerer, and lunatic; and we are inclined to believe it after seeing them hammer away on a Raspberry Pi Zero on Twitter. Electronic atrocities aside, they have some pretty cool projects on deck including a wildly awesome ZX Spectrum emulator built with a Raspberry Pi Zero W, which fits inside a cassette tape. JamHamster showed off the project on the /r/raspberry_pi subreddit, where it amassed a healthy 2.5k upvotes. To get the project to the state you see in the image above, Jam had to figure out how to cram a Raspberry Pi Zero into a cassette tape, which was not easy. What they ended up doing is dremelling away parts of the board, which you can see below....
Read more...
In 2019, popular retro-style controller manufacturer 8BitDo released the SN30 Pro+, a fully customizable controller with a host of settings and features. Now, the company is taking things up a notch with the new 8BitDo Pro 2. This new controller should allow users to "play like a pro with 8BitDo's most advanced controller ever" at a fraction of the cost of competing options. Supposedly, the Pro 2 is an evolution of the Pro+ in every way, and while it does not necessarily look that way, we will take 8BitDo's word for it. As we hinted at, the exterior design appears largely the same, with the only major noticeable difference being that there is now a grippy texture on the back of the controller....
Read more...
Super Mario World is something of a cornerstone game that millions of players have enjoyed over the years. While it is an awesome game, it certainly had some limitations when released 30 years ago. One of these limitations was the amount of storage available, so some things like music had to be highly compressed to save space. However, some dedicated retro gaming fans and dataminers have recreated the music of Super Mario World from uncompressed audio samples. In the modern era, we have games like Call of Duty that take up hundreds of gigabytes of storage to play, but Super Mario World could not use that much when it was released. In fact, the maximum storage in an SNES cartridge was just...
Read more...
The Atari VCS is one of those things that has been delayed time and time again, and it has become something of a myth. Atari still has them up on its website for preorder with claims that the new console will ship to consumers sometime this Spring. Ahead of the launch (maybe), Atari has sent some of the modern retro gaming consoles to reviewers and content creators. One such creator, TronicsFix, got his hands on the Atari VCS and promptly tore it down. When the Atari VCS was announced and shown off, people laughed at it a bit over the aging specs that would likely have to compete against other new consoles. Over time, the console was redesigned and upgraded from the Bulldozer-era part to a modern...
Read more...
Earlier this year, retro gamers and emulator fans got their hands on the Odroid-Go Advanced Black Edition, a portable emulator akin to a Nintendo Switch. Now, Odroid has announced another product, the Odroid-Go Super, which has some marked improvements and losses over the last device. First, and most importantly, are the specs in this retro gaming console. This time around, though, not much is changing. The Odroid-Go Super retains the Rockchip RK3326 SoC with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A35 processor paired with a Mali-G31 MP2 GPU. It also still has 1GB of RAM and 16MB of flash memory for bootloading. However, the most noticeable upgrade is the screen, which has gone from 3.5” to 5”. The...
Read more...
For many people, the golden age of PC gaming was the DOS era. Or maybe that is just my nostalgia kicking in. Either way, emulation is the key to reliving those days, playing old games that are neither lost nor completely forgotten. One of the go-to emulators has been DOSBox, but the newly released DOSBox Pure promises an even easier time getting old games up and running, with some nifty features to boot. "After 6 months of quite intense development, DOSBox Pure has been released for public testing. DOSBox Pure is a new fork built for RetroArch/Libretro, aiming for simplicity and ease of use," indie developer Bernhard Schelling explains. Part of what makes DOSBox Pure so easy to use is that it...
Read more...
At the risk of dating myself, I remember discussing with my older brother whether we should buy a TurboGrafx 16 or Sega Genesis game console. We unwisely chose the former (I would make a similar mistake when, years later, I bought an HD-DVD player instead of Blu-ray). But while the Genesis proved way more popular, I don't have any regrets, because the TurboGrafx was a pretty good system for its day with some gems. And it is also making another comeback. Meet the Analogue Duo. Reviving retro game consoles is pretty popular these days, especially with companies trying to replicate the success Nintendo has had with its NES Classic and SNES Classic consoles. That is a probably an unrealistic bar...
Read more...
The late 90s and early 2000s was a special era for personal computing. We saw PC prices drop drastically, we moved from dial-up to broadband, and we dealt with Windows ME while waiting for XP to arrive. While some of us went the DIY route at the time, many started with a prebuilt rig purchased from a brick and mortar retailer. One of the more notable brands during that era's race to the bottom was eMachines, founded in 1998 and later acquired by Gateway, which was then acquired by Acer. Plenty of "Never Obsolete" eMachines systems were sold to budget users back then and they helped introduce a generation to ATI Rage II and Rage Pro graphics. A Rage LT Pro AGP integrated graphics card is what...
Read more...
Hordes of retro gamers woke up yesterday excited to preorder the Analogue Pocket retro game console. The Pocket was highly anticipated by retro gamers, and preorders kicked off at 8 AM PST yesterday. However, gamers were unable to complete entering their payment details before the console was sold out only eight minutes after preorders started. It's unclear how many units Analogue had available to sell, but it is clear they went very quickly. For many people trying to preorder the portable console, they could add the device to their cart, and enter their address. When the shopping cart tried to calculate shipping costs, the loading swirl on the screen just spun because the device had sold out...
Read more...
The long-delayed and long-anticipated new Atari VCS console may soon be coming to a living room near you. It was recently announced that the upcoming Atari VCS 800 will be available this autumn and is available for pre-order for $389.99 USD. The console bundles are expected to ship by the 2020 holiday season. The Atari VCS 800 bundle includes the console, Wireless Classic Joystick, a Modern Controller, free Atari Vault of 100 classic games, and access to the Atari VCS game and app store. Users can pre-order the bundle from the Atari website, GameStop, or Walmart, but each site sells a slight variation of the bundle. Users can only pre-order the system in Black Walnut from the Atari website and...
Read more...
A glance at the graphics in the SimRefinery image above, and you know that this is an old game. It's actually an old, incomplete game that was recently discovered and made available to download and play on Archive.org. If you think that a game about an oil refinery sounds a bit odd, it wasn't meant for SimCity fans to play. SimRefinery was a game designed in the early '90s by Maxis Business Solutions at the request of Chevron. The idea the oil company had was to use a game that took all the very complex components of an oil refinery and made them visible, just as SimCity did for the parts that make up cities. Anyone who has ever played SimCity will know what they mean. In that game, you have...
Read more...
Retro gaming is a big deal with enthusiasts that want to relive the old games they grew up with. Tom Cruise fans may recall his NASCAR racing movie called "Days of Thunder". The Video Game History Foundation has discovered an unreleased version of a video game based on the film that was created by the late Chris Oberth (he died in 2012). He was the developer behind some popular retro games, including Anteater for the NES and Winter Games for the Commodore 64. It's unclear why the video game was canceled, but Oberth had virtually finished the game before it was shelved. The game was discovered spread across 40 different floppy disks acquired from Oberth's family by the Video Game History Foundation...
Read more...
