The Curated Pulse of Retro Computing.

A new dark fantasy text adventure has surfaced, and it wears its retro roots proudly. The Morning Star is an atmospheric piece of interactive fiction built for classic hardware including the Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad, C64, MSX and ZX Spectrum. It evokes the golden age of gaming with text-driven exploration set against beautifully illustrated fantasy backdrops, and it features exploration, inventory management and

Homebrew team Tedzogh, Dor, aZtOcKdOg, imjustpickle and keyj freely has officially kicked off a playtest phase for its upcoming native Commodore Amiga adventure game, The Adventure of Node. Drawing clear inspiration from classic action-RPGs like Zelda, the game drops players into a fantasy world that demands quick reflexes and sharp thinking. The project is still in active

Games like Ultima have a classic overhead camera view rather than the moving character view that I have been showing in my retro roguelike. How is that implemented? Jay in the Commodore 64 Ultimate Development & Modifications Facebook group asked: Here is my answer (which on reflection wasn’t as helpful as it could have been): The way to do it with c64 characters is the map defines the whole potential area and the “camera view” is a slice of that starting at x, y of the map. So if the map is 100,100 you need x to x+11, for y to y+11 rows. I’m sure someone has code already if not I can come back with some Rather than leave that as it was, I felt I needed to offer a better solution, plus it is a good challenge to walk through in a blog post, so here we are. View Port Versus Map As I mention briefly in my response, the main mental split is between the “world map” and the visible portion. We are simulating a viewport or portal into the whole, and solutions will involve taking the correct slices out of the bigger version and pasting them onto the game screen. Our player has a X and Y coordinate that represent their horizontal/left and vertical/top position in the world The world map is the whole potential area living in memory, independent of who or what’s on screen this second The playable area on screen is just a fixed size camera view, it’s a slice of the map starting at some (x, y) position within the whole For a 100×100 map you only ever draw x to x+10 across and y to y+10 down (ie. 11 tiles each way for an 11×11 window) Another wrinkle, of course, is however we draw it, we also want to center the gameplay on the player character, so there also needs to be an additional offset from the top, left, so the sprite or whatever is in the middle vertically and horizontally rather than always at the top left of our game screen. First Draft, No Optimisation Our dirty first draft, completely unoptomised, will be barely one step away from pseudocode: Define a 2D map array M(x, y) sized to the full world dimensions Track the player’s world position (PX, PY) separately from their screen position Each time through the game loop: Compute the camera top-left: CX = PX - 5, CY = PY - 5 (half the 11×11 viewport) Clamp the camera so it never reads off the edge of the map (Zelda style) For each cell (I, J) in the 11×11 viewport, copy M(CX+I, CY+J) to screen RAM at (OX+I, OY+J) Draw the player at the fixed screen centre (or offset, if the camera clamped) Wait for input, update (PX, PY), redraw Of course this is really really slow, but as a proof of concept it helps us get the general shape nailed. Level 1 Code  →Get your own editable copy of the final code and see it run in the online editor. 10 REM ---- LARGE MAP / SMALL CAMERA DEMO ---- 20 REM JAY'S QUESTION: KEEP PLAYER CENTRED, 30 REM MOVE THE MAP AROUND THEM (ULTIMA STYLE) 40 REM LEVEL 1: HORRENDOUSLY SLOW UNOPTIMISED FIRST DRAFT 50 MW=40 : MH=24 60 VW=11 : VH=11 70 HX=INT(VW/2) : HY=INT(VH/2) 80 OX=14 : OY=6 90 SC=1024 100 DIM M(MW-1,MH-1) 110 GOSUB 600 : REM BUILD MAP 120 PX=20 : PY=12 130 PRINT CHR$(147) 140 GOSUB 300 : REM DRAW VIEWPORT 150 GOSUB 500 : REM DRAW PLAYER 160 GET K$ : IF K$="" THEN 160 170 DX=0 : DY=0 180 IF K$="W" THEN DY=-1 190 IF K$="S" THEN DY=1 200 IF K$="A" THEN DX=-1 210 IF K$="D" THEN DX=1 220 IF K$="Q" THEN PRINT CHR$(147) : END 230 NX=PX+DX : NY=PY+DY 240 IF NX<0 OR NX>MW-1 OR NY<0 OR NY>MH-1 THEN 160 250 PX=NX : PY=NY 260 GOSUB 300 : GOSUB 500 : GOTO 160 270 REM 300 REM ---- DRAW VIEWPORT (NAIVE) ---- 310 CX=PX-HX : CY=PY-HY 320 IF CX<0 THEN CX=0 330 IF CY<0 THEN CY=0 340 IF CX>MW-VW THEN CX=MW-VW 350 IF CY>MH-VH THEN CY=MH-VH 360 FOR J=0 TO VH-1 370 FOR I=0 TO VW-1 380 POKE SC+(OY+J)*40+(OX+I),M(CX+I,CY+J) 390 NEXT I 400 NEXT J 410 RETURN 420 REM 500 REM ---- DRAW PLAYER (NAIVE) ---- 510 SX=OX+(PX-CX) : SY=OY+(PY-CY) 520 POKE SC+SY*40+SX,81 530 RETURN 540 REM 600 REM ---- BUILD TEST MAP ---- 610 FOR Y=0 TO MH-1 620 FOR X=0 TO MW-1 630 T=46 640 IF X=0 OR Y=0 OR X=MW-1 OR Y=MH-1 THEN T=160 650 IF (X=10 AND Y>4 AND Y<15) THEN T=160 660 IF (Y=8 AND X>14 AND X<25) THEN T=87 670 M(X,Y)=T 680 NEXT X 690 NEXT Y 700 RETURN Phase 2: Screen Lookup Table (LUT) We could leave it at the above but it animates like a slideshow rather than a game, plus you might be forgiven for thinking it has crashed due to the extreme slow startup. Let’s tweak the display logic first. The biggest move we can make at this stage is to replace the expensive multiplication (OY+J)*40 with a precomputed lookup table. Our 8 bit 6510 is not quick at multiplication as a rule, even less nimble in floating point BASIC. So we add DIM R(24) and fill once at startup: FOR Y = 0 TO 24 : R(Y) = Y*40 : NEXT Y The display loop then becomes one lookup, no multiply: RO = SC + R(OY+J) + OX POKE RO+I, M(CX+I, CY+J) 121 floating-point multiplications eliminated! ~3–5× faster. This will unfortunately make the startup even slower. Phase 3: Dual Lookup Tables Why is it still slow? 2D array access in BASIC v2 still costs a hidden multiply per read. So how about we switch the map to a flat 1D array: DIM M(MW*MH - 1) Now due to this change we should add a map-row lookup table: DIM MR(MH-1) and fill that LUT with MR(Y) = Y * MW at startup. Our viewport loop now has become ONLY additions, which microprocessors are much better at: RO = SC + R(OY+J) + OX (screen base for the row) MO = MR(CY+J) + CX (map base for the row) POKE RO+I, M(MO+I) zero multiplies Again, we trade off play speed with initialisation delays – we have added ~24 more multiplications at startup, but we did eliminate ~121+ per display frame. Phase 4: Init Progress Indicator We started out with a slow startup but it is now so slow that if we don’t show the program is running it is certain to look frozen. All we need to do is print inside each initialisation loop.Ironically those prints do add even more slowness to the process, C64 BASIC is not at all quick at printing. Fortunately in a real game we would encode the LUTs and map as DATA statements and READ them, or even better load from disk. Phase 5: Unrolled Loop The last stage of optmisation is to find the next “Hot Path” and optimise it. A “hot path” is the section of your program that is executed most frequently. Optimising those sections provide the most noticeable improvements. In this case our FOR J = 0 TO 10 ... NEXT J runs every redraw with the same constant bounds. BASIC’s FOR/NEXT per-iteration overhead is significant (push to the stack, perform variable lookup, do a comparison, jump to next). Instead we can move the calculation to another LUT DIM VR(10) filled with VR(J) = SC + R(OY+J) + OX once at startup and “unroll” one of the loops. Instead of two FOR loops we replace the outer loop with 11 explicit lines that each handle outputting one row: RO = VR(0) : MO = MR(CY) + CX : GOSUB 460 RO = VR(1) : MO = MR(CY+1) + CX : GOSUB 460 Yeah, we still have a FOR but we have eliminated 10 NEXT s per display frame which is not too shabby. It does feel snappier on each WASD press which is a big deal. Final Code (for now)  →Get your own editable copy of the final code and see it run in the online editor. Further optimisation ideas follow, but here is a good place to end with some working but still too slow code. 10 REM ---- LARGE MAP / SMALL CAMERA DEMO ---- 20 REM JAY'S QUESTION: KEEP PLAYER CENTRED, 30 REM MOVE THE MAP AROUND THEM (ULTIMA STYLE) 40 REM LEVEL 3: UNROLLED VIEWPORT + PRECOMPUTED 50 MW=40 : MH=24 60 VW=11 : VH=11 70 HX=INT(VW/2) : HY=INT(VH/2) 80 OX=14 : OY=6 90 SC=1024 95 PRINT CHR$(147) : PRINT "LOADING"; 100 DIM M(MW*MH-1) 105 DIM R(24) 106 DIM MR(MH-1) 107 DIM VR(10) : REM PRE-BAKED VIEWPORT ROW SCREEN BASES 110 FOR Y=0 TO 24 : R(Y)=Y*40 : PRINT "."; : NEXT Y 111 FOR Y=0 TO MH-1 : MR(Y)=Y*MW : PRINT "."; : NEXT Y 112 FOR J=0 TO 10 : VR(J)=SC+R(OY+J)+OX : NEXT J 113 PRINT : PRINT "BUILDING MAP"; 114 GOSUB 600 115 PRINT : PRINT "READY" 120 PX=20 : PY=12 130 PRINT CHR$(147) 140 GOSUB 300 150 GOSUB 500 160 GET K$ : IF K$="" THEN 160 170 DX=0 : DY=0 180 IF K$="W" THEN DY=-1 190 IF K$="S" THEN DY=1 200 IF K$="A" THEN DX=-1 210 IF K$="D" THEN DX=1 220 IF K$="Q" THEN PRINT CHR$(147) : END 230 NX=PX+DX : NY=PY+DY 240 IF NX<0 OR NX>MW-1 OR NY<0 OR NY>MH-1 THEN 160 250 PX=NX : PY=NY 260 GOSUB 300 : GOSUB 500 : GOTO 160 270 REM 300 REM ---- DRAW VIEWPORT (UNROLLED, LUT) ---- 310 CX=PX-HX : CY=PY-HY 320 IF CX<0 THEN CX=0 330 IF CY<0 THEN CY=0 340 IF CX>MW-VW THEN CX=MW-VW 350 IF CY>MH-VH THEN CY=MH-VH 360 RO=VR(0) : MO=MR(CY)+CX : GOSUB 460 361 RO=VR(1) : MO=MR(CY+1)+CX : GOSUB 460 362 RO=VR(2) : MO=MR(CY+2)+CX : GOSUB 460 363 RO=VR(3) : MO=MR(CY+3)+CX : GOSUB 460 364 RO=VR(4) : MO=MR(CY+4)+CX : GOSUB 460 365 RO=VR(5) : MO=MR(CY+5)+CX : GOSUB 460 366 RO=VR(6) : MO=MR(CY+6)+CX : GOSUB 460 367 RO=VR(7) : MO=MR(CY+7)+CX : GOSUB 460 368 RO=VR(8) : MO=MR(CY+8)+CX : GOSUB 460 369 RO=VR(9) : MO=MR(CY+9)+CX : GOSUB 460 370 RO=VR(10) : MO=MR(CY+10)+CX : GOSUB 460 410 LX=CX : LY=CY 420 RETURN 430 REM 460 REM ---- POKE ONE VIEWPORT ROW ---- 470 FOR I=0 TO 10 : POKE RO+I, M(MO+I) : NEXT I 480 RETURN 490 REM 500 REM ---- DRAW PLAYER ---- 510 SX=OX + (PX-LX) 520 SY=OY + (PY-LY) 530 POKE SC+R(SY)+SX, 81 540 RETURN 550 REM 600 REM ---- BUILD TEST MAP ---- 620 FOR Y=0 TO MH-1 625 YB=MR(Y) : PRINT "."; 630 FOR X=0 TO MW-1 640 T=46 650 IF X=0 OR Y=0 OR X=MW-1 OR Y=MH-1 THEN T=160 660 IF (X=10 AND Y>4 AND Y<15) THEN T=160 670 IF (Y=8 AND X>14 AND X<25) THEN T=87 675 M(YB+X)=T 680 NEXT X 690 NEXT Y 700 RETURN Ideas for future optimisations So about those future optimisation ideas … 1. PRINT is faster than POKE The biggest would be to eliminate the slow pokes (heh). We have seen before that in C64 BASIC with no assembly routines, print is faster than poke. POKEing individual characters to screen memory is slow. PRINTing with the cursor positioned via cursor escape controls would be the single biggest remaining win in pure BASIC. Building up the string using concatenation would still be slow so instead the map would be built as a string array of rows I think. We could use C64 BASIC string manipulation commands to extract just the portions we need. 2. ASM Routines Called from BASIC Alternatively, or in addition, we could have an assembly routine that does the display and uses memory copies. This would bypass our display loops and character by character friction and instead would be given a starting memory address and would get the source and paste to the destination super quick. 3. Meta Tiles Great use of Meta Tiles in Bitmap Brothers’ – Chaos Engine Last thought I had was to use meta-tiles. Part of the reason initialisation is so slow is because the map is made up character by character, but in a game like Ultima or Zelda you might use tiles that are 3×3 or 5×5 to make a wall corner, part of a house, a bend in a road, and so on. This would make loading or generating the world map a lot quicker because it could be the same size when displayed but compressed down to 1/3 or smaller. Other improvements: How else would I improve it? Colour: parallel POKEs into $D800 (55296) so walls are grey, water is blue, grass is green, player is yellow … Partial redraw: when moving one tile you only need to draw the newly-revealed row or column plus the old/new player position ~12 characters instead of 121, so roughly 10× faster. Hardware smooth scroll: writing to $D016 / $D011 for sub-character pixel scrolling. Custom character set: replace the default font with bespoke tile graphics for a real game polish. Lessons Learned The technique that started this discussion applies no matter what platform or language you are using. Decouple your world coords from the visible screen coords and treat the playable, visible area as a window into a larger ‘world’ buffer. While my ‘Zelda-Like‘ demos use push scrolling, the concept used is the same. We quickly went into a side-quest of trying to get CBM BASIC v2 to perform. The cost of multiplications in particular was very visible. Lookup tables are the single most powerful optimisation tool on retro systems: trade a tiny bit of RAM and up-front calculations for huge time savings at runtime. You can see this technique over and over in the demo scene. Finally, unroll loops (and anything else you need to do), but don’t optimise until you’ve measured where your hold-ups are (your hot path). As in the linked video from Robin, just because something seems like it should make things faster, doesn’t mean it will! The post C64 BASIC: Game Map Overhead “Camera View” appeared first on Retro Game Coders.

Our next Trading Card Spotlight features Mark Robichek who is displayed on card number 40, from the Superstars of 2011 Collection.  Mark is another original Twin Galaxies alumnus from 1982.  He can be seen alongside the greats in the Time Life Magazine photograph taken on November 7, 1982.   Mark early on set the bar for world records on such arcade games as Frogger, Tutankham and Berzerk.    Today Mark can be seen playing Pengo on MAME or smart phone games such as Words with Friends and What’s That Phrase.   Currently Mark is a Casino Party Dealer and resides in Sunnyvale, California.  If you can design your own game, what would it be about and who would be the main character? I would create a puzzle game in which the main character, none other than Walter Day, tries to figure out a way to save the video arcade industry! Did you ever think when you were younger you would be on a Video game Trading card?  Not a clue! Even as an adult, I never thought that I’d be on a Video Game Trading card! Do you prefer playing video games alone, against friends or online against the world? I always saw video games as a way to socialize with friends. For many years, I would meet up with my video gaming buddies (including Eric Ginner and Franz Lanzinger), go out for pizza and play video games for a few hours. We would play against each other, and we would play alone but nearby. Because so many of the games that came out were single-player games, my preferences shifted a bit from a social one to a “perfect my skills” one.  Do you remember your first video game / arcade you played and what do you remember about it? The first video game I played was Asteroids. I remember watching other people playing it who used the “blast everything as fast as possible” technique. As was my style, I tried to come up with a slower, calmer technique, so what I tried to do was to blast one asteroid and then try to blast all of its offspring, leaving the other larger asteroids alone until then. Effective? Not really, but I had fun! What are your opinions about today’s generation of video games?  How do you compare them to older, classic games? I’m not a big fan of today’s video game scene. I think that the newer stuff has become way too derivative, such that one success breeds too many knockoffs (like Dance Dance Revolution or dinosaurs fighting). Nearly every new game that came out in the 80s was original; even sequels of the older games were more original than brand-new games today. Are you still involved with gaming today, and what role do you play? I am pretty-much out of the video game scene, although I do occasionally sit down at my computer, open MAME, and play some Pengo. When California Extreme comes to town (I live only a couple miles away!), I’m happy to be one of the guest speakers, offering either tips & tricks or simply playing the role of celebrity from my movie appearances. Do you prefer PC or Console gaming and why? In my younger days, I got into both the Atari 2600 and the original NES system, but after that, my attention turned to the PC. Although I preferred the competitiveness of the consoles, I preferred the games themselves on the PC. What games today do you play and what are your favorite genres of games? I enjoy playing a variety of games, including Words with Friends, Word Streak (Boggle), What’s the Phrase? Hanging With Friends and Flow Free, but most of all, I like playing BridgeBase (live bridge against players from around the world). From this list, I guess you could say that my favorite genres would be word games, puzzle games and card games. If you could own one arcade game or pinball game, what would it be and why?  I would definitely choose a Crazy Climber machine! It’s one of my all-time favorite arcade games, and the controls are unique enough that the game doesn’t translate well to playing on a PC. Growing up were you team Sega or Nintendo and why? Nintendo, for sure. Why? Because of one game…Dr. Mario. My good friend Franz Lanzinger (creator of Crystal Castles and other titles) and I wasted hundreds of hours playing Dr. Mario against each other. What does it take to be a Video Game Journalist? Talent and enthusiasm. You have to be a fan of the subject matter; otherwise, the writing won’t seem genuine. It also helps to be able to get into the minds of the game players and game creators. Are video games aimed mainly at children, adolescents or adults? The target audience has long been adolescent males, and even though there have been more inroads into adult and children’s markets, the biggest (and most profitable) audience remains those pimply boys. Do you believe some Video Games are too violent and lead to violence in America today? I believe that video games were and are a great way to stave off the desire that some people may have to commit violence, in the same way that watching a violent cartoon can help keep people from perpetrating such violence in real life. However, and this is a big however, there are some people (such as sociopaths) who might get some of their violent ideas from playing violent games or watching violent cartoons. That’s why this issue is a toughy. Which company makes the best games and why? It’s gotta be Actual Entertainment! Why? Well, because I was the company president, and Franz Lanzinger and Eric Ginner were our programmers. Do you learn anything from playing video games? Probably the biggest thing I learned was how to focus. Those skills really helped me when I entered the working world as an engineer. Even now, when I play a game or any sort, my wife notices that my expression changes, my demeanor changes, as I enter “the zone” of a game player. Are video games good for relieving stress? Absolutely, 100%! When I was in college, after I felt that I’d done all the studying I could possibly do in preparation for an exam, I would play video games for a while to unwind. Then, after a good night’s sleep, I would almost always ace the exam. Do you like it when Hollywood makes a movie from the video game? I did like Tron, but in my opinion, most of the other movies based on video games have failed to meet the expectations of both game players and the general public. Who is your favorite video game character and what makes that character special? That would have to be Gubble D Gleep, the main character from the games Gubble and Gubble 2. Gubble D Gleep is special because he’s the creation of Actual Entertainment (see above), and as an interesting bit of trivia, all of Gubble D Gleep’s sounds are Finnish! What springs to mind when you hear the term ‘video games’? The whole concept of video games makes me smile! They were a huge part of my upbringing, as a source of fun, a means of socialization and even a huge ego boost. I never expected my video game playing to result in anything more than fun, so when Life Magazine and Chasing Ghosts came along, I was delighted to hop on for the ride. Of these five elements video games, which is the most important to you and why?  Gameplay, Atmosphere, Music, Story, Art style It’s all about gameplay. To me, part of the downfall of the video game industry was that too many people jumped on the art/style bandwagon. Once gameplay was no longer the focus of games; that was it for me. Do you find boss battles to be the best part of a video game? No; while boss battles can be fun, and it can be immensely satisfying to get past a boss, I feel that an even bigger thrill can be gained from conquering a difficult level in a puzzle game. What is your favorite single player game and favorite multiplayer game? My favorite single player game is Pengo; I really loved the combination of speed, technique and cleverness featured in Pengo. Even today, I could spend hours playing Pengo on MAME. My favorite multiplayer game was Dr. Mario; I enjoyed torturing my opponent by dropping random pills on his side when I did particularly well. Where do you see Video gaming in the next 20 years? I would guess that video gaming will move into the brain. I attended an event at which they demonstrated new technology that allowed players to control a video game using only their brain, and if complete focus wasn’t maintained, the controls would slow or stop. This is one of an ongoing series of articles based on the Walter Day Collection of e-sports/video gaming trading cards – check out more information at thewalterdaycollection.com. The post Video Game Trading Card Spotlight – Mark Robichek appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Well, this is a surprising Sunday story: a long-lost game called Fugitif 31 appears to have been recovered. Originally developed by Frédéric Mantegazza and his cousin Laurent Dieudonné between 1986 and 1991, the retro sci-fi title is now being completely rebuilt to tackle the original game’s main problem — with the developer noting he was unable to do anything else during the process.

Earlier this week, we spotlighted JOTD’s work-in-progress Arcade-to-Amiga conversion of Xevious, the Namco classic that first made its name in the arcades before landing on other home computers. If you’ve been holding off on playing it until the finished version arrived, your patience may have just paid off: JOTD has now announced that both Xevious and Super Xevious have been released for the

Those two epic words helped launch the work of Ed Boon, John Tobias, and the rest of the team behind Mortal Kombat in pop culture lore forever. It’s also made it a video game series that essentially always comes back refreshed and inviting, after over 30 years of entries. So while your love affair with Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Sonya Blade, and all the other characters in the game is just as intense as your feelings for characters in Tekken or Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat has always been different. It’s always hit harder. For that reason alone, it’s easily one of the most important games of all time and absolutely on the Mount Rush… Read the rest of this article on page 50 by clicking here!       Be sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine for free by clicking here! The post Mortal Kombat – by Patrick Hickey Jr. appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

If you’ve had enough of blasting away enemies, jumping from platform to platform, or wrestling with punishing puzzlers, Bisboch has something colder and faster for the Commodore 64. Super Slalom is a new downhill skiing game inspired by the original SLALOM from COMMODORE ELEC. LTD & HAL LABORATORY, JAPAN, and it even comes with an editor. Saberman has also shared gameplay footage to match the announcement.

The Commodore 64 is getting dragged back into the dark with GloomKeep by j5-2026, a punishing new roguelike built around 10 procedurally generated floors, 100 hand-drawn monster glyphs themed by depth, stair guardians with themed taunts, hidden traps, healing wards, holy water, EXP bonuses, and an original multi-track SID engine with mood.

Go-Go BunnyGun may have grabbed some attention on the ZX Spectrum today, but Natthrafn has brought a different kind of underground thrill to the Commodore 64 with Vault of Seraphim. The developer calls it a jump-and-run cave crawler in the spirit of Catacombs of Cherubim, now expanded with four entirely new caves and a completely reworked player movement system. If that sounds like

Drop a quarter, get a game. Everyone within earshot knew exactly what that transaction meant. No subscription tier, no loot box probability table, no auto-renewal buried in a terms and conditions update. The quarter-per-play model was the most transparent payment system the entertainment industry has ever produced, and we have spent the fifty years since trying to find something that works as well. It has not happened yet. But the search has produced some genuinely interesting results along the way, and understanding how payment systems have evolved since the arcade era tells you something useful about where we are now and why certain industries have had to work harder than others to earn consumer trust. The Quarter Economy Worked The elegance of the arcade payment model was its total legibility. You could see exactly how much you were spending because the coins were physical objects in your hand. You could decide mid-session to stop, and stopping costs you nothing. The operator got paid per unit of entertainment delivered. There was no mismatch between what you paid and what you received.  This mattered more than it sounds. Trust between consumer and entertainment provider is built on clarity about what the exchange involves. The arcade gave you that clarity in the most literal possible form. A warm handful of quarters was both your budget and your session timer. When they ran out, the decision to get more was a conscious one made with full awareness of what it would cost. The Industries That Had to Get Payment Transparency Right Not every industry has been able to paper over the trust gap with marketing. Some categories of online entertainment operate in environments where consumer scrutiny is intense enough that payment transparency is not optional. Online casinos are the clearest example. Players choosing where to deposit real money apply a level of due diligence to payment infrastructure that most gaming consumers never apply to their platform choices. Which payment methods are accepted, how long withdrawals take, what fees apply, whether the platform has a clean record with player complaints: these are questions that serious players research before committing anything. The market has responded by developing more detailed independent comparison infrastructure around payment methods than exists for virtually any other entertainment category. For anyone who wants to understand what that infrastructure looks like in practice, independent review resources that catalogue casino payment methods platform by platform give you the kind of granular, player-first comparison that the old gaming magazine adverts never could. Accepted currencies, processing times, documented withdrawal histories, licensing details: the information exists, it is independently maintained, and it is exactly the kind of clear, verifiable exchange information that the arcade quarter made redundant for a few glorious decades. Home Gaming Complicated the Picture The shift to home consoles introduced a payment model that felt simpler but was actually more opaque. You paid once upfront for a cartridge, which meant the transaction was front-loaded. The risk moved from the session to the purchase. You were committing significant money before knowing whether you would enjoy the game, based on magazine reviews and word of mouth from the kid down the street who had already bought it. Anyone who bought games in the 1980s and 1990s remembers this calculation intimately. Mail-order adverts in the back pages of gaming magazines offered deals that required you to send a cheque and wait three weeks. The Digital Era Made Trust Harder Digital distribution removed the wait and the postage cost. It also removed the physical object that made you feel like you had received something in exchange for your money. The economics of gaming shifted toward subscriptions, season passes, and in-game purchases, each of which introduced its own layer of complexity between the consumer and a clear understanding of what they were paying for. The result has been an ongoing negotiation between players who want the clarity of the quarter model and an industry that has discovered it can extract significantly more revenue through systems that are harder to mentally account for. This tension has never fully resolved. It shows up in every conversation about microtransactions, loot boxes, and subscription fatigue. What the Quarter Got Right That We Still Have Not Fully Replaced The reason the arcade quarter holds such a powerful place in gaming memory is not entirely nostalgia. It represents a payment philosophy that genuinely served the consumer: immediate, reversible, proportionate, and completely transparent about what was being exchanged. Every payment system that has come since has traded some element of that clarity for something else, usually convenience or revenue optimisation on the provider’s side. The best modern payment systems, in gaming and beyond, are the ones that have worked hardest to rebuild that clarity in a digital context. Clear fee structures, fast and reliable withdrawals, documented track records, and independent verification all serve the same function that the quarter did physically. They tell you exactly what the exchange involves before you commit to it. That is a standard worth holding onto, even if it takes more than a warm handful of coins to apply it now. The post The Arcade Quarter Was the OG Microtransaction and Matched Honesty appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

“TAG TEAM WRESTLING” is an action game released by Technos Japan in 1983. Enjoy the world of professional wrestling as you control the hero wrestler and aim to become world champion. Quick move selection and the skillful tag team work unique to tag matches are the keys to victory! Sometimes brawls spill out of the ring, and unexpected intruders might even show up!? https://www.arcadearchives.com/en/title/aca-411/ Fast pick-up-and-play matches Classic arcade difficulty Primitive but charming animation Crowd-pleasing moments like ringside brawls and surprise interference Review If you enjoy early-1980s arcade wrestling games and retro preservation, both versions of Arcade Archives TAG TEAM WRESTLING and Arcade Archives 2 TAG TEAM WRESTLING are worth a look — but they’re definitely niche titles aimed at arcade-history fans more than modern wrestling gamers. It feels more like a playable museum piece than a must-play wrestling game — but Hamster continues to do a great job preserving arcade history. Faithful preservation of an obscure Technos arcade game Fun in short bursts Local multiplayer can still be entertaining Cool piece of wrestling-game history Arcade Archives emulation quality is consistently excellent     The post “Arcade Archives TAG TEAM WRESTLING” and “Arcade Archives 2 TAG TEAM WRESTLING” now available! appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Legendary developer JOTD, the force behind conversions like Double Dragon, Pooyan, Jail Break and Xevious 1200, has announced Roc'NRope for the Amiga. It’s a straight conversion of Konami’s classic 1983 arcade platformer, and for JOTD, it offered a refreshing detour into a smaller, less demanding project.

Crisis after crisis.

Old poker games were great at explaining the rules, but weak when it came to showing uncertainty. They taught us how to calculate hand rankings and how a digital table flows. What they rarely captured was the invisible part of poker: the shifting story built from position, stack size, board texture, and opponent action. That gap matters because research on video game players found faster and more accurate responses during sensorimotor decision tasks, which helps explain why games can sharpen pattern recognition without replacing judgment. Poker works in a similar way. The screen gives incomplete information, so the player sorts the signals, removes unlikely stories, and keeps updating carefully. From Scripted Tells To Real Hand Reading https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OvLj212PKgbTrv4vhLWpnfl2207S8k71/view?usp=sharing Image source: Original graphic created by the author for this article ALT text: Retro and real poker hand reading   Old card games often made opponents readable in a simple way. One character bluffed too much. Another folded too often. A third raised only when strong. Modern Hold’em hand reading is more fluid because the same action can mean different things depending on stack depth, table position, and the hands a player could reasonably have. That is why watching Texas Holdem online tournaments can reveal so much about the strategies that top players use. You’ll get to see repeated Hold’em decisions made inside changing blind levels, with different stack sizes, and table states where a read develops across more than one hand. Texas Hold’em online tournaments also give you the chance to think about what you would do in a given player’s situation. Would you raise, fold, try to bluff? After deciding that, check if your instincts line up with what the player actually did, and if there was a difference, whose call was the correct one? You’ll soon start to see patterns taking shape. A limped pot tells one story. A squeeze from the big blind tells another. A call in position narrows the story again. After the flop, stack depth can change the meaning of every choice. Good hand reading is not naming the exact two cards. It is recognizing which hands still make sense after each decision. For a short example of that process in motion, Xuan Liu’s Instagram hand review, “Let’s see a flop!”, is useful because the narration follows the action. The hand starts with multiple limpers, then a queen-jack suited squeeze from the big blind. Liu continues with king-eight suited and explains how the pot, remaining chips, and flop texture shape the fast-play decision. The hand becomes readable through context. **PLEASE EMBED THIS LINK** https://www.instagram.com/p/DXpU9u0D2Fc/ What the Screen Could Not Show Retro poker software had to compress human behavior into routines. That made it friendly. It also made it limited. A player could learn that one avatar overplayed medium hands, or that another rarely challenged a raise. The lesson became pattern memory, which is useful, but narrower than real reading. A real hand has more moving parts. Consider how each clue changes the meaning of the same cards: Clue What It Adds To The Story Position Shows how much information a player had before acting Stack size Changes whether a call, raise, or shove is realistic Pot texture Shows how much pressure already exists in the hand Board texture Alters which ranges connect with the flop or turn Previous action Checks whether later moves still fit This is why older poker games can feel relaxing on a replay and incomplete as training tools. The NPC players simply weren’t capable of approaching the game with the same skill as actual humans. Real hand reading begins when the player stops asking, “Do they have a strong hand?” and starts asking, “What would this line look like if they did?” The Shape Of A Real Read The best reads are usually descriptive before they are decisive. A player who limps, calls a raise, and then continues on a wet flop may have suited connectors, pairs, or broadway combinations that found enough equity to stay involved. A player who raises from the big blind after several limpers may be applying pressure with a hand that plays well but benefits from reducing the field. Stack size gives those clues weight. With deep stacks, players can call more often. With shorter stacks, the hand becomes compressed. Decisions arrive sooner. A player may fast-play a strong draw or made hand because the pot is already large compared with chips behind. This is the layer that NPCs in old card games also usually missed. Why Retro Players Still Have An Edge Retro players already understand repetition, pattern memory, and rule systems. Those instincts matter. The difference is that real poker asks for flexible pattern reading, rather than fixed pattern recall. That is the bridge between old card games and modern poker thinking. The classics gave players a clean table and a clear ruleset. Real hands add noise, timing, stack pressure, and human adjustment. Reading them well means respecting every clue without letting one clue explain the whole hand. The skill is disciplined attention, a point supported by research on how action video game play relates to perception and attention. The post Poker Hand Reading Lessons Old Card Games Never Taught appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

The Amiga’s competitive football scene is set for a serious glow-up, with KONEY-SCANLINES preparing a new graphics fix and restyle demo for the Amiga Competition Version of Kick Off 2. Built on the solid KO2CV v1.37 framework, Kick Off 2 CV is aiming to tighten up the game’s visual identity with updated pitches, refreshed kits, and a series of long-needed fixes.

By far the best and most influential of these is Westwood Studios’ Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty from 1992, a landmark Real Time Strategy (RTS) game that not only laid the way for Command & Conquer, but also for the whole genre. Of course, Dune II wasn’t the first RTS. Both 1988’s Modem Wars and 1989’s Herzog Zwei featured the strategic but more reflex-based gameplay that would come to define a genre. Unlike traditional turn-based war games, where gamers could spend as much time as they wanted to make a turn, Read the rest of this article on page 49 by clicking here!       Be sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine for free by clicking here! The post Dune II – by Mat Bradley- Tschirgi appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Stern Pinball has officially pulled the curtain back on Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye, a new pinball table inspired by Transformers: The Movie and the 1984 TV series. Announced via video and a news release, the machine leans hard into nostalgia, loaded with original footage, music, and custom call-outs from Peter Cullen and Frank Welker.

This is the kind of surprise announcement that makes retro fans sit up and pay attention. Hoyster Games — Kevin Watson-Hoy & Matthew McGuire — has officially unveiled its third title, Rex: Into the Shadow Realm, a fast-paced vertical shooter heading to the classic Commodore Amiga later this year, with a demo due in June. As a direct sequel to Rex and the Galactic Plague, this one is already sounding like a standout.

The Commodore Amiga scene has another eye-catching tease: a high-performance recreation of the arcade classic Moon Cresta is now in beta. Built from scratch by Johnny Acevedo under the Amiten Games banner, it’s being positioned as both a free tribute to Nichibutsu’s 1980s original and a nod to François Lionet, the creator of AMOS.

The Commodore Amiga scene has another attention-grabbing tease: a high-performance recreation of the arcade classic Moon Cresta is now in beta. Built from scratch by Johnny Acevedo under the Amiten Games banner, this free tribute to Nichibutsu’s 1980s original also pays homage to François Lionet, the creator of AMOS.

A very late night update for retro gamers: a new Commodore Amiga release has arrived in the form of ARC4NERD, a classic arcade-style game with unmistakable "Ruhrpott" charm. Developed by HooGames2017 and published by APC&TCP via the Amiga Future website, it is now available as both a boxed physical edition and a digital download, following in

After the huge success of the 2026 platforming hit Crystian and the Lost Crystals, developer Marcel Sásik has officially unveiled a direct follow-up: Adrian and a Friend in Need. The upcoming Commodore 64 release aims to shake up the formula completely, introducing a brand-new, ultra-athletic protagonist to replace the slow, grid-locked exploration of the original game!

The legendary 8-bit Speccy has just picked up another homebrew gem: Max Stone DOS Max Stone Two, officially subtitled In the Count’s Castle. Developed by Flopping, this striking sequel is available right now and serves up a masterclass in classic gaming, backed by an absolutely fantastic chiptune soundtrack that pushes the ZX Spectrum’s audio capabilities to its limits.