The Curated Pulse of Retro Computing.

When Street Fighter II: The World Warrior came to arcades in 1991, it turned the 1-on-1 fighting genre on its head. It added so much to the fighting games that had come before that it became a genre unto itself. With the massive runaway success of the game, it was only natural that sequels would ensue. But instead of giving us Street Fighter III ‘(which we wouldn’t get for 6 years), we got a number of seemingly iterative versions of the original. Each of these new versions would add to the original’s formula, some more than others. Let’s take a look at the versions released to the arcade before Capcom moved… Read the rest of this article on page 20 by clicking here!       Be sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine for free by clicking here! The post The Many Faces of Street Fighter II – by Marcus Albers appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Kweepa is taking on a wildly ambitious demake: Quake is being reimagined for the Commodore 64 as Quake64. It would complete a trilogy of id Software ports on the machine, but only by making some serious sacrifices to satisfy the C64’s famously tight hardware limits. Don’t expect the original’s visuals to survive the trip, though it will still deliver a true 3D wireframe.

From 2018 to 2019, the retro scene was shaken when Ultimate Play the Game’s Knight Lore — already known on the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC, MSX and Famicom Disk System — turned up on the C64 as a full Z80 conversion by Rod and Emu, complete with an awesome loading screen by STE. Now, fast forward to today, and Knight Lore is back in the news with a recent port.

It’s been a while since we spotlighted a proper ZX Spectrum release, so here comes Basilisk of Roko from RetroSotano to shake the dust off the speccy. What began as a straightforward plan to remaster a 2024 game morphed during development into something far more ambitious: a smart action-platformer hybrid built for the ZX Spectrum 128K. With 24 intricate screens and a soundtrack that

A fresh wave of retro re-releases arrives with Dawn of Dark Defenders leading the charge.

Well this is a surprise as Arnaud de Klerk (TFHFony) has brought the MSX1 arcade game C0man to the Commodore Amiga. With help from an AI assistant, this native port arrives as a direct sequel to the MSX original, keeping the raw charm of a quick, low-pressure development session intact. Retro gamers get the same Pac-Man-style maze, the unmistakable green-on-black look, and those stripped-back audio bleeps.

SNK fought alongside their greatest rival Capcom to define the “traditional” 2D fighting game. The King of Fighters (KoF) and Fatal Fury are as classic as Street Fighter, but SNK was more willing to walk on the wild side than Western audiences may realize, often placing their iconic characters in more absurd scenarios than Capcom ever did. SNK published some of the strangest spinoffs to ever be associated with the fighting genre, many of which have been forgotten due to some combination of regional inaccessibility and lacking an audience. Read the rest of this article on page 15 by clicking here!       Be sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine for free by clicking here! The post Kings & Vagabonds – by Noah Lapointe appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

It wasn’t long ago that retro fans were enjoying Allan Turvey’s Terrapins RX, a Rally X Remix demo built on Namco’s 1980 original and the official conversion Maze Death Race, released in 1983 by PSS for the ZX Spectrum 16K. Now the Amiga is gearing up for its own slice of the Rally action, after Tom got in touch today to reveal that JOTD is working on a

The acclaimed 8-bit fantasy hack-and-slash roguelike Rogul has officially arrived on the Atari ST and STE. Originally created by Wojciech "Bocianu" Bociański, players step into the boots of the warrior Rogul on a deceptively simple but brutally unforgiving mission: carve a path through ten demon-infested dimensions, track down elusive portal keys, and bring down the tyrant Amolotolos. True to its

Almost There Games is back with another affectionate salute to a nostalgic classic. Nelumbo is a modern reimplementation that tips its hat to an iconic Amiga racing franchise, reviving the spirit of the Lotus trilogy — from the groundbreaking Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge to the fan-favourite Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, and onward.

We’ve seen plenty of Arcade-to-Amiga conversions over the years, from Final Fight Enhanced to Super Xevious, Flying Shark, and Green Beret. Now there’s another one to keep an eye on: Tom says AcidBottle, together with JMD(Audio), is still working on Breakthru, Data East’s 1986 side-scrolling shooter where you drive a military vehicle through enemy territory to rescue your PK430 aircraft.

For three decades, the Sega Genesis versus Super Nintendo debate has refused to die cleanly. Sega’s marketing was loud and confident, positioning the Genesis as the technically superior machine. The actual hardware, however, told a more complicated story, one where speed traded against depth, and a famous marketing phrase turned out to be entirely theoretical. Sega’s Marketing Claims Against the Real CPU Numbers Sega built its mid-1990s campaign on two phrases that became cultural shorthand: “blast processing” and “Sega does what Nintendon’t,” according to BGR. Both were designed to signal technical superiority, and both demand closer inspection. The CPU comparison offered Sega something genuine. The Genesis processor ran at 7.67 MHz against the SNES processor’s 3.58 MHz, and the Genesis carried 64 KB of RAM while the SNES carried 128 KB. That clock-speed gap was real. Genesis games did process slightly faster. But the SNES doubled the RAM, which shaped what developers could hold in memory at any given moment, and that trade-off complicated any clean declaration of winner. Blast processing is where the story gets more pointed. It was a real technology, one that would have allowed the hardware to change the color of every pixel individually. In practice, implementing it on a standard cartridge-based game was nearly impossible. No Genesis game ever used it. Games on the Sega CD add-on could theoretically have accessed it, but none did. The phrase that defined an era of playground arguments corresponded to zero actual titles. The ’90s Hunger for Hard Numbers, and Where That Appetite Went Next The Live Sports Odds editorial team, which follows competitive gaming as observers of how fan culture processes rivalry and outcome, sees something recognizable in the blast-processing episode. It captures the particular intensity of ’90s console debates, moments when kids needed a concrete figure, a clock speed, a named technology, to settle arguments that loyalty alone could never resolve. The problem was that the numbers being cited did not always reflect what was actually happening inside the cartridge slot. That same impulse, settling competitive arguments with data rather than fandom, has carried directly into the esports era. Where those earlier arguments centered on CPU clock speeds and color palettes, today’s competitive-scene followers consult an esports odds tracker to read match form and win probabilities, replacing playground boasts with measurable, updated information. Where the SNES Held a Demonstrable Lead Strip away the marketing and the SNES had a substantial graphic and audio edge in most quantifiable categories. On color, the gap was stark. The Genesis could draw from a palette of 512 colors and display up to 64 on screen at once. The SNES offered a palette of 32,768 colors with 256 displayable simultaneously. In practice, SNES games looked richer and more varied in their shading, particularly in detailed backgrounds and character designs. Resolution and sprite counts extended that lead. The SNES supported resolutions up to 512 by 448 pixels and could render 128 sprites at once. The Genesis topped out at 320 by 224 pixels with 80 sprites. That difference showed up most clearly in games with dense action or complex visual environments. Audio told a similar story. The Genesis carried 8 KB of audio RAM across six channels. The SNES packed 64 KB of audio RAM into its sound chip and offered eight channels. The Genesis sound chip did include a synthesizer, and developers used it to create soundtracks that became iconic in their own right. But sound effects and orchestral scores in multiplatform releases were generally more natural and fuller on SNES versions. The instrument samples the SNES could load into its larger audio memory gave composers more room to work. Library, Content Calls, and the Final Sales Picture Specs were part of how consumers made decisions, but library was often what closed the argument. The Genesis owned the sports game market. The SNES dominated JRPGs and turn-based titles. Those weren’t minor preferences, they represented the primary gaming identity of millions of buyers who had little interest in the other platform’s strengths. Mortal Kombat became one of the era’s sharpest case studies in platform differentiation. The Genesis version kept the blood and fatalities intact. The SNES version toned those elements down significantly. For a specific, vocal segment of the market, that content difference mattered more than any clock speed comparison. The sales figures eventually produced a cleaner verdict than any spec sheet could. The SNES surpassed 49 million units sold worldwide. The Genesis sold roughly 30 million. That gap, nearly 20 million units, reflected the compound effect of library depth, software exclusives, and the sustained reach of Nintendo’s first-party franchises across a broader demographic. Both machines shaped a generation of players. Retro consoles reproducing the SNES and Genesis experience are available today for under $150 each, meaning the debate no longer has to be theoretical. The hardware remains accessible, and the argument, refined now by three decades of spec analysis, is worth settling with a controller in hand rather than a magazine advertisement in mind.   The post Sega’s Blast Processing Was Real, But No Game Ever Used It appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

The Amiga scene is showing no signs of slowing down. After a flood of recent game stories — including Bio Menace, Project Hydron, Superfrog, and OpenTTD — there’s another one to add to the pile: Muzza and lzardo2012 are working on a mech platformer called Deimos Storm. And no, it’s not to be confused with all the other...

It’s not every day a game update lands through our MS-DOS Gaming Facebook group, but today brought a worthwhile discovery. Daniel Blake has pointed the community toward the in-development remake Outpost HD, a passionate fan-led effort to resurrect and reimagine Sierra On-Line’s 1994 space colony simulation. Built as a complete redesign of OUTPOST, it takes the core concepts and pushes them into new territory.

To mark 25 years of the original Xbox, Mattel and Microsoft have teamed up on a 3,509-piece Brick Shop premium building set that recreates the legendary console, its classic “Duke” controller, and three iconic game experiences. Priced at $329.99, the set is loaded with interactive features, hidden details, and tributes to Halo: Combat Evolved, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and Psychonauts.

Most popular video games eventually end up on platforms other than the one for which they were initially created. Obviously, there are exceptions. You wouldn’t have seen a Super Mario Bros title on a Sega console, just like you weren’t going to see the blue hedgehog on a Nintendo machine. But third-party developers often took games available on one system and either developed them alongside other platforms or ported them afterward, with varying levels of success. And when computer and console games crossed, the results were often a wildly erratic mixed bag. In this series, we’ll take a game that was ported to different platforms, pick five, and look at what went right, what maybe went wrong, and how they’re all related. Next up is Nintendo’s classic arcade hit Donkey Kong. We’ll look at the arcade original, the Atari 2600 version, the ColecoVision version, a 2-for-1 for the Commodore 64, and the 1994 Game Boy release. Donkey Kong – Arcade Arcade Shigeru Miyamoto created the original arcade version of Donkey Kong, with veteran engineer Gunpei Yokoi supervising the project for Nintendo, and the reason is somewhat unusual. At the time, Nintendo’s most recent release in North America, Radar Scope, was a technically impressive arcade game that failed to find an audience with American arcade goers. They needed a hit that would utilize the same hardware, and Donkey Kong was the answer. Originally, the game was conceptualized as a Popeye game, with the sailor saving Olive Oyl from the clutches of the evil Bluto. As the concept evolved, it shifted to a carpenter, Jumpman, saving his girlfriend, “the Lady”, from the top of an under-construction building from the giant ape, Donkey Kong. Of course, Jumpman would later become Mario (and change careers from carpenter to plumber), and “the Lady” would be known as Pauline. Donkey Kong would stick til this very day. The game takes place over four different levels. Each one is a different configuration of levels, girders, and enemies. The ultimate goal of the first three screens would remain the same: get to the top of the screen and rescue your girlfriend. The fourth screen would change it up. Instead of simply reaching your girlfriend, Jumpman must cross eight rivets. Each disappears when crossed. Removing all eight undermines Donkey Kong’s platform, causing him to fall and temporarily reuniting the couple. Finish the fourth screen, and the cycle starts over. Donkey Kong became a massive success for Nintendo, not only in Japan but in the US as well. Building the game around a story helped to draw players in. Solid platforming mechanics and a variety of gameplay mechanics kept them plunking quarters in for years. Donkey Kong – Atari 2600 Atari 2600 It’s easy to make fun of the primitive visuals of the Atari 2600 conversion of Donkey Kong, especially compared to the ColecoVision and Intellivision versions, which were out around the same time. But the real beauty of this version isn’t the look; it’s what went into making this port happen in the first place. Nintendo gave Coleco the license for Donkey Kong. In turn, they developed versions for the ColecoVision, as well as Mattel’s Intellivision and Atari’s 2600 VCS. Legendary programmer Garry Kitchen, who programmed the ColecoVision version, was the sole developer and programmer for the 2600 version. Kitchen recalls working on it during the summer of 1982 under an extremely short deadline. He had only limited assistance and access to an arcade machine for reference. The cartridge ultimately sold nearly 4 million copies. Original 2600 cartridges contained only 4KB of space. This was the primary constraint that shaped the game’s design and the sacrifices it required. The detail of all graphic elements had to be turned down. Donkey Kong looks more like a giant orange gingerbread man than a gorilla. But even with the reduction in fidelity, everything is recognizable. The other major tradeoff was fewer available screens. The 2600 version offered only two of the four original playfields: the initial girder level and the final rivets screen. While the game didn’t have the wide variety of the original, including two different screens instead of simply repeating the first screen over and over gave the game the sense of progression from the arcade original. Even though it is one of the least faithful translations of the original game, Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 is one of the most commercially important versions, having sold nearly 4 million copies during the life of the system. It showed that, while the system could not necessarily handle arcade-perfect conversions, it could produce versions that captured the original’s spirit at home. Donkey Kong – ColecoVision ColecoVision If the 2600 version demonstrates compromise, the version developed for the ColecoVision demonstrates aspiration. It is often thought, since Coleco had their own console to think of when developing Donkey Kong for home systems, that they intentionally sabotaged the other versions, the 2600 version in particular. In reality, the systems’ constraints at the time allowed them to develop a version closer to the arcade original for the ColecoVision than for Atari’s console. Even though the ColecoVision port looks nearly arcade-perfect on the surface, sacrifices were necessary to bring it home. The Cement Factory level (screen 3 of the arcade game) had to be eliminated to fit the game on a cartridge. And while the graphics are much closer to the arcade version than the 2600, many elements still have reduced detail. One of the biggest reasons that the ColecoVision version was so successful was that it was included as a pack-in game for every ColecoVision system sold. Many credit the bundle with helping drive early hardware sales. While Atari could claim that they had a version of Donkey Kong, Coleco was able to show that they had a game that actually looked the part, and a system that could provide that experience at home. Donkey Kong – C64 (Ocean) Commodore 64 Donkey Kong on the king of 8-bit computers is a tale of two developers. While Coleco owned the rights to home console conversions, Atari bought the rights to home computer ports. They created the Atarisoft label specifically for these types of arcade conversions. In 1983, they released the first version of Donkey Kong for the C64 in North America. Without the same space constraints as the home console versions, Atari could include all four screens in the C64 conversion. The graphics, while nearly as detailed as the arcade version, were stretched from the original’s vertical orientation to fill the entire home computer screen. The 64’s advanced sound capabilities allowed programmers to produce sounds and music that, while obvious versions of the originals, were recognizably Commodore creations. Three years later, publisher Ocean commissioned a new version of the game for European users, developed by Arcana Software Design. In the three years since the original’s release, developers had gotten better at creating arcade ports closer to the originals, and users had come to expect much more sophisticated versions. Ocean’s version also included all four screens. The graphics were redesigned to look closer to the originals, while the playfield had been compressed to more closely emulate the arcade’s vertical orientation. Comparatively, the Atarisoft version is generally seen as a slightly slower, more precise gameplay experience, while the Ocean version is mechanically closer to the arcade original but sacrifices some of the Atarisoft version’s smoothness. Both versions are worthy entries in the compendium and should be experienced by any 8-bit computer fans. Donkey Kong – Game Boy Game Boy This is the true wildcard of Donkey Kong conversions. Released in 1994, Donkey Kong on the original Game Boy starts out as a standard but impressive version of the arcade original. Once you make it through the fourth screen, instead of starting over at the first screen again, after Donkey Kong grabs Pauline and exits the top of the screen, Mario follows. Then the actual game begins. It turns out the original four levels were merely an introduction to the actual game, which consists of 97 levels that, while borrowing their mechanical vocabulary from Donkey Kong, turn the game into a modern puzzle platformer. Mario must find the key on each level and unlock the exit to the next. Mario gains a number of new abilities here, like backflips, handstands, wire swings, and the ability to carry and throw objects. The backflip and side-somersault ideas are particularly notable because similar moves would later appear in Super Mario 64. The level mechanics are expansive. Enemies can be stood on, thrown, and used to help Mario reach otherwise inaccessible areas. Some stages let Mario temporarily create ladders, platforms, and springs to move around the level. Mastery of these tools will be important to completing each level. While retrieving the key may be easy, getting both Mario and the key to the exit may be another challenge altogether. You can drop the key temporarily and pick it up again, but if you leave it alone for too long, it will return to its starting place, and you’ll need to backtrack to get it again. Donkey Kong for the Game Boy is also notable as the first game to support the Super Game Boy adapter for the SNES. When used with the SGB, it gains specially assigned color palettes and presentation enhancements designed specifically for television play. Unlike arcade Donkey Kong, which is fundamentally an endless score challenge, the Game Boy version is a substantial adventure and therefore includes multiple save slots. This illustrates how much game design had advanced in the 13 years since the original’s release. The post One Game, Five Systems – Donkey Kong appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

We’ve covered Galaga on Indie Retro News plenty of times over the years — from the Atari 2600 port, to the Amiga demake by Pink and Fade One, the C64 release by Arlasoft, and the excellent Amiga version by JOTD and team. Now there’s another version joining the pile: Galaga for the VIC-20 16/32K, a fast-paced tribute that keeps the classic arcade spirit alive.

The fighting game genre dates back about five decades. It has been a major pillar in the gaming industry for much of that time. The genre is built on a simple premise: two opponents fight in close-quarter, one-on-on combat. They battle across (typically) best- of-three rounds until one emerges victorious. High-stakes combat and a unique culture have defined the genre. Over the decades, fighting games have evolved by pushing technological boundaries. This is the story of how fighting games became one of the most compelling and influential video gaming genres in history. Early Fighting Games The history of fighting video games began during the 1970s when SEGA released Heavyweight Champ in 1976. Heavyweight Champ was a technically simple arcade game that pitted two boxers in a boxing ring to slog it out against each other. Read the rest of this article on page 6 by clicking here!       Be sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine for free by clicking here! The post The History of Fighting Games – by Matthew Adams appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

A Design That Never Needed a Rewrite Charles Fey built the Liberty Bell in the back of his San Francisco workshop in 1895: three spinning reels, a handful of symbols, a single payline, and a mechanism simple enough to run on nothing but springs and gravity. According to Britannica’s history of the format, Fey’s design became the template every slot machine after it copied in some form, decades before anyone had coined the word “arcade.” There was no marketing department behind it and no focus group. Just a cabinet maker who happened to also be a mechanic, solving the problem of how to make a coin drop feel like an event. That matters more to retro-gaming history than the machine’s reputation suggests. The slot reel is arguably the single design idea that survived every hardware transition our hobby has been through, mechanical to electromechanical, electromechanical to video, cabinet to browser tab, without ever changing its basic grammar. Pac-Man had to be reinvented for every console generation, rebuilt from the ground up each time the hardware moved on. The three-reel format just kept getting a new coat of paint. Compare how many design decisions from 1980 still ship untouched in a 2026 release, and the reel is close to alone in that company. From Warehouse Prototype to Everyday Habit What’s easy to miss, sitting in a room full of restored cabinets, is that the reel machines lining the back wall of any classic arcade auction aren’t a sideshow to gaming history. They’re one of its oldest continuous threads. Fortune Coin Co. built the first true video slot in a Las Vegas warehouse in 1976, swapping the physical reels for a modified 19-inch Sony television and a logic board, years before anyone was talking seriously about video games as an industry with a future. The instinct to digitize the reel came almost as early as the instinct to digitize anything else on a screen. The early video units still simulated a mechanical spin because players expected to see one, even after the physical reels themselves became unnecessary. That’s the detail worth sitting with: the hardware moved on decades ago, but the visual language Fey settled on in 1895 was strong enough that nobody has seriously tried to replace it since. Every skin, every theme, every bonus round still runs through the same three-reel window. The Reel Keeps Reinventing Itself That lineage is why the format never really stopped moving. Speaking to Gambling.com, an independent editorial authority that covers where New Zealanders can access licensed reel games, one retro-arcade collector put it plainly: “Nobody redesigns the three-reel layout from scratch. Every developer inherits it, then decides how much of Fey’s original grammar to keep.” That inheritance is why, if you play pokies online today, the reels, the payline logic, and even the anticipation before the last symbol lands still trace straight back to a wooden cabinet built for coin-operated saloons. The screen has changed. The pause before the last reel stops hasn’t. New Zealand Catches Up With the Format The market around those digital reels has kept pace with the design. New Zealand’s Online Casino Gambling Act came into force on 1 May 2026, and the government opened its expression-of-interest window for the country’s first 15 online casino licences in July, the first time New Zealand has built rules specifically for the format rather than treating it as an extension of land-based gaming law. It’s a reminder that the regulatory side of these machines is still catching up to a design that’s already 130 years old. Old Hardware, Same Idea None of that changes what’s sitting in the corner of a restoration workshop, though. A stripped-down electromechanical reel unit from the 1960s runs on the same logic as the app most people used to check their phone this week. Anyone who’s spent time cataloguing coin-op cabinets for a collection, the subject of our own coverage of coin-op arcade culture, will recognize the pattern instantly: the hardware keeps changing shape around an idea that never needed fixing in the first place. Fey wasn’t trying to invent an industry. He was trying to make a Saturday afternoon in a saloon a little more interesting. A hundred and thirty years later, that’s still the whole job.   The post The One-Armed Bandit Never Really Left the Arcade appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

A complete run through every Alex Kidd game ever made — with one notable exception: the Mega Drive entry.

Once your classic cartridge collection reaches a certain size, you’ll discover you’re finding few new cartridges at thrift stores. In order to “get their fix,” so to speak, many collectors start collecting label variations to keep their number of “finds” up. “Label variations” simply means different types of labels on the same game. For Colecovision cartridges, this might mean the difference between the labels saying the cart is “for Cole- covision” and saying it’s “for Cole-covision & ADAM.” For Intellivision, it’s probably the difference between the colorful Mattel labels and the black and white Intellivision, Inc. labels, which also featured slight name changes to avoid licensing fees (e.g. “Football” instead of “NFL Football”). For the Atari 2600, it’s more complicated. – Read the rest of the article here from Classic Gamer Magazine (courtesy of Old School Gamer)! Be sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine Digitally for free by clicking here!       The post When is a Combat not a Combat? By Lee K. Seitz appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Whoa indeed — the wild ride starts here.

Cobour has officially announced "Hydron," and even at this early stage it’s already shaping up nicely: an upcoming vertical shoot ’em up pitched as a direct love letter to Amiga classics Hybris and Battle Squadron. Built to run smoothly on the Commodore Amiga, Hydron is specifically targeting a standard Amiga 500 with a 512KB memory expansion, bringing

This is fantastic news and a straight shot of nostalgia: Rescue on Fractalus!, the ground-breaking 1985 title originally developed by Lucasfilm Games for the Atari 8-bit, Atari 5200, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Commodore 64, Color Computer 3 and ZX Spectrum, is being ported to the Amiga by Vesuri, giving fans of this all-time classic a fresh way to relive it. Just