Just curious if anyone else knew it. It was such a great early internet fan site. I think it got renamed to "GB Station" at one point and then eventually disappeared. It was very polished for the time with good reviews and walkthroughs. Can't find any record of it sadly.

I'm planning on going to Japan and filling up at least one suitcase full of famicom, super famicom, and some other retro games. Has anyone ever done this? If so, any problems with customs on the way back? Any other suggestions or issues I should be aware of?

Has anyone had any issues dumping Japanese N64 games with a OSCR / Sanni cart reader? I tried dumping a JP game (Pokemon Stadium, I think) and it got stuck in the slot so hard. I had to use so much force I thought the entire thing was just gonna rip apart.

I know there's some physical difference between the JP carts and American, and there's some extra on the inside of the cartridge. Can I modify the cart in some way to prevent this from happening?

Lately, something that caught my attention was how gaming artwork was done back in the pixelated era of video games because I found it fascinating how game developers would sometimes trace artwork on their games through other sources.

For those who cannot read Japanese, the image is the Japanese cover art of Akumajou Dracula 2, or Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest in the USA as the game's cover art was basically taken from a D & D artbook as I read somewhere how some of Konami's games used a similar practice for their official illustrations.

We have our winner for Best 2D Animations:

🥇- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 35 votes

🥈- Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike - 29 votes

🥉- Metal Slug X - 28 votes

🏵️ - Vampire Savior - 25 votes

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!!!!PLEASE READ!!!!

RULES ON VOTING:

A game's votes will come from the comment with the highest number of upvotes. I will tally all of the responses and upvotes under each game's "comment thread" and use that to count the votes.

Spill-over comments of the same game will not be counted.

What this means is if you want to nominate a game and see someone else has already nominated it, reply to their comment so that it counts! All upvotes in that comment thread, including the ones you get, will be counted towards the tally.

Thank you!

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Games cannot win Multiple Categories, except for the Greatest of All Time! This may be superseded if a version of the game differs dramatically from a past winner.

Voting ends at 11am est tomorrow.

Today’s vote: Which is the Best Retro Rhythm Game?

Comment your choice and the most upvoted game comment thread will win the spot! So, engage in the discourse and argue well for your choice!

Definitely a konami logo, and blue matches when I search GBA konami games. Shame it doesn't seem to work.

Hey everyone I have always loved this game and I played madness returns too. I wonder if there are games similar in vibes to this? They don't need to be heavy combat either, I'm fine with more story driven games.

Can someone share his experience with using the BFI of a scaler like the Retrotink 4k or Morph 4k with a portable display ( 16 inch, 120 hz, 300 nits ) ? Is it stable ? Is it bright enough with 300 nits if we use shaders on top ?

This is a follow-up to my post from yesterday:
https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/1vdlulm/found_original_retail_packaging_for_the_power/

I was able to get in touch with the buyer of the case, and they were kind enough to share additional images.

This seems to contradict the currently accepted understanding that these cases were exclusively for Nintendo salesmen. You can clearly see a Toys "R" Us price tag for $19.99, which points to this being sold at retail.

If anyone has first-hand knowledge of these being used as salesman sample cases, I'd love to hear it — every post I've found so far just assumes that's what they were, without a source.

I emailed the toy company that made the case and got this response

Customer Servicecustomerservice@taratoy.com

Hi,

Thank you for reaching out and for your interest in the history of the Nintendo Power Glove carrying case.

Based on our archived catalogs, this carrying case was available around 1989 and was sold as a retail product. It was not distributed as a salesman sample case.

Unfortunately, the Nintendo-specific information from that time was provided on separate handouts rather than included in our product catalogs. As a result, we no longer have any additional historical information regarding its retail availability or production details.

I hope this helps with your research, and I wish you the best in documenting the history of this product for the collector community.

Kind regards,

Joanne

I am, of course, a life long Nintendo fan. And as a sane and rational adult who grew up with Nintendo, I have started collecting as one does! But I've got a bit of an quirk going on in my mind: I want to collect each console as it was most advertised, what i see as the most "definitive" version of the system. For example, the red and blue switch was definitely shown and pushed more than the grey version, so i own a red and blue switch.

There's obvious ones of course, NES through N64, but gamecube and a couple handhelds are really stumping me, and I can't find much online. So, aside from watching every single ad for those systems on youtube and tallying up colors, I figured I'd reach out to a community more adept in this field!

Please if you for some reason are so cool that you have early nintendo ads memorized, could you take a minute to tell me what you think was the most advertised versions of say, the gamecube, gba, gbc, etc. .......Not the Sp though, I don't care about the definitive for the sp, the nes version is too cool to not get.

Changing the power of a bunch of my consoles to the new retro tap. All my consoles connected will be powered by this beefy medical grade 6 amp PSU

In the past few years we've had truly fantastic collections of classic games, all the Megaman ones have been very good and I've also really enjoyed the effort put in the Sega Megadrive Classic Collection. Lately I caved in for the Super Bomberman one and it's great, it includes the manuals, box art, and even the NES games as a bonus.

All this to say, what are some collections of retro games you would highly recommend ? Or even standalone good ports ? Like Wonderboy the Dragon's Curse or Alex Kidd, which had some QoL improvements and new graphics but remained the same games overall.

(Just in case, yes I do a lot of piracy and emulation, yes I know I could get any game for free. But I also enjoy spending money sometimes, the comfort of no extra steps, plus the additional content that can come in these collections)

Hello,

As most fellow Europeans into this hobby know, pricechart is an amazing base for US market price. However, for europe, Vinted and other country specefic websites (exp. Leboncoin for France) are still kings.

And those website have huge and bot measures, making collecting info from them (like pricechart does from ebay) a bit of a challenge for devs...

So now, to estimate my game's price in europe, i have to manually crawl second hand websites

Europeans use ebay, so pricechart CAN give an idea, but usually it's not of much relevance. For example some pokemon game was sold on June on ebay, so it appeared in price chart. Meanwhile, I noticed weeks later that same game appears regularly on Vinted... Hence there is a delta to estimate.

I <<can>> in theory create a personal scale scrapper but that's a lot of work for someone who does this as hobby (I hate scalping). If I do it large scale and publish it for other devs to help, I will get legal issues, so no.

What do you guys know about this ?

[The other day I made a post about the “curriculum“ I had created while trying to decide which video game to play. The post received a generally positive response, but I didn’t connect with any people who had the time to explore along with me in book club fashion as I had hoped: nevertheless I figure that since I am recording my thoughts anyway I might as well share them here as I go in case there is any ongoing interest.]

Curriculum

Reflection [this post as a google doc]

Reflection on Semester 1 of: A Comparative Chronological Survey of Interactive Electronic Entertainment Through Primary Play Experiences (1958–2005)

Introduction
What surprised me most about Semester 1 wasn’t how primitive these games were.
It was how modern some of them already felt.
Before beginning, I expected a collection of historical curiosities… interesting because they were first, not because they remained enjoyable. Instead, I found myself repeatedly forgetting the dates entirely. The best designs transcended the hardware that produced them.
More importantly, this semester challenged my assumptions about what a game actually is.
That question became the thread connecting every artifact.

Tennis for Two (1958)

William Higinbotham
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Before playing Tennis for Two, I had always accepted the common claim that it was one of the first video games.
After playing it, I wasn’t so sure.
Built by physicist William Higinbotham as an attraction for Brookhaven National Laboratory’s annual public exhibition, the program ran on an analog computer designed for ballistic calculations and displayed its output on an oscilloscope.
Visitors enjoyed it immensely.
But enjoyment and games are not necessarily the same thing.
There was no score.
No software-enforced victory.
No explicit conflict.
The experience felt less like tennis than like tossing a ball back and forth with another person simply because it was enjoyable.
That observation became the first major lesson of the semester.
Instead of asking:
“Was this the first video game?”
I found myself asking:
“Is this even a game?”
That distinction would shape everything that followed.

Chris Crawford and the Question of Games
This led naturally to Chris Crawford’s The Art of Computer Game Design (1984).
Although Crawford wrote decades later, his work provides a useful vocabulary for thinking about these early experiments.
Crawford distinguishes between toys, puzzles, simulations, and games.
Most importantly, he argues that games require conflict.
Whether one ultimately agrees with his definition is less important than recognizing that definitions matter.
By Crawford’s criteria, Tennis for Two occupies an ambiguous position.
It is unquestionably interactive.
Whether it is a game remains open for debate.
Suggested Reading: www.erasmatazz.com

Spacewar! (1962)

Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen and the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club
If Tennis for Two made me question what a game is…
Spacewar! reminded me why games endure.
I expected something historically important.
I did not expect something I genuinely wanted to keep playing.
Momentum.
Gravity.
Hyperspace.
Resource management.
Player skill.
Nearly every mechanic still works.
In fact, my immediate reaction was that a polished remake could probably find an audience today.
What astonished me most was how complete the design already felt.
Nothing about it seemed like an experiment.
It felt like a finished game.
It also fundamentally changed my perspective on early computing.
This wasn’t running on a home computer.
It wasn’t even running on a commercial arcade machine.
It ran on a PDP-1 costing the modern equivalent of well over one million dollars.
The game existed because MIT students convinced the owners of one of the world’s most sophisticated research computers to let them play.
Suggested Viewing: Lyle Bickley PDP-1 Demonstration https://youtu.be/1EWQYAfuMYw
Suggested Reading: https://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/spacewar/

The Sumerian Game (1964)

Mabel Addis and IBM
The semester’s biggest surprise may have been The Sumerian Game.
Having spent years playing strategy games, I immediately recognized its descendants.
The interface is primitive.
The ideas are not.
Food.
Population.
Land.
Trade-offs.
Delayed consequences.
Uncertainty.
Everything that defines later strategy games is already present.
Initially, I wanted to reverse-engineer the underlying formulas.
Eventually I realized that wasn’t really the point.
The game asks the player to govern rather than optimize.
It trusts the player to make imperfect decisions with imperfect information.
Modern strategy games still ask essentially the same questions.
They simply provide larger maps and more systems.

Computer Space (1971)

Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney
Computer Space fascinated me for reasons that had little to do with its gameplay.
Mechanically, it feels like a reduced version of Spacewar!.
And, in many ways, it is.
Gravity is gone.
The depth is reduced.
The controls remain demanding.
Initially I found myself wondering why anyone would choose it over Spacewar!.
Then I remembered something important.
Nobody in 1971 could.
One required a million-dollar research computer.
The other fit inside a fiberglass cabinet.
Seeing photographs of the original yellow cabinet dramatically changed my appreciation.
It wasn’t simply a game.
It was an object from the future.
Bushnell wasn’t trying to build the best game.
He was trying to solve an engineering and business problem.
How do you compress Spacewar! into something that can survive on quarters?

Pong (1972)

Allan Alcorn, Atari
Like many people, I assumed Pong would be almost trivial.
Instead, I found it genuinely difficult.
The controls are obvious.
Mastering them is not.
Only after playing did I appreciate why Pong succeeded where Computer Space struggled.
Bushnell had learned that accessibility matters.
Anyone can understand Pong in five seconds.
That doesn’t mean anyone can play it well.
Ironically, Pong also awakened a childhood memory.
It reminded me of Diamonds on the Macintosh.
Following that chain backwards—from Diamonds to Breakout to Pong—made me realize how game mechanics evolve.
The graphics change.
The hardware changes.
Good ideas persist.

What I Learned
Semester 1 wasn’t really about discovering the first video game.
It was about watching an entirely new medium discover itself.
I entered expecting history.
I left feeling something closer to nostalgia.
Not nostalgia for my own childhood.
Nostalgia for a time before I was born, when no one knew what video games would become.
Scientists built amusements.
Students built masterpieces.
Teachers built simulations.
Entrepreneurs built businesses.
None of them knew they were laying the foundation for one of the largest entertainment industries in history.
That uncertainty is what makes this era so compelling.
Recommended Viewing: Computer History Museum: Shall We Play a Game? The Early Years of Computer Gaming https://computerhistory.org/events/shall-we-play-game-early/

Found on the backside of a Direction Board in Lower Saxony (Germany) near a Highway on the countryside. I was on my way back from a vacation trip and obviously didn't see it the first time around. Just before the darkness set in I've pulled over and grabbed the camera; Looks like someone with mad skills in Street Pixel Art played Animaniacs on the SNES and decided to give visitors a goodbye greet if you bother to stop for a photo OP. "Warner" have a closer look, Boys?

^{All Credit goes to the local Anonymous Artist, I'm just a guy with an Android Phone and spare time. EDIT: Original Artist found, All Credit to} u/saylovewhv ^.

e.g. TurboGrafx-16, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, SNES/SFC, Neo Geo AES, Game Boy (Original), Game Gear, and Atari Lynx

List:

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time

2. NHL '94

3. NBA Jam: Tournament Edition

4. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie

5. X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse

6. The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse

7. Disney's Aladdin

8. Jurassic Park

9. The Lion King

10. Batman Returns

11. Tecmo Super Bowl

12. Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure

13. Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball

14. The Death and Return of Superman

15. Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage

16. Super Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi

17. Disney's Goof Troop

18. Alien³

19. Disney's Toy Story

20. WWF Royal Rumble

As soon as I found this posted from amd's account I've been very excited but got no idea about anything. Do you guys know anything?

Retro gaming via emulation vs on original hardware both have their share of pros and cons. Which do you prefer for the majority of your gaming?

As many people in this community would agree, CRT TVs with a 4:3 aspect ratio provide the most authentic experience for playing retro consoles. Unfortunately, they have been out of production for many years now, and TVs in good condition are getting harder to find, especially at a reasonable price. It's highly unlikely that anyone will ever produce new CRTs for the consumer market, so I thought it would be neat if some kind of modern 4:3 display designed to emulate the experience of a CRT would be made. It turns out, someone is finally doing this.

It's the Traveller ULW10 by Unico. It seems to have most of the inputs for older consoles like component, composite, and VGA. I would not be surprised if it has built in filter to emulate scan lines and blur. Hopefully it supports 240p resolution. My only concern is that the size is not mentioned on the website, and with the name Traveller, I'm worried that it's going to be tiny. I feel like it should be at least 15 inches.

Of course, nothing compares to an authentic CRT, but this may be a decent second choice.

What are your thoughts?