The World of Vintage Gaming Video Series

[Winston]

Excellent series.

Great point made in part 1 - the attraction of classic games can be due to a much lower required time commitment and learning curve and not just nostalgia. Those are the reasons I prefer them.

ANALOG FRONTIERS - Part 1: The World of Vintage Gaming



ANALOG FRONTIERS - Part 2: Original Hardware



ANALOG FRONTIERS - Part 3: Preservation and Replication

 

[Funkworks]

Once in while, I have to find a game play video, just to hear a melody that stayed with me since the 80's. Obscure music that can't be found anywhere else.

 

[vcp]

I recently did a PCB for a guy who is making and selling new game cartridges for the Atari Jaguar system. Apparently there is a following that is creating new games for this system. I only vaguely remember the system myself; from the '90's? '80's?

 

[ewomack]

I made it about 1/4 the way through a book on programming Atari 2600 games in assembly. It was an entirely new way of thinking, even though I've been programming for over 20 years. It gave me a new respect for the programmers of the 1970s and 1980s - they had to do a lot with very little.

Apart from that, I still have a few of my originally bought Atari 2600 games in the boxes I bought them in, two of my favorites being "Adventure" and "Space Shuttle."

 

[Winston]

I recently did a PCB for a guy who is making and selling new game cartridges for the Atari Jaguar system. Apparently there is a following that is creating new games for this system.

And for nearly every other classic game system for which there is adequate technical information to write software along with all kinds of commercially sold hardware mods to implement things like RGB and even HDMI output on original hardware. Software emulation produces control lag that is unacceptable to serious players, so they want original hardware.

FPGA-based gate-level systems which emulate the original systems at the hardware level (amazing, no?) don't have that problem:

FPGA consoles:

https://www.analogue.co/
DIY hardware with open source software that uses a manufacturer's FPGA evaluation board. Depending on how the FPGA is configured, it can emulate any classic hardware including computers:

MiSTEr

https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/MiSTer
This guy covers the classic hardware mods scene:

 

[Winston]

One example of the ongoing game creation activity for old machines and consoles. This new C64/VIC20/PET game has been available for only a few months and he's already shipped 600 copies: