http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/kotaku.com.png http://kotaku.com/tag/retro gaming http://kotaku.com/tag/retro gaming

If you're lucky or just old, you can remember the classic stand-up arcade era, where Pac-Man machines stood next to Defender and/or Donkey Kong and people lined up for the chance to play. Those same machines have become collector's items now and there's money—and stories—attached to each one. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5864519&view=rss&microfeed=true

We live in an age of gaming gorgeousness. Gamers' lives nowadays are filled with fancy normal mapping and illumination engines, powered by slickly encased hardware that outputs onto super-sharp screens. In short, there's a lot of thought given to aesthetics in the present day. But, it hasn't always been this way and an upcoming art show will showcase the uglier—yet vitally important—gaming hardware of yesteryear. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5859633&view=rss&microfeed=true

I've seen many a lovely retro gaming room in my lifetime, but this one from Netherlands resident donkey*kong makes me want to lay my head down on his Famicom pillow and quietly pass away. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5437030&view=rss&microfeed=true

It's become something of a tradition ‘round the Tower to observe Easter with, what else, lists of Easter eggs. So here is my dirty half-dozen, from well before the 8-bit days. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5208983&view=rss&microfeed=true

Reader Adam E. and his co-workers decked the office with 8-bit jolly, dressing up their manager's cube to look like the castle at the end of Super Mario Bros. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5115064&view=rss&microfeed=true

There's a really nice (lengthy) article over at Adventure Classic Gaming that takes a look at puzzles in (as you can probably guess) adventure games, and how those forms have seeped into other genres. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5109696&view=rss&microfeed=true

Along with 'legitimate' means of preservation, there's the whole specter of abandonware, which Les Chapelle takes a look at over at the Escapist. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5100108&view=rss&microfeed=true

Remember Portal for the C64 emulator? Reader burgerk1ng has a nice find to go with it: "Gang Garrison II" by "Faucet" software - an 8-bit, fully multiplayer "de-make" for PC gamers. I am ... retarded close to going out and getting a copy of Windows and Boot Camp, which would make this the most expensive free game in the history of anything. On the other hand, maybe it's a good thing I don't have a PC, as my expectations could only shattered. Gameplay video and links on the jump. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5055901&view=rss&microfeed=true True, this mod could have been done with pretty much any small plastic box, but choosing a Nintendo Entertainment System to house a retro gaming PC is the kind of crowd pleasing coup-de-modding that is difficult to surpass, save by hollowing out a Vectrex or performing electronic taxidermy on an actual anthropomorphic hedgehog. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5038306&view=rss&microfeed=true

Our disturbed friends at Retro Sabotage are all suspender-popping about their 20th sabotage since the site launched shortly before New Year's Eve. Remember, these are flash games that play normally (or close to it) before something goes horribly, comically wrong and beyond your control. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5016475&view=rss&microfeed=true

Wired's Chris Kohler helps get you up to speed—on his own journalistic merits, mind you—on videogaming's early copycats. From the numerous Pong imitators to mercifully unpopular games such as Gangly Man (a painfully obvious Pac-Man clone) and Golden Axe Warrior (Sega's sorry attempt at cashing in on Golden Axe's pedigree and The Legend of Zelda's gameplay), he highlights the worst of the worst of gaming's half-assed doppelgangers. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=152784&view=rss&microfeed=true

Cruising through Osaka's Den-Den Town on a Saturday, I ducked into an otaku second hand shop. Regular folks rent out these glass boxes in a shop and sell their goods. It's like Ebay, but you gotta give a cut to the dude that runs the store. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=129125&view=rss&microfeed=true

Fossil's ill-fated and poorly thought out PDA wristwatch bit the dust, but that hasn't stopped the company's latest venture: retro video game watches. Partnering with Atari, the watcher maker is rolling out tickers featuring vintage Centipede and Asteroids style graphics. As always, Atari is in it for the money as a company rep. tells Eurogamer that the former game giant is "committed to 'mining the vault' for new revenue streams." That aside, this actually does sound like a cool idea. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=128063&view=rss&microfeed=true

Americans tend to imagine Japanese arcades as something out of Blade Runner. The truth is that most of them look like they are circa late-1980's yakuza films, filled with skinny thugs smoking cigs and pounding each other in Street Fighter. Sure, these arcades are not hi-tech or futuristic, but still cool nonetheless. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=126880&view=rss&microfeed=true

Stop dreaming Mario fans, Nintendo won't be offering its back catalog for the Revolution without a price. Eurogamer reports that Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said Nintendo had no intention of releasing its back catalog games free of charge. Some of the games could end up as bonus content or promotional material, but Iwata and Nintendo aren't talking about what will be in this catalog or how it will be distributed. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=126722&view=rss&microfeed=true

In the past we built monuments to commemorate our favorite pasttimes. Now some of us build... chairs. Craftster.org user boingo82 spent over a year reupholstering this chair, finishing with one of the coolest homages to the NES I've seen. All we need now is a cardboard crown from Burger King and we can coronate the king of Nerd-dom. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=114140&view=rss&microfeed=true

Way before R.B.I. Baseball rocked the house that Ruth built, there were low-tech baseball board games like Yakuban Deluxe. Living up to its name, fastballs appear from underneath the pitcher s mound, hitters weld metal bats, gutters gobble up fouls, and fielders can be arranged according to your strategy. Granted, the players can t round bases, track down fly balls, or do much of anything, but they do look like they were designed for Super Nintendo. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=112079&view=rss&microfeed=true

Retro gaming craze or simply folks unloading used units? Either way, I found a Sega 16 (sans Alterd Beast and controllers). Here's a system that threatened to run Nintendo into the ground at one time, but is now going for a whopping 500 yen. To give you an idea of how much 500 yen is, you can't even buy a McTeriyaki Burger with fries and a melon soda for that chump change. Maybe, you can buy a McTeriyaki Burger and fries, but definately no melon soda. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=112067&view=rss&microfeed=true

I friggin love this Flickr group. Someone's compiled a photo collection of old school portable electronic games. The collection includes photos of those mini-arcade machines put out by Coleco and Galaxian 2, a two-player game that I got as a birthday present when I was 12. Man, I loved that game. You could play it solo or have a second player control the bad guys, which was a first for the early 80s. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=111551&view=rss&microfeed=true

The wireless NES controller More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=109830&view=rss&microfeed=true

Getting your retro gaming on from the bathroom just got a lot more convenient. Messiah (what an appropriate name!) has developed 2.4GHz wireless controllers for SNES, NES and Famicon. Even players too lazy to dig out their ancient and dusty platforms get lucky with a USB NES controller. Can you really afford not to play Castlevania 2 while nuking bean burritos? I think not. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=108006&view=rss&microfeed=true

If there were ever an official video game Olympics (getting all those gamers out of their houses would never happen), speed trials would probably be one of the most anticipated events. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=108001&view=rss&microfeed=true Pinball is on its last cigarette scarred, wobbly legs. Stern Pinball is the only company in the world still making them, and they turn out a paltry 10,000 each year. The Chicago-based company still hands makes each Pinball, which takes about three days of meticulously piecing together 3,500 or so parts. The company s owner says that once his company closes up the world can say goodbye to pinball. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=38635&view=rss&microfeed=true Would you like a burger and fries with that? Burger King is giving away handheld versions of four classic Activision games in their new Kids Meals. You can get Kaboom!, Barnstormer, Grand Prix and Tennis. To land the games all you have to do is pry it out of the nearest 5-year-old s greasy hands or just bid on this eBay auction. The site also has some cool desktops featuring the blocky art from the games. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=32442&view=rss&microfeed=true

Alas poor Dreamcast! I knew it reader, a console of infinite possibility. Just why did a game system that was, by most accounts, years ahead of the competition, die a lonely and premature death? Inside Pulse has a great retrospective of the final days of Sega s last console, examining how the company managed to kill off a system chockfull of so much innovation and with near-unheralded game support. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=30085&view=rss&microfeed=true

Watch the videos of Gary Whelan, the man who wasted two hours a day for a quarter of a century playing Galaxian, beating the world record in the game. You can also watch him avoid an in-game near death and hear him sigh in relief as the game wraps up. No videos yet of him hanging himself after realizing he s wasted his entire life, but you can kind of see that twinkle of realization in his eyes in this photo. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=28616&view=rss&microfeed=true

A company actually paid $32.5 million for the Commodore brand. Yeahronimo Media Ventures picked up the classic computer name from Tulip who had used it to create a short-lived run of Windows-based PCs and a popular plug-and-play joystick. The C64 Direct-to-TV unit features 30 classic Commodore games and just recently started shipping to retailers. I m sort of surprised that Tulip only managed to get one joystick out of their license in seven years and then decided to sell. Commodore is a great nostalgia brand that deserves to live on. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=28581&view=rss&microfeed=true 1Up rounded-up a bunch of punk-ass kids to mock gaming history in their second installment of Child s Play. The six kids, aged 10 to 13, got a chance to sit down and play such classics as Star Wars, Defender and Adventure and then shit on them. Here s a little outtake from their time with the first-ever role playing game, Adventure: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=28534&view=rss&microfeed=true I just found an interesting way to kill 5 minutes and nine seconds: Beat Super Mario Brothers. Treavor Finishes Everything In Less Than Six Minutes Seguin whipped through the game s first level in 21 seconds and then went on to tear through the rest of the game in a total time of 5:09.60. Rumors already abound about an elusive second that can still be cut from this near perfect time and I m sure hordes of fat men wearing Star Wars T-Shirts are already sitting in their couches, bowl of Cheetos at hand, trying to find it. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=28466&view=rss&microfeed=true