Retro triumphs: People who love old consoles are creating new games for them

6 min read

Nostalgia is a powerful selling point. And if not tell that to the NES Mini that console that right now is getting complicated by the brutal demand. The success has led to revive other old consoles, but do not come back alone.

The truth is that love for these machines has made their user communities keep them alive by fervent activity that is going beyond some time: there who is dedicated to program new games for these old consoles and distributes those original cartridges. Hallucinatory!

Someone is currently programming in assembler for the Mega Drive

This is the case of ‘Tanglewood’, a game for the Sega Mega Drive (aka Sega Genesis) will arrive in November 2017 and whose developer, a Briton named Matthew Phillips, has spent five years working on it.

For this devotee Mega Drive user the project returns him to his childhood, and he is following all the steps that would follow a developer of the time to carry out the project. In fact a console for developers who took a year to use bought. It had to buy several cables and components, besides the manuals and even a software license to be able to use that console legally.

Retro triumphs
Image Source: Google Image

The game, says Phillips, is a platform game inspired by ‘Limbo’ and the original version of the game ‘King Leon’ that appeared for the Mega Drive. The development is being frequently and with great detail commented in a blog that tells how that programming in assembly language is.

The game in fact is already beginning to be able to book through Kickstarter (40 or 50 lbs), and Phillips expects this game to be the trigger for a tendency to make more and more games are developed for Old consoles. In fact this trend exists.

Today’s games for consoles from before yesterday

The case of ‘Tanglewood’ is in fact an example of how programmers and developers who enjoyed those old consoles want to return to recapture the charm that had such machines. What better way to do it than through the development of new games.

It is what companies that make games like retro engage Good Deal Games and Piko Interactive. It’s what told us this article from the Animal magazine in which they talked about how their developers were creating games for Atari, Super Nintendo or even the Virtual Boy .

Michael Thomasson, creator of Good Deal Games, became famous for recording Guinness as the world’s largest video game collector (he had 12,000 in early 2014), and his fondness for this market is so surprising that despite having put in launched this project, does not charge a euro for him : everything that is entered is reinvested to develop new titles.

Eleazar Galindo is a Mexican-born boy who has collaborated with Thomasson after creating Piko Interactive and developing games for the Atari Jaguar, NES, Super NES, Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) or Gameboy Advance. The games are not exactly cheap dollars -35 for a game for the Mega Drive, $75 if you want the ‘Custodian’ for the Atari Jaguar but the truth is that this niche has its adherents.

Even consoles collector’s almost like the Nintendo Virtual Boy have been recovered for this type of purpose. Only 22 games were marketed for this “rarity”, but the online community Planet Virtual Boy is made up of fans of a platform for which they have created new games like ‘Mario Combat’ or ‘Death Chase’.

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One of them, dubbed Thunderstruck, claimed that the Virtual Boy “has great unused potential as it was canceled very soon. Adding new games to your library makes us feel like we’re doing a little more justice to this console.” This German developer earn some money with your game for VB, ‘Faceball’, but as he says, the reason is not money, but win back the charm of these platforms.

There are other companies specifically formed for this purpose, and Super Fighter Team is dedicated to the Sega Mega Drive continues to have the same charm – or more- than the past. Games like ‘Beggar Prince “sold 1,500 copies, which exceeded all your expectations, and have since been dedicated to develop 11 games.

Brandon Cobb, the creator of that project, commented how everyone in this segment shares an idea: “There is some art and discipline in creating games for machines with limited hardware. You cannot over saturate in content, and you cannot a soundtrack licensed rather than a digital soundtrack handmade. To do something really great you have to work hard, and do besides heart. That’s what a lot of players want to keep watching, and we are happy to offer it”.

The original retro experience is different from the emulation

Those who enjoy these games also do so in a different way. It is something similar to those still enamored with vinyl – a format, which incidentally is again on the rise, whether, or not posture -: the experience is totally different.

This is what explained in Gaming Rebellion, where a user had his own experience in the world of video games and how what he wanted was to enjoy the games of yesteryear on the platforms of yesteryear.

The emulation that is valid for many users was not for him, and like many others ended up becoming a follower of retro informatics. Old consoles with its peripherals He bought and connected to old TVs with old cables because that is precisely what I wanted. Not to mention the fact that he could play those games legally because he had bought them physically, another criticism that can be made to the segment of the emulation in which the traffic of ROMs is indiscriminate. For that user:

When you use an emulator to play the ROM image from a digital list, the soul of the game is lost. What you’re playing is a copy of what that was. […] Using the original hardware not only helps you build a bridge with your past, but allows you to live in the present and the past at the same time. It is like a time machine that can only be created with the authenticity of the original hardware. There is no code, however precise, that can replicate that.

That is the general feeling of a community that is gradually gaining more followers and is miraculously rescuing from the past platforms that resist being forgotten. Blessed nostalgia, dear readers. Blessed nostalgia.

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