The authoritative retro gaming publication and encyclopedia. Breaking news, in-depth scored reviews, 247 vintage platform profiles, hardware preservation, MiSTer FPGA coverage, and modern physical cassette editions for Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.
Virtual Calais XXL opens October 3–4 at the Gambetta Forum in Calais, France, celebrating video game history, arcades, VR, robotics, and pop culture.
multi · 2026-10-03 · news
Snow-G introduces a €19.90 Supporter Edition of Void Lancer that burns each backer's name directly into their own bespoke Commodore 64 game build.
c64 · 2026-10-03 · news
Snow-G releases Void Lancer, an ambitious 6502 assembly horizontal shooter for Commodore 64 featuring biomechanical horror stages, giant bosses, and SID music.
c64 · 2026-10-03 · news
The 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge produces the 68k-MBC, an all-through-hole homebrew computer running CP/M-68K powered by a Motorola 68008 and three chips.
multi · 2026-10-03 · news
A new web-based dumper app for Ultimate 64 and 1541 Ultimate streamlines physical Commodore 64 cartridge preservation into CRT and raw BIN formats.
c64 · 2026-10-03 · news
Developer bitbarista releases DRAMscope v1.6, an open-source EasyFlash diagnostic cartridge that boots in Ultimax mode without working C64 RAM.
c64 · 2026-10-03 · news
Dante Retro Dev releases Castlevania AGA v1.0 for Commodore Amiga AGA, delivering a complete Scorpion Engine reimagining of Konami's 1986 classic.
amiga-1200 · 2026-10-03 · news
Nottingham emo outfit Pillow Fort releases debut album Indefinite, but not Forever as a physical Game Boy Advance cartridge featuring a bespoke rhythm game.
gba · 2026-10-02 · news
Atari's 1984 diagonal raster arcade game Return of the Jedi arrives on MiSTer FPGA, recreating original coin-op hardware with full analogue controller support.
multi · 2026-10-02 · news
Cross-platform engine PSXForge adds an Amiga 68K target, running real-time 3D benchmarks on 68040 and 68060 hardware with dynamic scene LOD scaling.
amiga-1200 · 2026-10-02 · news
Minimalist, hypnotic, and weirdly stressful: a strategy puzzle about line-of-sight, terrain, and resource conversion. It feels like playing chess against a lighthouse that wants you dead. Not everyone’s taste, but if it clicks, it becomes obsession material. “One more attempt” is the whole game.
spectrum · 2026-02-14 · review · Score: 78/100
Strategy as atmosphere: sweeping map, moody presentation, and decisions that feel like a winter campaign journal. It’s less about micromanagement and more about planning, movement, and morale—like chess with weather and dread. Not fast, but deeply absorbing if you enjoy thinking your way through a cold apocalypse.
spectrum · 2026-02-14 · review · Score: 76/100
A text adventure with personality, weirdness, and an AI that occasionally behaves like it’s been left alone too long. It’s famous for feeling alive—sometimes helpfully alive, sometimes “your companion just did WHAT?” alive. If you like narrative experimentation and don’t mind friction, it’s a fascinating trip. If you want clarity, it will respond with riddles and smug silence.
spectrum · 2026-02-14 · review · Score: 72/100
A school simulator where the goal is basically to survive education through mischief. It’s open-ended, comedic, and full of little routines that make the place feel alive—teachers patrol, classmates react, chaos spreads. It’s not “smooth,” but it’s charmingly systemic: you create stories, not just solutions. Also: this is the only game where detention feels like a boss fight.
spectrum · 2026-02-14 · review · Score: 73/100
A jungle maze of “where am I?” and “why is everything trying to touch me aggressively?” Exploration is the game, and it’s charmingly brutal: you learn landmarks, manage risk, and accept that confusion is part of the adventure. It’s iconic because it feels like a real expedition—just with more snakes and fewer health & safety regulations.
spectrum · 2026-02-14 · review · Score: 76/100
A licensed game that actually tries: multiple gameplay styles, gritty tone, and enough challenge to make you feel like a machine built for justice (who still falls into pits like everyone else). It’s uneven, but it’s memorable, and the atmosphere does a lot of work. When it hits, it feels cool. When it misses, it feels like you’re enforcing the law with a rubber chicken.
spectrum · 2026-02-14 · review · Score: 73/100
Street brawling with that gritty “everyone is a problem” vibe. It’s simple, satisfying, and absolutely built to make you feel like a hero until three enemies decide you’re not. The combat has a nice rhythm once you learn spacing and timing. It’s rough around the edges, but the attitude is timeless.
spectrum · 2026-02-14 · review · Score: 75/100
Manic Miner is pure 8-bit platform chaos: tiny rooms full of hazards, tight jumps, cruel timing, and the constant sense that the level designer is giggling behind the curtain. It’s a Spectrum classic because it’s simple, hard, and instantly readable. Graphics are clean and functional, and on the Spectrum that means something. Rooms are distinct, hazards are visible, and the game uses color boldly even with attribute clash shenanigans. Sound is basic but charming—classic Spectrum beeps and simple tunes that set the mood. Gameplay is the hook: tight platforming in small, contained spaces. The game’s challenge comes from precision and pattern recognition. Honesty time: it’s unforgiving, but it’s short-loop unforgiving. You restart quickly, you try again quickly. Verdict: a brutal, charming Spectrum platformer that defined an era.
spectrum · 2026-02-14 · review · Score: 78/100
The isometric landmark. It looks incredible for its time and created a whole genre vibe: spooky rooms, object puzzles, and exploration. It can feel slow and fiddly now, but as a piece of design history that’s also still playable, it’s a must. Like stepping into the blueprint of British micro gaming.
spectrum · 2026-02-14 · review · Score: 79/100
A huge mansion of platforming chaos and questionable collision. It’s ambitious, iconic, and occasionally held together with tape and vibes. Exploring the mansion is fun; falling through something you swear was solid is less fun. As an era-defining oddball, it’s still worth it—just bring patience and a sense of humor.
spectrum · 2026-02-14 · review · Score: 74/100
Commodore 64 · Arcade puzzle · Updated 2026-09-23 · development
2.0 RC1 emulator acceptance
An original C64 arcade puzzler in 6502 assembly: 200 rounds in ten worlds of ice blocks, snow-bee eggs and diamonds, with rock candy, thin ice, slick ice, hot coals, moonlight and blizzards. Accepted in VICE (PAL and NTSC) and the free demo runs in the browser emulator. Checkout stays disabled until payments are switched on.
Commodore 64, J2ME, Symbian, Windows Mobile, ZX Spectrum 48K · Stealth puzzle · Updated 2026-09-23 · development
1.0.0 emulator acceptance
A turn-based C64 stealth puzzler in 6502 assembly: 24 floors of a silent radio station, each with an amber and a cyan map, drifters, listeners and echoes, noise zones, carrier surges and timed retune windows. The whole campaign replays in VICE (PAL and NTSC) from PRG, D64 and TAP, and the free Night Desk demo runs in the browser emulator. Checkout stays disabled until payments are switched on.
Commodore 64 · Platform / cozy · Updated 2026-09-23 · development
1.1 RC1 emulator acceptance
An original C64 platformer in 6502 assembly: Pip the hedgehog crosses twelve stages in four worlds, past beetles, wasps, jam drips, magpies, chestnuts and spiders, over conveyor belts, jam floors, crumbling planks, boiler updrafts and honey walls. 289/289 emulator acceptance assertions pass in VICE (PAL and NTSC) and the free demo plays through in the browser emulator. Checkout stays disabled until payments are switched on.
Sinclair ZX81 / Timex 1000 · Arcade Shooter · Updated 2026-09-12 · development
Pass 02 · WRX renderer hot-path pass
Flicker-free WRX hires driver, 16K RAM limit and deterministic wave generation locked.
Dead Air is a turn-based stealth puzzler for the Commodore 64, written in 6502 assembly. WDSA 88.7 has gone quiet, and you work the night shift through 24 handcrafted floors of the station, from the Night Desk to the Final Sign-Off. Every floor exists twice, as an amber map and a cyan map: retune to swap the walls around you, throw the relay, reach the exit and bring back the recording. Drifters walk their rounds, listeners come for noise and echoes follow your footsteps, each hunting on its own frequency, while noise zones, carrier surges and timed retune windows tighten the later floors. Three radio modules, medals against par, production VIC-II art with animated sprites, and SID music and effects. Keyboard or joystick; runs on PAL and NTSC machines; supplied as PRG, a D64 disk image and a TAP tape image.
Target digital release price: €4.99 · c64 · emulator verification pending
Signal Box is an original Commodore 64 railway signalling game written in 6502 assembly. It is a day at the lever frame: twelve signal boxes, from a quiet country halt to Grand Junction, and every train on the timetable is yours to route. Clear the signals, set the points and lower the crossing barriers in real time, send each train to its platform and away by the right exit, and keep expresses moving past the stopping trains. Later boxes bring a level crossing with road traffic that queues, loops and overtaking, dock freight, fog where a lamp shows only under your cursor, the night mail, engineers’ trains that reverse out of a quarry bay, a four-platform city throat, points that fail for a while, and finally everything at once. Multicolour diagrams with hand-drawn scenery, a SID score and effects, a high-score table and an attract demo. Runs on PAL and NTSC machines; supplied as PRG and a D64 disk image.
€4.99 · c64
Side B is a Commodore 64 programming puzzle on tape, written in 6502 assembly. Two operators must reach their matching sockets at the same moment: you record Track A one beat at a time, rewind the tape, then drive B live while A plays back everything it did — the pads it stood on, the crates it pushed, the signals it sent. Thirty boards in three chapters: Boot Sequence (the original ten), Crossfade with one-way diodes and toggle switches, and Master Tape, which puts everything on one reel. Every board is proven solvable by the build, with a par for three stars. Hand-drawn indigo-and-pink tiles, little tape-head robots, turning reels on the deck, undo and retry, chapter passwords, a star table, an attract demo and an original SID soundtrack. Runs on PAL and NTSC machines; supplied as PRG and a D64 disk image.
€4.99 · c64
Critical Grid is a real-time power-routing game for the Commodore 64, written in 6502 assembly. As a reactor technician you steer a probe over the reactor floor, laying conduit from the cores to the terminals that need power. The bigger the live network, the more energy it earns — and the more heat it makes and the more sparks it draws. Sparks leave the vents and hunt for live conduit; a surge fizzes for a second, then burns along the network towards your terminals, so you ground sparks, fit stabilizers and cut the line ahead of the burn. When the heat tops out, every core overloads. Forty grids in five reactor families: Feedwater, Rotor Works with turning junctions, Diode Yard with one-way current, Coolant Basin with hot cores and coolant lanes, and Mirror Core, where every move is copied across the floor. Three stars a grid, family passwords, a records table and an attract demo. Chrome raster logo, hand-drawn industrial tiles tinted per family, an original SID soundtrack. Runs on PAL and NTSC machines; supplied as PRG and a D64 disk image.
€4.99 · c64
Little Programs is a programming puzzle for the Commodore 64, written in 6502 assembly and played entirely with the joystick. You never steer the creatures: you teach them. Gatherers carry food, builders bridge gaps and water, scouts leave markers — and each role gets a short program of rules, IF hands SENSOR THEN ACTION, read top to bottom every tick. Press RUN and the whole population sets off on its own, solving the habitat or failing in ways that show exactly what your program says. Forty-five habitats in five biomes: Verdant Grove, Azure Tides, Compiler Wilds, Glitch Meadows with its arrows and crowds, and Memory Garden, where old places come back in a mirror. Every par is proven by a solver, so three stars — solved, par rules, par time — is always possible and never easy. Biome passwords, a star table and an attract demo that writes and runs its own program. Sunny raster logo, hand-drawn multicolour habitats and creatures, an original SID soundtrack. Runs on PAL and NTSC machines; supplied as PRG and a D64 disk image.
€4.99 · c64
Super Sean 007: Legend of the Seven Gems is a role-playing game for the Commodore 64, written in 6502 assembly. On Sean's birthday Xelar the Bald Wizard shatters the Village Crystal of Asteria and scatters its seven Gems across the land. Take up the Crystal Sword and bring them home through eight regions — Birthday Village, Mushroom Meadow, the Crystal Cave, Petro Plains, Ruushwood, the Moon Shrine, the Ancient Ruins and Bald Moon Tower — the last seven streamed from disk, each with its own tiles and monsters. Four friends join Sean on the way, and each of the five has a skill: Sean's Crystal Slash, Dave's Gadget Guard, Petroman's Iron Guard, Ruush's Twin Arrows and Haraku's Moon Blessing. Turn-based battles where every boss has a tell to read — Moldor's spores, the Guardian's shield, the Titan's furnace, the Treeguard's regrowth, the Shade you cannot touch, Guardian Prime's dials, the Echo's mirror and Xelar's Bald Beam. Puzzles, chests, a shop and an inn, save to disk and Continue. Gold raster logo, hand-drawn multicolour regions and monsters, a ten-song SID score. Runs on PAL and NTSC machines; supplied as a D64 disk image.
€4.99 · c64
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