Featured Posts
Timeless Games That Span Multiple Decades
Recently I’ve been getting into my retro games, or retro style independent games that I stumble on for cheap in the PS Store. They not only give me a feeling of nostalgia, but they’re also just really decent games – good dynamics and gameplay, witty dialogue and...
Games From the Trenches
When George Lucas unleashed Star Wars into theatres in 1977, he created more than a great film. He forever changed how Hollywood would design and market movies, particularly on the merchandising front. After an avalanche of Star Wars action figures, T-shirts, plastic...
RETROSPECTIVE: The Theoretical Sega CD Mini
Next in Line for the Retro Mini Treatment from Sega? In my last column I talked about the Sega Genesis Mini and the fact that Sega actually managed to trump its arch rival of years past (Nintendo) in a few key areas of the retro mini market. In the time since, the...
Online Gaming: A Brief History
The history of online gaming is very long and storied, and we could take it all the way back to packet-based LAN games on the earliest versions of personal computers. And while there’s something to be said about how local network games came before online games, we...
Howard’s Revenge By Darrin Powell
In 1982, a daring archaeologist named Indiana Jones was thrilling movie audiences across the country as he battled poisonous snakes, runaway boulders, and ruthless Nazis in a fast-paced adventure film called "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Meanwhile, at the offices of the...
Designing Yars’ Revenge (Part 1 – The Inception) – By Howard Scott Warshaw
“Talent borrows, genius steals.” -Oscar Wilde My first game for Atari ultimately became what is now known as Yars’ Revenge. This is not how it started. Originally it was assigned as a coin-op conversion of a Cinematronics arcade game called Star Castle. The key to...
Classic Gaming: Video Shelf
"Joysticks" Review by Kyle Snyder One of the things the 80s was infamous for was the glut of teen sex comedies across the movie screens of America. This trend began in 1978 with "Animal House," and continued with films such as 1981's "Porky's" and 1984's "Revenge of...
What Nintendo SHOULD Do Next: A Suggestion.
I can hear you already, "Oh great another opinion piece from Ben. Nothing we haven't heard before!" Well if you would put your torches and pitchforks down for a hot second I think I'm on to something here. Now in the past I've written how Nintendo has been knocking...
Mini Street Fighter II Arcade Cabinet Released by New Wave Toys
New Wave Toys announced the launch of the limited edition Street Fighter II X RepliCade, a fully-playable 12-inch tall replica of the original Street Fighter II: Champion Editioncabinet. This 1/6-scale arcade cabinet fully licensed by Capcom, also includes Super...
Analogue’s $200 Pocket Could Be the Ultimate Retro Gaming Portable
A multi-video-game-system portable handheld. A digital audio workstation with a built-in synthesizer and sequencer. A tribute to portable gaming. Out of the box, Pocket is compatible with the 2,780+ Game Boy, Game Boy Color & GameBoy Advance game cartridge...
NBA Jam (The book review)
Like many others in 1993, I spent a lot of money at the arcade, dropping token after token into NBA Jam. I was ten years old at the time, and our state basketball team, the Chicago Bulls were tearing through the NBA for championship gold for the third year in a row....
Entering the Digitized Era–Part3 – By Warren Davis
In Parts 1 and 2, I talked about the development of WTARG, the software I developed at Williams/Bally/ Midway to allow artists to incorporate digitized video of live actors in our games. My exploration into digitizing began in 1986, and the first version of WTARG came...
Ghostbusters By Skyler Miller
This year marks the 15th anniversary of Ghostbusters, the 1984 hit comedy starring Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson. Directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Akroyd and Ramis, the movie grossed almost $240 million in the U.S., spawning a sequel,...
People and Places: Estarland – By Ryan Burger and Billy Mitchell
In this issue of Old School Gamer, we are profiling two stores that we love for different reasons. The first, which you will read about elsewhere in this issue, is a smaller sole proprietorship. Jason took his passion and built a store that caters to like-minded...
Alien By Kyle Snyder
Being a fan of horror and sci-fi, I remember being rather excited to see a video game version of the claustrophobic cinematic masterpiece, Alien. It must be a fantastic and frenetic shoot-em-up, I thought. Probably one of those three-dimensional type games like CBS'...
Dumbo’s Flying Circus By Kyle Snyder
What happens when you take elements of the arcade classics Joust, Defender, and Kickman, toss in some Disney magic, a clever control scheme, and engaging game play? You get a delightful cocktail known as Dumbo's Flying Circus for the Atari 2600. This was intended to...
Analogue Finally Announces its Handheld: The Analogue Pocket
Analogue, king of FPGA, has, at last, pulled the trigger on a handheld to dominate over all rivals. The Analogue Pocket is, naturally, powered by FPGA (so, no emulation here) and out of the box will play Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance cartridges. The...
Convention & Event Update: July-August 2019 – By Old School Gamer Staff
Austin, Phoenix, St. Louis, Long Island, Ames, Pittsburgh, Chicago & Cleveland VIDEO GAME SUMMIT CHICAGO, IL BY RYAN BURGER Some events we go for the crowds, some for the spread of games, and some events we go to meet new people. Friends of Old School Gamer have...
Tron
Odds are, if you consider yourself a “Classic Gamer,” you’ve seen the movie “Tron” 112.4 times. That number comes from the fact that we know you scan the movie to the “Space Paranoids” scene and then straight to when Flynn gets digitized and brought into the computer...
Arcade Smash Hit Killer Queen Black Lands Nintendo Switch and PC Today
Killer Queen Black, the strategic eight-player action platformer from Liquid Bit and BumbleBear Games, triumphantly soars out of arcades and onto Nintendo Switch and PC via Discord and Steam today. The ultimate arcade eSport with millions of play sessions is finally...
Tracking Your Game Collection with Excel and Dropbox: A Simple, but Practical Guide
There are many ways one can track their game collection, be it an app or some other sort of online service. While these offer niceties like box art, market worth and social networking features so you can gloat about your collection of cardboard and plastic to other...
About Massively Multiplayer Online Games
Would you want to compete with other online players from different parts of the world in a variety of online only games? A massively multiplayer online game also known as (MMOG/MMO) refers to those video games that allow a large group of players to participate...
Brett’s Old School Bargain Bin: So You Want to Be a YouTuber – By Brett Weiss
If you know me well, you know I love a good bargain, and YouTube is about as good as it gets. If you’ve got a device to play it on, such as a modern game console or computer, a Roku device, a Blu-ray player, or a smartphone, YouTube gives you countless hours of free...
Lost Arcade Classic: Stratovox by Kyle Snyder
When I was growing up, there was a quaint little country store about a mile from home called Maloney's. In addition to candy, milk, cigarettes, and trinkets, they featured two arcade games for their patrons to play. Most of the biggest hits cycled through this little...
