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Pit Fighter – by Todd Friedman

Todd Friedman — Fri, 01 May 2026 17:45:19 +0000

While I agree with that, 2 years before Mortal Kombat hit the scene, there was a breakthrough game featuring live-motion capture. This game was Pit Fighter. An underrated game in my opinion, Pit Fighter captures the reality of fighting in a video game.

I remember playing this game in the bowling alley I worked at in 1990. I was blown away by the graphics and thought to myself, there is no way this can be duplicated! Of course, that turned out to be true; it was followed by so many other games. The fighting mechanics were…

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8bitDo – by William Schwartz

William Schwartz — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 15:32:07 +0000

In a retro market typically dominated by high concept\ companies advertising their commitment to nostalgia or cheap Chinese knockoffs, 8BitDo operates in a curious middle ground. Very little is known about the history of the company, save that it was founded in Hong Kong in 2013 by a group of gaming enthusiasts, although its actual operations are in Shenzhen.

Those gaming enthusiasts likewise seem surprisingly disinterested in self-promotion. Christopher Taber is listed online as the Founder/CEO\ of the company but has no social media presence. Even as a company at large, 8BitDo doesn’t leave much of a footprint. When Old School Gamer Magazine reached out to 8BitDo’s public relations, they seemed genuinely unsure how..

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Review of the GB Operator – By William Schwartz

William Schwartz — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 13:50:28 +0000

What distinguishes handheld gaming in the modern era? Strictly speaking, most games today are handheld, as mobile games are played on phones. If you want classic games on that platform, you can probably find them. But Epilogue’s suspicion – borne out by the fact that the GB Operator is chronically out of stock – is that there’s something special about those little Game Boy cartridges, many of whose save batteries are still going strong a decade after they probably should have died. Enter the GB Operator, a modest little device that promises to reconnect you with your childhood favorites.

The functionality of the GB Operator is straightforward. It connects Game Boy cartridges to your computer, allowing you to back up save files, dump read-only memory (ROMs), and otherwise manipulate the data. The technology isn’t new by any means, but it’s…..

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Berzerk – by Eugenio Agueira

Eugenio Angueira — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 07:18:39 +0000

In 1980, Stern Electronics released a multidirectional shooter game with the title Berzerk. This game was programmed by Alan McNeil and it was among the first games to use voice synthesis. Mr. McNeil stated he came with the idea of the game after having a dream in which he had to fight robots. He also named the game after the Berserker series of science fiction novels by Fred Baberhagen.

In Berzerk, the player controls a stick-figure man who is in a set of mazes that are full of robots who are in the hunt for “the humanoid.” To advance from one maze to the next, the player must escape through one of the openings located in the maze (usually opposite to where the player enters or on either the top or bottom of the maze) while destroying the robots in them. The player character has a laser weapon that can be fired in eight directions. The game has 876 unique maze layouts but there are 65,536 rooms to play through! The player can be killed if shot by any of the robots, by hitting an exploding robot, by hitting the electrified maze walls….

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Old School Gamer Magazine ranked #3 ! for Retro Magazines

Old School Gamer — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 16:24:24 +0000

Here are the current Top Retro Game Magazines according to FeedSpot

Old School Gamer Magazine has been ranked #3. Thanks to everyone for making this a top magazine in the retro gaming world. More exciting features are coming for OSG Magazine, Stay tuned.

1. Retro Gaming News

San Antonio, Texas, US
Reviews, Interviews, Articles, Product Reviews, and More! Video Game Magazine concentrates in bringing awareness to RETRO gaming enthusiasts about the things happening around this magnificent hobby; topics include new games and hardware being developed, rare items, unreleased games, as well as retrospectives, articles, reviews, interviews, new indie games inspired by classic ones, and back history of companies and games that marked the industry.

2. Retromags

Retromags is a site dedicated to the digital preservation of old video game magazines! Stay tuned to get the latest updates.

3. Old School Gamer Magazine

Dedicated to the gamer who enjoys everything from Arcade Games to playing to the gamer reliving his childhood and passing it on to the next generation.

4. Retro Dodo

Retro Dodo is the leading buyer’s guide for retro gaming enthusiasts. With over 10 years of experience testing products and more than 40 million video views, Retro Dodo is widely known for digging up the best of the best retro gaming products. With new gear posted every week, Retro Dodo plans to become the ultimate place for those with a passion for collecting and hunting down the ultimate selection of gaming items.

5. Den of Geek » Retro Games

Stay tuned to get the latest updates on retro games.

6. Retro Gaming Magazine

Find everything you need to know about retro gaming. Browse through to learn about the different facts about retro gaming and relive the classic gaming experience through the texts!

7. Retrounite

Retro Gaming News, Interviews, History, Features, and more from Europe’s Number One Retro Games Destination!

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Beatmania! – by Michael Mertes

Mike Mertes — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 18:04:26 +0000

October 1999 – A newly christened DJ named DJ Eclipse walked into a mall arcade with his high school friends and surveyed what arcade games were on the floor that home consoles couldn’t easily replicate. There were plenty of light gun games littering the floor, along with several large racing game cabinets from Namco and Sega, but towards the back of the arcade,
something had its volume cranked up as high as it could go pumping out Japanese dance music. “That has to be Dance Dance Revolution.” the DJ thought to himself. As he walked towards the arcade’s back, he did indeed spot a DDR machine, but that wasn’t the machine that was pumping out the beats. Instead, a machine next to the DDR cabinet was the culprit playing the Japanese Dance music called Beatmania.

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The Generational Gaming Gap.

Ben Magnet — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 10:41:54 +0000

It is bound to happen at some point in our lives. The time when the younger generation starts playing a game and us older/retro gamers start our sentences with, “Back in my day…” It always happens, we just don’t realize it is until it does and it happened to me some time ago. Before we get to that let me make something absolutely clear, this ISN’T an attack on the younger generation or the games the younger kids are playing these days. Full disclosure I’m only 29 years old and will be hitting the big 3-0 this November and I’m sure there are those who’ve read my articles and thought to themselves, “Well back in my day yada yada yada…” This also isn’t me pointing the finger at the older generation of gamers either, this is me realizing that I’ve reached a point in my life where I can see the generational gap among gamers, and it is interesting to say the least.

Lets start with when I first saw the gap. Some time ago I was at a friend’s baby shower and was talking to one of the guests. The subject of her son’s Switch came up and I asked him what games he was playing on it, hoping that the answer I would hear would be Zelda or Mario. Instead the young 8/9 year old said, “Fortnite” and I cringed. I tried to tell him that there are so many better games out there but he wouldn’t have it. Fortnite was his favorite and I knew there was no way I could convince him otherwise. It was on the way home when I was talking to my girlfriend about it when I realized I’ve hit the age where I can see the gap. Now I have played Fortnite before and I personally don’t like it. I know it’s one of the biggest games out right now and but it is just not my cup of tea. I don’t want to get into why I don’t like it but if you do then awesome, play what you love. The only battle royale game I do love playing is Tetris 99 because I freaking love Tetris. That aside both myself and my girlfriend realized that the times are changing. The type of games we love now aren’t really loved by the younger gamers of today. I thought back to when I started playing games and realized something that maybe that young man may realize as well. As we grow, our tastes change.

Back when I started I was a big platformer, FPS, and sports game player. I loved Sonic, Mario, DOOM, Crash Bandicoot, Mario Kart, the works. Yet if you were to ask younger me if games like Final Fantasy were good I would’ve said, “No.” Now as an adult the Final Fantasy franchise is one of my favorites of all time. My tastes in games changed. I still might play a sports game every once in a while, but now I want games with story, games with a history behind it, games that either test my skill or tell me a grand tale. That’s just what I like now. I’ll still of course play the games I loved as a kid, but the best part about video games nowadays, is that the classics are becoming more and more available to the younger kids.

One of the best things about us 80’s and 90’s kids growing up is that we’re having kids of our own. I personally don’t have kids yet, but I’ll tell you something that does give me hope for the next generation of gamers. The last few times I’ve gone to my local arcade it’s not just adults playing the old games of their childhood. It’s parent’s showing their kids the games they played when they were younger. I’ve always seen a family or two showing and playing with their kids their favorite arcade game. Showing them the tricks they know on how to get extra lives or get closer to that high score. The best part is that the kids like the games they are playing. Even though these are older, have cruder graphics, they’re still having fun. Even when I would go to a collector’s show I see families showing off and buying their younger kids retro games and telling them they played it when they were younger. It always makes me laugh when a kid realizes that their parents were playing Pokemon since before they were born.

If I ever do have kids, I’m going to teach them right so to speak by showing them how far games have come. My plan is to have them beat a few retro games (NES, SNES, Genesis and maybe 1 PlayStation game) and see how they like it before getting them into the more modern stuff. Of course there’s always a chance that my kids won’t like video games and that’s OK too. I’m sure that there are things that my parent’s liked that I don’t necessarily enjoy all that much and now, in a way, I’m experiencing what they did when I was growing up. There will always be a generational gap, and even though we may try to shrink it a little bit, it will still be there. We as retro gamers will still have our games and our game collections, and our kids will have games to play and show their kids some day. They may not be the games we like or enjoy, but at the end of the, playing games and having fun together is all that really matters.

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