Retrogaming

Retrogaming, also known as classic gaming and old-school gaming, is the hobby of playing and collecting older computer, video, and arcade games. These games are played either on the original hardware, on modern hardware via emulation, or on modern hardware via ports on compilations. Participants in the hobby are known as retrogamers in the United Kingdom, and classic gamers, or old school gamers in the United States. Similarly, the games are known as retrogames, classic games, or old school games. Retrogaming is often linked to, although not the same as, indie gaming, the hobby of playing games that are not published by any conventional publisher.

Games

Most popular retro games are those produced around the 1980s, and include games for the Commodore 64, MSX, ZX81. ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and the Nintendo Entertainment System. Arcade games are also popular, especially early games by Konami, Sega, Atari, and Williams Electronics. Games in this era were frequently attributed to individual programmers, and many retro gamers seek out games by particular developers, such as Eugene Jarvis, Dave Theurer, Jeff Minter, Tony Crowther, and Andrew Braybrook. Some games are played on the original hardware; others are played through emulation, and in some cases entirely new versions of the games are written (so-called "retro remakes").

As well as playing games, a subculture of retrogaming has grown up around the music in retro games. Since older hardware did not have the facility to play music CDs or sampled music, the music in many retro games had to be synthesised on the fly by the game hardware; writing music for these platforms therefore became a hybrid of traditional music composition and programming. One of the most popular genres is SID music, music written to be synthesised by the Commodore 64. As with programming, attribution to individual composers is commonplace and more easily assigned; popular composers include Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway and Chris Hülsbeck.

Various compilations of retro games have been published for modern video game consoles in recent years. Examples include compilations of retro games by Sega, Taito, Midway, Capcom, and Namco. Retrogame compilations for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox usually feature 10 to 30 games each. In addition, "plug-and-play" units (simple systems that look like a game controller and feature built-in games) released in North America have featured retrogames by Electronic Arts, Sega, Atari, and several other game publishers. Moreover, illegal (unlicensed) "plug-and-play" systems featuring retro games for the NES have made their way to shops all over the world from China in recent years. The British based company Alten8 has in the recent past licensed nearly 600 retro games (such as the first ever isometric 3D game Ant Attack, and also what are recognized as the first ever commercial games by Scott Adams), and is now starting to release these on formats such as PC, GBA, and Wii, with legally licensed emulators for machines such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga computers. Console makers now allow players to purchase retro games though online services such as the Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Store. The Sega Mega Drive Handheld which contains 20 Sega MegaDrive games, was also recently released.