Retrogaming

Most people probably grew up with console games; depending on your age, anywhere from the Nintendo 64 all the way back to the Atari 2600 and before. But some of us also started out in the pre-Windows world of PC gaming: a land of conventional memory, ZMODEM downloads, IRQ conflicts, and other things we don't miss. But we do miss the games, because when consoles were still maturing, the PC platform had some of the best and most entertaining games ever written. And for those of you who never played games in the pre-3D world: yes, DOS also stands for Disk Operating System. Yes, it's that thing you get when you type "cmd" into the Run bar, and yes, the whole computer used to look like that. Can you believe it?

Welcome to RGB Classic Games. This is a very simple web site about a very simple time.

VGA graphics were introduced in April 1987 by IBM with the PS/2 series. At first, they usually were not called VGA, just PS/2 graphics. It was a far bigger step than from CGA to EGA, which is probably why game designers were more reluctant to embrace them.

The enhanced graphics adapter (that's what EGA stands for) was a huge step ahead from CGA. For a short while, the PC had the pole position as far as graphics were concerned. EGA supported 16 colors out of a palette of 64 at a resolution of 640×350, or the standard 16 colors (the ones accessible in text mode) at 320×200 or 640×200.

It's been two years since we last visited this topic, which is just about enough time for the controversy over our previous selections to have just about died down. Since that last list was created, we've had some changes on the PC staff. First, Dan set sail for the Grey Havens so we asked Jason to come over from that other site. Then Charles revealed his treachery by moving to work on the 360 site so we rescued Jeff Haynes from the PS3 team and reacquainted him with the goodness that is PC gaming.

Welcome to IGN's Videogame Hall of Fame, where we recognize what we consider to be the absolute pinnacle of videogame excellence. Induction into the Hall of Fame is the most prestigious honor given at IGN as only a handful of games out of the tens of thousands released will ever make it into these hallowed halls.

The Atari 7800 never had a chance. Stacked against the dominant NES and a stubborn Master System, Atari's competitor was doomed to fail. The console was created in 1983 for full release the following year, but the faltering videogame market forced Atari to full it back. The ascension of the NES proved that consoles were still quite viable (if marketed correctly with good games), so Atari dusted off its shelved system. By the time it was released in 1986, the 7800 was saddled with tech a few years behind the curve. The comparisons between the 7800's launch library - which was also completed in 1984 - and the games burning up the NES and SMS were dismal. The system suffered little third-party support. It was eventually binned in 1991.

We've all heard of the Atari classic Space Invaders, right? Sure, of course, because we're not a pack of pop-culturally ignorant mother-scratchers. The same can be said about Dig-Dug and Breakout and Asteroids. These are the major titles, the games we all know and love to play.

How many times have you clicked on a "World's Greatest Video Games" link only to discover that most of the games listed were released within the past few months? Or even worse, the list omits such important video gaming milestones like Pong, Asteroids, or Tempest 2000?

Most people don't realize that I didn't get my start at the San Francisco Chronicle as the universally beloved pop culture critic that you know today. I was actually a Chronicle paperboy in the early-to-mid 1980s.

Released in 1977 by Atari shortly after its acquisition by Time-Warner (then Warner Communications), the Atari 2600 was only intended to be a stopgap for the company, not the industry giant that it eventually became.  However, its use of interchangable solid-state cartridges made it immensely popular with gamers tired of Pong clones, as well as early third party developers like Activision and Imagic.

Welcome ghouls and goblins to a special feature of NES Player. Well, it is that time again. A short-lived period of realization that summer has long died and we are forcibly accepting the changes that follow. Fall has made itself feel comfortable in our lives until the coldness of late November sneaks up close behind on us. This is the time of year when we celebrate autumn by placing seasonal corn stalks, haystacks, and pumpkins in and outside of our homes in the season's tradition. Let's not dance around the subject, though. We all know that October is best known for one day and one day alone. A certain holiday that has evolved through the generations -- the event we refer to as all hollow's eve.

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The Essential Guide to Classic Games

A competent repackaging of a 1999 PlayStation compilation, with a lovely 50% extra thrown in (adding up to a total of 15 games, instead of the PSOne's 10), Classics charts the early years at Konami ranging from 1982's Scramble to 1987's Contra (or Gryzor). The package contains all the usual extras such as information on the games, pictures of the game board and scans of the control sheets to ensure you know how to play. As some of the games are vertical and others horizontal, it's possible to choose from various orientations and multiplayer options on some games which, from a single cartridge, is a nice feature. But with any retro collection, we're only really interested in two questions: Are the classic games we really want included, and do they still play well today? The answer (as always) is yes and no to both questions. Let's delve into the packet of Revels and see what delights we find...

17 games including Ogre Battle, Kirby Dream Land 3 and Smash Bros.

For many of you reading this site, the arcade may well be the primary reason you got into videogames in the first place. That's certainly how it was for me back in 1980 and '81 when the sights and sounds of Pac-Man, Galaxian and Donkey Kong were hard wired into my brain.

Break out the cake and bunting and then put them on ice, or something: Nintendo's Virtual Console is almost two years old. There are currently over 250 emulated retro games available in Europe, drawn from eight different gaming platforms and covering a span of two decades. It's a daunting tombola of choice, so here's our rundown - in no particular order - of the Virtual Console games that you really should download.

It's not a hard task to conjure up a list of great Commodore 64 games when you're faced with a software library that's reportedly around the 10,000 mark. Between late 1982 and 1993, an almost constant stream of software highlights kept interest in the machine alive long after its logical sell-by date, so it's hardly surprising that the nostalgia value surrounding its finest games still runs high.

The first time I ever heard of the PC Engine was when a friend whose Chinese mate's uncle had imported one told me about it. Without having seen it, I just assumed it was some kind of Japanese computer for word processing's sake - not a console the size of a good sarnie, and certainly not one that ran cutting-edge games stored on credit cards. Any which way you sliced it, the PC Engine was something special. From five-player games and the eight-way d-pad sported by its controller to what was at the time easily the best console version of R-Type, NEC's machine was a little marvel. Shame, then, that hardly anybody in the UK had one (though, for some reason, everyone in France did).