Dan Mons

Interview with eXo: PC, MS-DOS and Windows game preservationist

“Preservation” is a term we hear frequently in the retro video game community, and one that is extremely important to the art form of video games.  Despite being such a young industry compared to other art forms such as novels, music or film, video games have arguably been some of the most difficult content to […]

Alex Mitchell

Hidden Palace Shares Treasure Trove of Prototypes

In their ongoing quest to document video game prototypes, hardware revisions, source code, artwork, and all kinds of other development ephemera, the preservationists over at The Hidden Palace have released 178 prototype game builds—30 of which are from games that never saw a commercial release! These releases are mostly from older cart-based systems, ranging from the […]

Dan Mons

Retro scans galore

A fantastic individual who goes by the username “ForeverMozart” on Reddit, and “GlobalVillageCoffeehouse” on imgur, continues to upload an enormous amount of technical-cultural imagery spanning across 4 decades. Obviously a big part of retro gaming is enjoying playing the games themselves.  But I find it incredibly enjoyable personally, and important culturally, to look at the […]

Dan Mons

PC Engine palette improvements – the amazing people behind the technology

One day, all the CRTs and all the original consoles will be gone, and I’ll be eternally grateful for the efforts of those who preserved it all. This story began for me with a tweet. David Shadoff posted that the RGB palette on the popular multi-system emulator Mednafen for the PC Engine module (released as […]

Vanessa (Vanessaira)

Dreamcast’s Castlevania Resurrections Demo Released

The long lost Castlevania: Resurrection E3 Demo once used by Konami for a potential release and showcase on the SEGA Dreamcast.  Has been made available for download via website The Dreamcast Junkyard. This build of the game had been recently found and had made news headlines earlier this month.  With a bit of additional controversy […]

Vanessa (Vanessaira)

Sony Officially Announces Closure of Old Stores

Sony Computer Entertainment has officially announced the closure of the online PlayStation Store fronts for PlayStation 3, Portable (PSP), and Vita devices.  In this release, Sony gave a break down in the form of an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) of what services would and would not be available and what users could expect going forward […]

Dan Mons

PlayStation preservation ups and downs

Mixed news in the realm of game preservation this week.  Starting on a less positive note, website TheGamer reports that the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable (PSP) stores may go offline July 2, and the PlayStation Vita store will go offline August 27: https://www.thegamer.com/ps3-vita-psp-stores-permanently-closed/ This means that legally purchased digital titles and DLC may not […]

Dan Mons

Sega Master System blue channel mysteries further uncovered

Back in November and December of 2020 there was some discussion around measured non-linear ramps in Sega Master System’s blue channel.  A tweet exchange between Chris Covell and Bernard Bygott lead to some interesting measurements and documentation written by Bernard with the assistance of Tianfeng and others, which we covered in January: Sega Master System […]

Dan Mons

CPS2 reverse engineering progress – DL-0921

In addition to impressing us with his highly objective and accurate controller and game engine input lag measurements, Loïc Petit has been working hard on a years-long project to fully reverse engineer the Capcom Play System 2, or “CPS2” arcade system.  This arcade hardware is responsible for some all time classic titles in series such […]

Dan Mons

Sega SC-3000 preservation – making rare games available in a web browser

Anyone who has browsed The Internet Archive over the years would have likely stumbled across their pages where they offer old video games running from within your browser.  Over the years they’ve added countless games from classic systems in a way that is incredible accessible for anyone, regardless of technical skill. Take a browse through: […]

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