It's kind of insane and magical just how easy it is to play retro games. I remember my first time seeing an emulator playing one of the earlier PokΓ©mon games on a friend's laptop in around 2008 and thinking, "hell yeah", but we've come way past that. You can play long-discontinued Java games on your computer, you can play any number of C64 games in-browser, and you can play Ring Rage and many other arcade hits in-browser too.
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| Mermaid Madness (1986). |
Granted, these somewhat more niche formats often have awkward control issues and glitched audio and so on - they're not as beloved and supported as, say, Game Boy titles. But that's part of why it makes me so happy to see them so accessible. They're lesser-known chunks of gaming history that have plenty of their own charm.
Take Jack and the Beanstalk for example, a beautiful C64 game about climbing that stalk. I love its insane-looking screens, its joyful sun smiling vacantly from high above, and its chunky little player avatar.
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| Cute. |
The game is a nightmare to play. You have to avoid various insects and birds as you ascend the beanstalk, and those creatures go shockingly fast. An insurmountable, horrifying challenge. I love it.
Many of this era's games become, through their unforgiving gameplay, more of a sort of surreal and bothersome interactive digital painting. You enter their world and you are unwelcome. It's unbelievably awkward and challenging to make progress, and so sometimes I start to think of this as more of a distant cultural experience than a game. I'm just here, looking on, with wide eyes and useless fingers. Help me.
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| Maggotmania, a game where you get insta-killed if you touch a leaf on the ground. |
The world is a terrifying place, and none of us are making it out alive.
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