Retro Delights

A Designer Who Built With AI, Here's What Happened

2026-04-07T00:00:00Z

I want to write this carefully, because I'm wary of AI content that's either too much hype or too dismissive. What follows is what I actually did, what surprised me, and what I think it means for designers.

The project

Retro Delights is a personal site I've been setting up with my youngest, Alex. It started as a content site about retro gaming. But over the last couple of weeks I've been using it as a testing ground for building with AI, specifically Claude Code.

I'm a designer. I'm not a developer. I can read code and even write a bit, I understand how things fit together, but I couldn't have built what I'm about to describe on my own, not without it taking months of time I don't have.

What I built

Here's the list, I hope it's more useful than vague claims. You can see a lot of it live on this site:

A full membership system using Netlify Identity and Stripe, subscribers pay, get access to premium content, and their role is updated automatically via a webhook
A newsletter integration, new account signups are automatically subscribed, premium members tagged separately
Several serverless functions handling webhooks, email confirmation flows, and subscription management
A pixel-alien easter egg in the footer that toggles the entire site colour scheme, complete with a synthesised retro coin sound using the Web Audio API
A review score component for review posts, circular score, individual score bars, pros and cons, all driven by content data
A full Lighthouse performance audit with a set of improvements off the back of it

That's not a small list. It was built iteratively, in conversation, over a series of sessions.

To be clear, this is a personal project. There's no engineering team, no test suite, no shared codebase, no production complexity at scale. The conditions that make engineering hard aren't present here. But that's also kind of the point, for exploration and learning, those barriers are gone.

What surprised me

The two things that surprised me most were the capability of the AI (Claude Code) and how much of the work was still mine. I'd expected it to be capable of writing code to deliver features I wanted, but it far surpassed what I thought it could do.

The decisions about what to build, how it should look and feel, where things should live, what the experience should be, all of that was still design work. What changed is that I could act on those decisions immediately. I could say exactly what I wanted and it happened.

On a personal project, that's a meaningful shift. The gap between design thinking and shipped product improvements got a lot smaller.

The other thing I noticed is how much the quality of my input mattered. Vague instructions got vague results. Clear, specific, contextual direction got good results. That's just design communication, the same skills that make you clear on a problem make a good AI prompt.

Taking it further, Figma MCP and AI

One of the more interesting experiments was connecting Figma's MCP server directly to Claude Code. Once connected, I shared the live Retro Delights home page design in Figma and asked Claude to replicate it and build it in Figma.

It gave me a reasonable starting point, the layout structure came through, the broad composition was recognisable. But it wasn't production ready. The fonts weren't right, some text overflowed headings, spacing was off in places, and the logo rendered as a plain square. It needed work.

But here's the thing, it was still useful. A reasonable starting point you can refine is faster than starting from nothing. And this is early days; the workflow will only get better as the tooling matures.

My takeaways

I work for AutoTrader and we're looking at how AI can help our designers' workflow. The interesting question isn't whether it's perfect right now, because it isn't. The question is broader than just accelerating the path from design to code. It's whether AI can help earlier in the process too, framing problems more clearly, shaping research questions, stress-testing thinking before any design work starts. And on the output side, whether connecting AI to Figma, our design system and brand guidelines could meaningfully close the gap between design and production, and help designers engage more directly with code themselves. Based on what I've seen, I think the answer is yes, with time.

I think it's important to be actively exploring how AI can help, rather than waiting to see how it plays out. It feels like the right conversation to be having, and the answer is probably going to be more nuanced than most people expect.

What it can already do is make acting on an idea almost as easy as having one.

I've always believed you learn more by doing. Reading about AI tools or watching videos only gets you so far. Building something real, with real constraints, real integrations, real users, teaches you things you can't get any other way.

The designers who'll get the most from this are the ones willing to find out for themselves, and that's why I'd encourage anyone curious about it to just start.

The views expressed here are my own and don't represent AutoTrader's position on AI or any related topics.

Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered Lara Croft Posters

2026-03-03T00:00:00Z

A set of posters of Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered game have been removed in a recent patch when using the visual mode option.

The pinup posters were in Tomb Raider 3 and located in the 'Sleeping with the Fishes' level and were looked upon as an easter egg to find in the game.

Fans need not worry; it looks like the removal could have been a mistake, the developer has said they were "inadvertently removed" and will be put back in a future update.

The Top 10 Playstation One Games Of All Time

2026-02-10T00:00:00Z

There is no doubting how great the Playstation 1 console was, produced by Sony, released in Japan in 1994 and 1995 for the rest of the world, it was the first console to sell over 100 million units.

It would be another five years before the Sony Playstation 2 was released, in that time we saw the Playstation one produce some of the greatest video games we've ever seen.

10. Tekken 3

Starting off with a fighting game, the third in the Tekken series, Tekken 3 was developed and published by Namco and released in 1998.

Tekken 3 was ported from the arcade version and had all the modes and then some, it pushed the playstation to its limits, you had two punch and kick buttons and move left and right with some great 2d backgrounds.

9. Wipeout 2097

Wipeout was released in 1996, developed and published by Psygnosis, it was the sequel to Wipeout and was a futuristic racing game with an emphasis on speed.

You controlled a space ship with anti gravity and would participate in races with other ships to the sound of electric dance music.

8. Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2

A 2000 release, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision as a followup to the successful Tony Hawk's Pro Skater which was released in just the previous year.

Easy to pick up and play, it had a strong mix of simulation and arcade, with a focus of trying pull off trick, it was fun and also accompanied by a brilliant sound track.

7. Resident Evil 2

Not the only survival horror game in this list, Resident Evil 2 was released in 1998 and was developed and published by Capcom.

You could play the game as either Leon or Claire navigating them through some of the best level design in the Playstation one era, solving puzzles, uncovering the mysteries of the game and generally try to stay alive.

6. Pro Evolution Soccer 2

The Pro Evo series was the number one football simulator before Fifa rose to fame and Pro Evo went to pot.

Why was it so good? Because it felt like real football, the passing, the tackles, the shooting, each player would have their strengths and weaknesses and you could craft a goal in so many creative ways.

The Pro Evo series will hold fond memories in a lot of retro players hearts with the Playstation One showing how good a football game could be.

5. Metal Gear Solid

Hideo Kojima was the mastermind behind Metal Gear Solid, which was developed and published by Konami and released in 1998.

You took control of Solid Snake who navigating his way around a nuclear weapons facility, with the goal not to be detected by terrorist outfit FOXHOUND.

Snake had to use his abilities and the environment around him to stay undetected, it was an original idea full of surprises along the way.

4. Silent Hill

In 1999 we saw the first instalment of the Silent Hill series, a game developed by Team Silent and published by Konami.

You played the character Harry Mason, his wife had died and he was grieving and goes on a vacation with his adopted daughter Cheryl to the town of Silent Hill.

Driving on route to Silent Hill, Harry is left unconscious as he avoids hitting a girl in the road, he wakes to find Cheryl has gone and on foot walks into the mysterious town of Silent hill.

Silent hill was a survival horror game, it involved solving puzzles, combatting the many horrors of the game and exploration, it has a unique eerie feel which really did create a terrifying atmosphere.

3. Gran Turismo 2

Following the success of the original game, Gran Turismo 2 was developed by Polyphony Digital and released in 1999 by Sony Computer Entrainment and was the ultimate driving simulator which improved on its predecessor.

In Gran Turismo 2 you had a wealth of cars and options you could configure, the modes to play in could be arcade or if you wanted to get more serious simulation mode really brought out the options to configure and really got into the dynamics of racing a car.

2. Tomb Raider

Laura Croft the archaeologist adventurer came to the Playstation back in 1996 when Eiidos released it (Core design developed it) to much acclaim.

Tomb Raider was an action adventure game which at its core was about solving puzzles and a bit of action in between, one of the first games to be fully 3D you could walk, run, jump, climb onto ledges and across them, you jump into water and swim, you could interact with your environment.

Laura croft became an iconic games figure and the Tomb raider series is still going strong today.

1. Final Fantasy VII

This wasn't difficult for me, Final Fantasy VII had it all and then some, an absolute classic and way ahead of its time when Square developed it and Sony Computer Entertainment released it back in 1997.

What was good about it? You we're taken on a journey, an epic journey (over 3 CD's) with a unique set of characters that you grew to care about as the story unfolds and you learnt more about their pasts.

Final Fantasy VII was a turned based RPG where you would control different members of the story progressing the games main mission, on the way you would talk to people, do side quests, have battles and continue to build up the characters.

The score that accompanies the game is my favourite score of any game, Nobuo Uematsu worked magic with it, the game wouldn’t be the same without it, its a beautiful score.

Final Fantasy VII was easily the best Playstation One game in my eyes, arguable the greatest video game of all time (thats a discussion for a different day), what a legacy this amazing close left behind.

The Top 10 Arcade Games Of All Time

2026-01-13T00:00:00Z

Arcades are a massive part of gaming history and one of the reasons we set up Retro Delights so we could write about them to help contribute to a golden era not being forgotten.

In this list, we look at what we think are the top 10 greatest arcade games of all time, this was hard, so much so that we nearly changed it to a top 20!

10. Paperboy

Paperboy was a bit different, well, for starters, it had a bike handlebar with grips as a controller, in the game, you were a paperboy who had to deliver newspapers to customers while while avoiding the dangers on the streets.

Released by Atari Games in April 1985, you would have to throw the papers to a customer's door or mailbox, if you didn’t, you would lose customers or gain them if you delivered the correct amount.

9. Dragons Liar

June 19th 1983, was the exact date Dragons Liar became known to the world as the first full animation laser disc video game.

Controlling our hero, Dirk the Daring, to try and rescue Princess Daphne from an evil wizard, which involved pulling off the right move at the right time to complete each sequence in the game.

The game required 200 correct moves to complete, which was no mean feat, it could be frustrating, which ultimately added to the reward if you did manage to complete the game.

8. Tron

Tron was released as an arcade in the same year as the film in 1982 and was produced by Bally Midway in a deal with Disney and sold over 20,000 cabinets.

You could choose from four digital areas, which were based on the film: Battle Tanks, Light Cycles, I/O Tower and MCP Cone, if you completed all four, you would go again, and it would get more difficult each time.

The cabinet had an iconic look and feel, with its backlights and translucent blue joystick in a dark arcade, it stood out and added to its appeal.

7. Donkey Kong

The first game in the Donkey Kong series was released in 1981 by Nintendo; Donkey Kong was also one of the first games in the platform genre itself.

Donkey Kong is the villain in the game and has kidnapped the girlfriend of none other than a now well-known plumber appearing in his first game, Mario.

The game had four different stages, and Mario would make his way by climbing up ladders whilst avoiding or destroying obstacles with his hammer, getting to the top of the platform, and then moving on to the next stage.

6. Star Wars

The Star Wars arcade allows you to reenact Luke Skywalker and the Death Star trench run, as a kid, this was a big deal.

Star Wars: A New Hope was released in 1977, but the arcade didn’t follow until 1983, the same year as Return Of The Jedi, it had 3D vector graphics and speech samples from the film, which created a real feel of the film.

5. Gauntlet

Gauntlet was released in 1986 by Atari Games, inspired by the Dungeons and Dragons board game; you could have up to four players taking the role of Thor the warrior, Merlin the wizard, Thyra the Valkyrie or Questor the elf.

The game played like a shoot 'em up within a series of mazes; you had to find the exit to each level whilst avoiding/killing the enemies on each maze.

4. Bubble Bobble

Bubble Bobble was released by Taito in 1986 with two players being able to take control of the dragons Bub and Bob to help them find their kidnapped girlfriends in a charming platform game where you would fire bubbles at the enemies and then burst them on each level to progress.

Accompanied by one of the catchiest sound scores to grace a game, Bubble Bobble was a big hit and went on to have many sequels and many platforms.

3. Outrun

Released in 1986 by Sega as a stand-up and sit-down cabinet, Outrun oozed cool and set the standard for driving games.

Driving a Ferrari convertible with your girlfriend by your side along the coast with some of the best musical scores to be heard on an arcade, Outrun was a joy to play and still is.

2. Pacman

You can't mention arcade without PAC-MAN coming up, the game was released first in Japan in July 1980 and was licensed to the Midway Manufacturing company in the United and released a few months later in October 1980 in the United States and worldwide soon after.

PAC-MAN became more than a video game; it became an Icon, designed in the Japanese style Kawaii, which some would say is cute. Toru Iwatani who directed the game, wanted it to appeal to women as well as men.

Iconic graphics, iconic sounds and simple addictive gameplay control PAC-MAN in a maze with the objective of eating all the pills to progress to the next level. In the process, you must avoid the ghosts that accompany each maze, with the caveat that if PAC-MAN eats one of the four power pellets on each stage, the ghosts will temporarily flash, and PAC-MAN can eat them (if you can catch them, that is).

1. Space Invaders

This game needs no introduction, created by Tomohiro Nishikado and released in Japan in June 1978 by Taito and worldwide a few months later in October 1978.

The aim of the game, controlling a laser cannon, was to protect Earth from the waves of alien invaders that were coming down towards you from the top of the screen.

You had three lives, but the game would end if the aliens managed to reach you and the bottom of the screen, you had to avoid shots fired by the aliens either by moving out of the way or hiding behind bunkers.

Special mention to the iconic sounds of Space Invaders, from the firing of the laser to an invader being evaporated after being successfully hit to the prominent sound of the mystery ship, always accompanied by the continuous beat, which got faster and faster to add to the tension whilst playing the game.

Honorable mentions

Galaga
Frogger
Operation Wolf
Double Dragon
Super Mario Bros
Ghosts 'n' Goblins
Ms Pacman
Missile Command
Joust
Golden Axe

Pacman Quarter Arcade Review - A 1:4 Scale Replica

2026-02-17T00:00:00Z

No introduction needed

PAC-MAN needs little introduction, born in the golden age of arcade games, PAC-MAN was the superstar, an icon in the gaming world.

It’s no surprise then that 44 years on from its first release in 1980 by Namco in Japan, the franchise is still in demand.

Numbskull designs

Numbskull Design has created a fully playable 1/4 scale replica of the original PAC-MAN arcade, in short, it’s great.

Getting the replica out of the box straight away, you are struck by the quality and attention to detail of the cabinet.

This is what the original PAC-MAN arcade looked like to the tee: the cabinet shape, artwork, controls, and even the coin slots all scaled down to a 1/4 of the original size.

The cabinets have been built from solid wood, it feels premium, it's been well made, you can see Numbskull are passionate about arcades and understand the details matter, this is a proper replica.

The dimensions are 16.92 inches tall by 8.27 inches deep by 6.3 inches wide.

You also get a certificate of authenticity, only 10,000 copies have been built, so you’re personal unit number will be included on the certificate, which is a nice touch.

Also included is a lovely PAC-MAN metal collectable coin, which comes in its display box.

Turning it on

The cabinet is powered by a rechargeable lithium battery (4 hours per charge), and the on/off switch is located at the back of the machine.

Turning it on lights up the marquee and the PAC-MAN iconography at the top of the cabinet and kicks off the original ROM of the PAC-MAN arcade game.

If you press the coin return button under the coin slots, it inserts a credit for you accompanied by the same sound bite you would get inserting a real coin in the full-sized cabinet.

Then press the one or 2-player buttons to kick off a game, as soon as you do, the iconic sound of PAC-MAN starts up, the speakers blare it out, and the sound is spot on.

You have a 5-inch screen to play the game; it’s bright and colourful, and it represents the port faithfully.

The joypad is obviously small, but it plays nicely and functions as expected, it replicates a game of PAC-MAN well.

Its about the experience

As a designer myself, I’m passionate about a user's experience, and this is where the PAC-MAN quarter arcade comes into its own.

With all the minute details that go into replicating the experience you would have got playing the original arcade, it is insane; you won’t get this experience playing on an emulation on a different device!

Summary

I couldn’t be more complimentary about the PAC-MAN quarter arcade; it gives a feel of the magic arcades like PAC-MAN provided back in the 80s, I can’t ask for more than that.

Galaga Quarter Arcade Review - A Classic in 2024

2026-01-27T00:00:00Z

The Galaga arcade machine was released in 1981 as a sequel to Galaxian by Namco; it was created by Japanese developer Shigeru Yokoyama.

A classic fixed space shooter from the golden era of arcade machines, it’s now been re-created as a 1:4 scale replica of the original arcade, let’s have a look.

Unboxing

The packaging is lovely with a see-through front cover; you get an instruction manual, which is tastefully done with sprites from the game and the Galaga branding.

Also included is a plug charger to charge the lithium-ion rechargeable internal battery.

Attention to detail

This is the second quarter arcade I’ve purchased from Numbskull Designs, and it doesn’t disappoint, the attention to detail is where it's at.

Made from solid wood to give a premium feel, every painstakingly minute detail has been recreated, from the shape of the cabinet to the light-up marquee, the detailed side art and the air vents its all here in a QTR of the original size.

The dimensions for the cabinet are 430mm/16.9in (h) x 160mm/6.29in (w) x 210/8.26in (d).

The game

The cabinet includes the original arcade ROM on a bespoke emulator; this proves a 100% accurate emulation.

On starting a game, the nostalgic Galaga theme plays and sounds better than ever with through the cabinets good speak quality (3W speakers).

The screen is good quality, and bright multi-coloured stars shimmer beautifully against the black backdrop to reinforce you’re in space without distracting from the action.

This is Galaga feels and then some, it is an enjoyable game to play with its simplicity, and it still holds up in 2024, controlling your starfighter, shooting the aliens to complete the stages and pushing for your highest score.

I’ve already mentioned the theme music of Galaga; I’d forgotten how great the sound effects are in general, from the diving aliens to the firing of missiles, their iconic sounds.

The controls

As per the original, you have a left/right microswitch joystick and fire button to fiend off the alien onslaught, one-player/two-player start buttons, as well as the coin operating buttons at the front of the cabinet.

The controls feel responsive, I’ve played micro arcade machines before, where that’s not the case. I think the 1:4 scale is the perfect size where you get the portability size benefits, but it's still playable and a good user experience.

Verdict

I couldn’t recommend the Galaga QTR arcade any more highly, with the Numbskull quarter arcades, you get premium top quality, it’s all about recreating the original arcade experience but to a quarter of the size.

With this comes the premium price tag, but these machines are aimed at the retro gaming fan who is more willing to pay the price to get that best-in-class retro gaming experience.

Super Pocket Review - Retro Handheld

2026-01-06T00:00:00Z

Imagine having a device that fitted in your pocket and allowed you to play over 500 retro games back in the 80’s, damn.

In 2024, this is commonplace, the latest, the Super Pocket, lets you do that for under fifty quid, but is it any good?

Introduction

Super pockets are an Evercade product, which means out-of-the-box compatibility with over 500+ game cartridges, that's not a bad start.

The initial releases come in two editions, Taito and Capcom each have pre-installed games from the publisher.

The launch price is £49.99 for each edition.

Design

I’m a designer by trade, I have high standards, and the super pocket exceeded my expectations.

For the price point, It's a lovely thing to look at, the first two releases each bring a modern, chunky, but simple look.

The colours are bold and vibrant, Capcom comes in blue and yellow, and Taito green and black (I prefer the Taito colours).

It’s a good size, 10.46 x 1.09 x 16.81cm and weighing in at 90.72g, it's true to its name and will fit in your pocket.

They charge by USB-C (cable included), with each charge giving you 4+ hours of play, they also have a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Screen and sound

The screen is 7.112cm in size and 320px by 240px resolution. It’s bright with decent colours, and it does the job.

It's all about compromise with the size and resolution of the screen; some games will look sharp, some less so, but all in all, it works well.

The sound was louder than expected and packs a punch, the catchy Bubble Bobble soundtrack on the Taito edition sounded great.

Controls

Controls feel nice in the hand; you have a D-pad, four face buttons, as well as start, select and menu buttons.

There are back buttons as well, which give flexibility to more advanced games in the future.

The back buttons do feel a bit cramped; there's no getting away from this, though, because of the size of the device.

Games

I was drawn to the Taito edition. First, it comes preinstalled with 18 games:

Bubble Bobble
Space Invaders
Space Invaders 91'
Operation Wolf
The New Zealand Story
Rastan
Puzzle Bobble
Cadash
Chack'n Pop
Don Doko Don
Elevator Action
The Fairyland Story
Football Champ
Growl
Kiki Kaikai
The Legend of Kage
Liquid Kids
Volified

I started with Bubble Bobble, it played well and was an enjoyable experience. On the other hand, Operation Wolf was a weird one. A light gun game on a small handheld is not a great match. Still, it brought back nostalgia.

Space Invaders on this screen is always going to be a compromised play. For me, it’s OK, and I like having such a classic to be able to pick up and try to beat my highest score.

Other standouts for me on this list are The New Zealand Story, Puzzle Bobble, Elevator Action and Rastan.

The Capcom edition comes with 12 pre-installed games:

1942
1943
1944: The Loop Master
Bionic Commando
Captain Commando
Street Fighter II’: Hyper Fighting
Strider
Wolf of the Battlefield: Mercs
Mega man
Final Fight
Ghouls ‘N Ghosts
Forgotten Worlds

On this edition, I was straight into Ghouls ‘N Ghosts, this looks good and plays well, although it's still rock-hard!

Mega Man had bypassed me back in the day; this was the first time I’d played it, it was enjoyable on the Super Pocket.

The 1942 games are vertical shooters, so obviously, they don’t look as great on the small screen but are still playable.

Street Fighter II’ and Bionic Commando are also stellar games, although there are not as many games in this edition, it is still an impressive selection.

Verdict

For under £50, the super pockets offer good value; the massive 500+ Evercade cartridge library brings a unique angle.

Yes, there are better handhelds out there, but these don't play official roms, so no faff out of-the-box retro gaming with the Super Pockets.

RetroCon UK Comes To The NEC This November

2026-07-20T00:00:00Z

My wife Sarah's family are originally from Birmingham, and we visit occasionally. I was a bit of a fan of UB40 (it was a guilty pleasure) back in the day as well, so I have a soft spot for the 'Brummies'!

Birmingham has the NEC venue, which is decent for events, especially Retro events, and there is one coming up in November.

RetroCon UK is coming to the NEC in Birmingham on the 21st and 22nd of November, and it is a bit different from the usual gaming markets and expos. Their tagline is "celebrate the best of yesterday," and they really do mean everything from back then, not just the games.

I'm going to be straight with you: this is more of a whole-childhood nostalgia weekend than a pure retro gaming one. But there is still plenty here for our lot, and honestly it looks like a decent day out either way.

What's on

On the gaming side, you get loads of retro arcade machines, a handheld corner, racing simulators, Tetris and Pac-Man tournaments, and a Retroland exhibition walking you through vintage computers and gaming history.

Then it opens right out. There is a Matt Goss concert on the Saturday night, Pat Sharp bringing an actual Fun House, live sets from the likes of Nick Heyward, Toyah and Chesney Hawkes, a silent disco, and celebrity guests including Leigh Francis and actors from the likes of Charmed and Beverly Hills 90210. Add over a hundred traders selling retro toys, vinyl, comics and vintage gaming, plus classic cars and old motorbikes scattered about, and you have got a proper trip down memory lane here. It is organised by the Oakham Group.

Times, tickets and getting there

As mentioned, it is at the NEC in Birmingham, in Halls 19 and 20, postcode B40 1NT. The NEC is about as well connected as venues get, right off the M42 with Birmingham International station and airport on the doorstep, so it is doable from most of the country even if it is a bit of a trek for those of us further north.

It runs across both days with doors opening from 10am. Tickets start at around £20, which does seem good value, with earlybird discounts if you book ahead, over on the RetroCon UK site. There is also an event page on the NEC website.

So, more of a whole-childhood day out than a pure gaming one. But if the idea of wandering past a Pac-Man neon, a shelf of Donkey Kong figures and Pat Sharp's Fun House all under one roof appeals, then this is the one.

Sony Is Ending Physical Discs For New PlayStation Games

2026-07-19T00:00:00Z

I was surprised to see this one, maybe sad is a more appropriate word. Sony have confirmed that from January 2028 they will stop producing physical discs for new PlayStation games, and new releases from that date will be digital only.

First, some clarity, as I've read a few posts that weren't accurate. This will not affect the physical games you already have. All the discs in your collection will continue to work absolutely fine, as will any other games that were released on disc before January 2028 (which is quite a few!).

What is ending is any new physical disc in a case. Boxed games sold offline and online will stop, though Sony say the games will still be sold in shops, just in digital form. In practice that probably means a download code in a box rather than a disc you can hold, though they haven't spelled out exactly how that will work.

The reasoning is the one you would expect. Most people buy digitally now, and Sony are following the money. Fair enough, in a way. But it is hard not to feel that something is being quietly lost.

What you lose

The nice thing about a disc, or a cartridge, is that it is yours. You can lend it to a mate, sell it when you're done, pick it up second-hand for a few quid, or leave it on a shelf for twenty years and blow the dust off.

A download code is a licence, and a licence can be taken away. Sony gave everyone a taste of that not that long ago, when a licensing deal lapsed and hundreds of films were pulled from people's libraries. Even Hideo Kojima, about as inside the industry as a person can be, told the Guardian he was "very sad about it, because I grew up with physical media."

A win for Retro Gaming?

Looking at the positives, the more new releases drift into rented, digital-only territory, the more the old stuff on our shelves is worth.

A cartridge cannot be switched off from head office. A PS1 disc will play whether or not a shop still exists to sell it. The retro shelf was always about the love of the thing. Now it's the safer bet as well.

So yeah, I will defo miss buying new games on disc. But if this nudges a few more people towards the simple joy of owning what they play, of a library that is genuinely theirs, then it is not all bad news, and Retro Gaming might grow even more.

The good folk at Retro Dodo made much the same point, and I think they're spot on. When everything else becomes a stream, the things you can actually hold start to look like treasure.

You can read Sony's own announcement on the PlayStation Blog, and the BBC has a good rundown of the reaction.

The shelf endures. It always does.

Oblivion Remastered Is Coming To Switch 2, With A Physical Cart

2026-07-19T00:00:00Z

If, like me, you lost a good chunk of your life to Cyrodiil back in the day, this one is for you. Bethesda have confirmed that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is coming to the Nintendo Switch 2, and will arrive on the 11th of August 2026.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released in 2006, and for a lot of us it was the game that made an open world feel properly alive. Wander off the road, get distracted for three hours, forget what you were even meant to be doing.

The remaster was a bit of a surprise last year, no one expected it. Rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5 and given a proper lick of paint, it was a decent and welcome addition. Now the whole thing is heading to the Switch 2, so you can play on the go.

Digital and a physical cartridge

There is a digital and a physical Deluxe Edition. On the cartridge you get the base game plus both expansions, Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine, along with all eight of the smaller DLC packs, including the famous Horse Armor Pack that started the whole paid-extras conversation twenty years ago.

The Deluxe Edition also throws in digital codes for the Akatosh and Mehrunes Dagon armour sets. There is a standard version too, digital only.

How it runs, and where to get it

Nintendo are leaning on DLSS to keep things smooth, with the game running at 900p and 30 frames a second in handheld mode, and 1080p at 30 docked. It had a slightly bumpy launch on other platforms last year, so let's see how this version holds up, but the Switch 2 has more than enough under the hood to cope.

The Deluxe Edition is priced at £49.99 on digital and £56.96 for the physical version, and is up for pre-order now. You can grab it from the Nintendo store or Amazon, and the full announcement is over on Bethesda's site.

A hundred-hour RPG that fits in your bag, with everything in one package. The gates of Oblivion opening on a Nintendo handheld is not something I had on my list, but looking forward to it.

The NEOGEO AES+ Is A Reissue That Actually Reads Your Real Neo Geo Carts

2026-07-19T00:00:00Z

This is the retro revival that respects your shelf, and I did not realise how much I wanted that until I saw it. Nearly every "classic console returns" announcement is a little plug-and-play box with 40 ROMs baked in and no slot for anything you actually own. The NEOGEO AES+ flips that on its head: it has a real, full-size cartridge slot that reads the genuine Neo Geo AES carts we have been babying for thirty years.

SNK and PLAION announced it in April under the banner "Return of the King", with a release set for the 12th of November. The pitch, in PLAION's words, is "no emulation": they say it runs on newly manufactured chips based on the originals, a Motorola 68000 and a Zilog Z80A, rather than software or an FPGA core. That is their framing, and I would weigh the marketing with a raised eyebrow, but the important part is real enough. That slot takes your actual AES cartridges, the imported Metal Slug you paid silly money for in 2001 included.

The detail collectors will care about

One thing to get exactly right, because you will scrutinise it: it reads original home AES cartridges, including Korean variants, homebrew and flash carts. It does not take MVS arcade carts, which use a different board. AES only. Get that straight before you get excited about your arcade boards.

On the modern side there is low-latency 1080p HDMI plus proper analogue output for a CRT, on-screen region and language selection, dip switches, and permanent high-score saving, which the original famously could not manage without a battery-backed memory card.

Editions, carts and the price ladder

There are three editions, and the ladder is steep. The Standard is £179.99, the Anniversary Edition is £269.99, an ice-white console bundled with an exclusive all-white Metal Slug cartridge and a white arcade stick, and the Ultimate is a numbered, very limited £799.99 set that includes all ten launch carts. SNK is newly pressing those ten games, Metal Slug, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, The King of Fighters 2002 and more, at £69.99 each, and helpfully they also run on original 1990s AES machines.

Pre-orders are live now via the PLAION REPLAI store, plus Amazon UK and Very, and Time Extension has a thorough guide. Commercial director Ben Jones reckons the Neo Geo "remains peerless in the eyes of arcade enthusiasts", and for once the swagger is at least earned.

It is a modern reissue, not your battered original, and the top of that price ladder is a lot of money. But a machine built to honour the carts you already own, rather than lock you out of them, is a rare and genuinely lovely thing. The slot is the whole story.

Commodore Is Back, And The C64 Ultimate Is A Proper New Breadbin

2026-07-19T00:00:00Z

I did not expect to be writing about a brand-new Commodore in 2026, and yet here we are. The Commodore 64 Ultimate is a full-size, fully working C64 you can put on your desk today, and the story behind it is nearly as good as the machine itself.

The short version is that a fan bought the company. Christian Simpson, better known as the retro-tech YouTuber Peri Fractic, led an investor group that acquired the Commodore name and its surviving trademarks in 2025, and he is now acting CEO. He has said the group self-funded the deal, including remortgaging his own house to get it over the line, which is exactly the sort of daft, lovely thing you do when you grew up on these machines. Commodore reckons it has sold around 30,000 of these already, though that is the company's own figure, so take it as you find it.

An FPGA rebuild, not old stock

Let me be clear about what this is, because it matters. The C64 Ultimate is not a refurbished 1980s unit. It is a from-scratch recreation built around a modern FPGA chip that behaves like the original silicon, based on engineer Gideon Zweijtzer's well-regarded Ultimate 64 board. So the guts are new, but they do the old job faithfully.

The bit that made me grin, though, is the sound. There are two sockets inside for genuine vintage SID chips, the 6581 or 8580, and if you drop a real one in it takes over from the built-in emulation. Fit nothing and it falls back to an FPGA version so it always sings, but if you have a proper SID sat in a drawer, this thing will play it. That fat analogue warble, out through HDMI to the telly or out of the analogue DIN socket into a real CRT. Best of both worlds.

The rest is just as thoughtful. It keeps the original cartridge slot and is quoted at around 99 per cent compatible with 1980s carts, games and peripherals. There is Wi-Fi and Ethernet, USB ports that read thumb drives, cassette emulation, and a proper mechanical keyboard in the classic C64 layout.

Three flavours, and the price question

There are three editions at launch: BASIC Beige at $299, the translucent Starlight at $349.99, and the Founders Edition at $499.99, which comes in translucent amber with a 24k-gold badge, a holographic serial number starting 00000001 and a cheeky "I Rebooted C=" T-shirt. Every machine ships with a USB stick of licensed games, music and demos, including an exclusive Jupiter Lander follow-up called Ascension.

One thing to watch: Commodore sells direct in US dollars and converts at the checkout, so there is no fixed sterling price. As a rough guide those figures land somewhere around £230, £270 and £390 before any import costs, but that will move about. There is a newer wedge-shaped C64C "Slimline" model on the way too, using reacquired original moulds.

Is it "really" Commodore? That is a debate for people with more time than me. What I can tell you is that it is a real C64, made with obvious love, that takes a real SID chip. You can read the full spec on the official Commodore page, and GamesRadar's review is a good, honest read.

Thirty years on, and there is a new Commodore on the shelf. I never thought I would type that.

HyperMegaTech Announce An Activision Super Pocket

2026-07-19T00:00:00Z

The Super Pockets are a great product, nicely designed, they come with a load of pre-installed games plus you can play any Evercade cartridge on them, all for under £50. I've bought the Taito and Capcom versions and have had loads of use out of them.

The next one up has defo caught my attention, as HyperMegaTech and Blaze have announced an Activision edition of the Super Pocket, which comes loaded with 34 games from the Activision back catalogue.

If you had an Atari 2600 in the 80s, where Activision had some real success, there's going to be a lot of nostalgia here for you.

Games included

Barnstorming
Beamrider
Boxing
Checkers
Chopper Command
Cosmic Commuter
Demon Attack
Dolphin
Dragonfire
Enduro
Grand Prix
H.E.R.O.
Kabobber
Kaboom!
Keystone Kapers
Laser Blast
MegaMania
Moonsweeper
Oink!
Pitfall!
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
Plaque Attack
Pressure Cooker
Private Eye
River Raid
River Raid II
Robot Tank
Seaquest
Skiing
Sky Jinks
Spider Fighter
Stampede
Starmaster
Thwocker

It's a hit list, some standouts for me are Pitfall, Pitfall II, along with River Raid and River Raid II, H.E.R.O., Kaboom!, Keystone Kapers, Demon Attack, Enduro, Chopper Command, MegaMania and Seaquest, and plenty more besides.

These are some of the games that made Activision the first big third-party publisher, set up by a handful of Atari programmers who wanted their names on the box.

The specs, and where to get it

It is the familiar Super Pocket shape, dressed up in the Activision colours. You get a 2.8 inch IPS screen at 320 by 240, USB-C charging, a headphone jack, and around four hours of battery. As mentioned earlier, the best bit is that it's Evercade compatible, so any cartridges you already own or purchase will slot straight in, giving you access to hundreds of other games.

This one is priced at £59.99 standalone, or with an official case bundle for an extra fiver (£64.99). Both are available to pre-order now, with shipping expected on the 28th of September.

You can find it on the Funstock store, and there is more detail over on the official HyperMegaTech site.

Another lovely little retro gaming machine, what a time to be a retro gamer!

PLAY Expo Blackpool Returns This October

2026-07-18T00:00:00Z

PLAY Expo Blackpool is back over the weekend of the 3rd and 4th of October later in the year, and I would defo recommend it.

The PLAY Expos are top notch Retro Gaming events, and the main focus, as the name suggests, is playing: sitting down or standing up to play the rows of arcade cabinets, pinball machines, retro consoles and home computers, all set up and ready to go, with no coins needed.

In the 80s, Blackpool was the top destination for me and my school mates. We'd get the train down and the mayhem would begin, spending loads of time in the Fun House at the Pleasure Beach and getting a chippy at the end of the day if we hadn't run out of money.

What's on offer

Beyond the free-play arcades and pinball, there is a next-gen zone for the more modern stuff, an indie area with new games to try, gaming tournaments, LAN gaming, tabletop gaming, cosplay and a run of special guests.

And if you do want to take something home, or just browse for the fun of it, there is a big shopping hall packed with retro traders as well.

It is run by Replay Events, the same team behind the Liverpool Gaming Market, and they bill it as the UK's favourite and longest-running arcade, indie and retro gaming expo. This is its 16th year, so they are not doing too bad!

Times, tickets and getting there

It is on at the Norbreck Castle Exhibition Centre, Queens Promenade, Blackpool, FY2 9AA, right on the seafront with the tram running past the door, so it is an easy trip from most of the North West.

Both days run from 10am to 5pm, and pre-booking online gets you in from 10, a full hour before the on-the-door crowd. There are single-day tickets, weekend passes and family tickets, with earlybird discounts if you book ahead. You can purchase them on the Eventbrite page, and there is more on the official site.

A whole day of playing games you might never own, in a massive hall, five minutes from the Blackpool seafront. There are worse ways to spend an autumn weekend. You could even get some hot donuts!

The Liverpool Gaming Market Is Coming To Aintree In September

2026-07-16T00:00:00Z

As a proud Mancunian and Manchester United fan, I'll be honest and say Liverpool isn't my favourite destination, but I'll make an exception when Retro Gaming is involved (any Scousers reading, I'm just having the banter!).

Over in Liverpool on Sunday the 6th of September, the Liverpool Gaming Market is coming to Aintree Racecourse, and it is exactly the sort of day out I'm partial to: a big venue full of stalls selling nothing but retro games, consoles and gaming bits and bobs.

There is nothing quite like searching through boxes of old games with no idea what you might find, then walking out with something for the shelf you did not even know you wanted. It is half the fun of this hobby, and you cannot get that from most websites (with the exception of… cough cough!).

What's on offer

The market is packed with traders selling retro games, home computers, consoles and handhelds, import titles, arcade machines, artwork, apparel and all sorts of merchandise. It is run by Replay Events, who put on the Replay Gaming Markets and say they are the biggest and longest-running gaming markets in the country, with fifteen years of doing this behind them.

This one has Bitmap Books and ZenMarket on board as sponsors, so you know the right sort of people are involved.

Times, tickets and getting there

It is at Aintree Racecourse, Ormskirk Road, Liverpool, L9 5AS. Yes, the Grand National one. It is just off the M57 with plenty of parking, so it is an easy run over from most of the North West.

Doors open at 11am, and it runs through to 4pm. Entry is tiered, so the keenest collectors can get in first: it's £7 to get through the doors at 11 and have first dig through everything, £5 from midday, and then £4 for general entry from 2pm once it has calmed down a bit. Under-16s get in free with a paying adult, and little ones under 5 do not need a ticket at all. All in, cracking value for a proper day out.

Tickets are on the Liverpool Gaming Market Eventbrite page, and there is more on the official site.

I might pop over myself and have a gander. I'll take some pics and post about it on Retro Delights.

LEGO Donkey Kong Set Coming Soon

2026-07-13T00:00:00Z

LEGO have delved into the retro gaming market in recent years, and created some fantastic sets. The PAC-MAN Arcade, the Atari 2600, the NES set and the Super Mario Game Boy last year all spring to mind (some others not too great, to be fair, as well!).

It looks like there is more to come. LEGO did a bit of a reveal of a new Donkey Kong LEGO set on their website recently, announcing it was coming soon, with a teaser video showing the official Donkey Kong logo and some rolling LEGO barrels. See for yourself on their website.

A LEGO Donkey Kong Arcade Set

Coincidentally, the announcement could have been a reaction to an alleged leak, where someone posted a LEGO Donkey Kong Arcade set box to Reddit, which to be fair I hope it is, as it looks top notch and would make sense with the success LEGO have had with the retro gaming sets, and it being Donkey Kong's 45th anniversary this year.

The box in the leak says it's 1367 pcs, so a substantial build. Looks like from the cover that there could be moving parts with it, would be great if you could move Mario!

Better Than the PAC-MAN Arcade LEGO?

I recently picked up the PAC-MAN arcade LEGO set, it's the first LEGO set I've ever bought, so look out for a review soon. I'm looking forward to building it as it was really well received when it came out in 2023, and it looks like the Donkey Kong Arcade set, if it's true, could surpass that.

We'll keep our ear to the ground for this one.

Rayman's 30th Gets A Proper Physical Edition, With The Cancelled 1992 SNES Version On Board

2026-06-26T00:00:00Z

Now this is the sort of release we are here for. Rayman turns 30, and rather than a quiet download and a shrug, the anniversary collection is getting a proper physical edition, on the shelf, in a box, with actual things inside it. And there is a lovely archival surprise tucked in the middle of it.

The physical version lands on the 26th of June for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5, and it is around £22. That is a genuinely fair price for what you get. One thing to note up front: the physical edition is Switch and PS5 only, so Xbox owners are stuck with the digital version. The other thing worth saying is that on Switch the whole game is on the cartridge, no day-one download nonsense, which is exactly the completeness a cart collector wants.

The cancelled 16-bit ghost

Here is the headline draw for me. The collection includes a never-before-playable prototype of the cancelled 1992 SNES version of Rayman. Rayman actually began life as a 16-bit Super Nintendo project before moving to CD-based hardware, and that early build has sat unseen for 34 years. Now it is in our hands. There is real poetry in a limbless little mascot finally shipping on the machine he never made it onto first time round.

Around that sits the 1995 original in five flavours, the PlayStation, Atari Jaguar, MS-DOS, Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color versions, plus an interactive timeline with more than 50 minutes of new interviews with the original developers, concept art and design documents. If you just want to enjoy it, there are modern niceties too: infinite lives, invincibility and a 60-second rewind.

Who made it, and what is in the box

A fun wrinkle: it is Atari handling the physical release, not Ubisoft, though Ubisoft still owns Rayman and the collection itself was built by the restoration experts at Digital Eclipse. Open the box and you get the game, a reusable sticker sheet to build your own Rayman, reprints of three original postcards, a reversible cover and a double-sided poster. Proper collector bits, not filler.

The digital version actually launched back in February; the 26th of June is specifically when the physical edition ships. You can pre-order from Atari, UK stockists include GAME, and VGC has the full contents rundown.

Physical, preserved, complete on the cart, and priced like they actually want you to own it. Consider me sold.

Evercade's NEOGEO Arcade 4 Packs Eight Neo Geo Classics Onto One £20 Cart

2026-06-26T00:00:00Z

Here is a pure hit of physical-media joy: eight slabs of Neo Geo arcade royalty on one boxed cartridge for twenty quid. Evercade's purple NEOGEO Arcade line has reached its fourth cart, and it is exactly the sort of thing that keeps me banging on about why cartridges still matter in 2026.

The line-up is a proper spread. You get 3 Count Bout, Baseball Stars 2, Blazing Star, Fatal Fury Special, King of the Monsters, Metal Slug 4, Robo Army and The King of Fighters 2002. Metal Slug 4 and KOF 2002 are the obvious headliners, but the one I would tip the wink to the connoisseurs about is Blazing Star, that gorgeous Aicom shmup that costs an absolute fortune to collect for real. Having it here, boxed, for pocket money, is the whole appeal of this format.

Why the cart still wins

This is Cartridge number 22 in the Evercade range, and like the rest it comes in a proper case with a full-colour printed manual full of descriptions, controls and tips. You own it, outright, and it slots into any Evercade machine, the Alpha, the EXP-R and the VS-R, as well as the HyperMegaTech Super Pocket handhelds I keep going on about. Nice touch for the fussier among us: each game has its own dip switches and AES home-console modes, so you can set them up arcade-style or console-style, whichever feels right.

It is a properly licensed SNK release under the Evercade banner, not an emulator you have cobbled together, and that matters. The whole point of the platform is that the games are legit, boxed and yours.

Price and where to get it

It is £19.99 in the UK, $29.99 in the States and €24.99 in Europe, and it came out on the 26th of June, so it is available now rather than something to wait for. Full line-up and stockists are on the official cartridge page, and there is more in the Evercade press release. UK readers, best to route through the "where to buy" links on the official page rather than guessing at retailer URLs.

Eight Neo Geo arcade games, boxed, manual and all, for less than the price of a round. This is exactly why I still buy carts.

Sonic Is Finally Getting A Real Pinball Machine, And A Legend Designed It

2026-06-23T00:00:00Z

Sonic is 35 this year, and somehow, after all this time, he has never had a proper pinball machine. Not a real one, anyway. That changes now, and the debut is no cheap cash-in. Jersey Jack Pinball, working with SEGA, has fully revealed Sonic the Hedgehog Pinball, and they got a genuine legend to design it.

That legend is Steve Ritchie, 76 years old and nicknamed the "King of Flow", a man with more than 40 years in the trade and credits including Firepower, Black Knight and Terminator 2. He describes this one as "the fastest game I've ever made" and "a very chaotic pinball machine", and rates the interplay between its upper and lower playfields among his best work. When someone with that CV says a table is fast, you believe them.

Green Hill Zone in glass and steel

The playfield is a proper spectacle: a four-flipper layout with an upper deck, magnetised ramps that fling the ball along, a floating Dr Eggman target, a golden-ring shooter, and Sonic and Eggman figures that collide above the backglass. There is a 27-inch screen, a high-score "player camera", and Chaos Emeralds to collect, with a cast that runs from Sonic and Tails to Shadow, Amy, Big the Cat and Froggy. It is packed with over 6,000 lines of dialogue from the official voice cast, and the nine-song soundtrack is reported to feature Slash on guitar, which is a wonderfully daft flourish.

The collector's ache

Here is where I have to be honest with myself, because this is the bit that stings. It is a genuinely beautiful, properly made physical object, built by a master at the end of a long career. And it costs a fortune. The three editions are priced in dollars: the Arcade Edition at $9,999, the Special Edition at $12,000, and the Collector's Edition at $15,000. That is before it has even crossed the Atlantic.

There is no official UK price yet. Over here, Pinball Heaven is Jersey Jack's exclusive distributor, and by the time VAT and import land on top, it will be dearer still. Pre-orders are open now, with the Special Edition asking a $1,000 non-refundable deposit, and there is no firm ship date announced.

You can see it on the Jersey Jack announcement, and Pinball Heaven is the UK route.

So I will sit in the gap between wanting it badly and knowing the shed will never hold it. But give Steve Ritchie his due, because a table like this, made with this much love, is exactly the kind of thing that outlives the download. Sonic waited 35 years for it. It looks like it was worth the wait.

Breath Of The Wild Is Getting An 8-LP Vinyl Box, And Nintendo Handed It To A UK Label

2026-06-19T00:00:00Z

Right, this one is proper catnip for a physical-media obsessive. Nintendo, famously tight about letting its music out onto records anywhere outside Japan, has finally opened the vaults for one of the best-loved scores in gaming. And it handed the job to a British label, which I love.

The label is Laced Records, based down in Guildford, who have quietly become one of the best in the world at pressing game soundtracks onto proper heavyweight wax. Announced last October, the collection comes in two sizes: a 2-LP set with 34 select tracks, and the big one, an 8-LP deluxe box holding 130 tracks, all newly remastered for vinyl. That deluxe set is close to four hours of music. Four hours of Breath of the Wild's aching, sparse piano off a needle. I may need to sit down.

The object itself

You know me, I care about the thing as much as the music. The limited 8-LP box has alternating blue and gold splatter-effect discs, printed inner sleeves, and a rigid gold-and-blue slipcase, and the eight records are sequenced thematically to follow the game's own journey, exploration through to the Divine Beasts and shrines. There is archival artwork in there from the game's own development team too. The 2-LP set gets blue-and-white marbled discs in a wide-spined sleeve. There are plainer standard black-vinyl versions of both as well, same music, if you do not need the colours.

The music comes from the Breath of the Wild composing team, Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata, Hajime Wakai and Soshi Abe, and the highlighted tracks are the ones you would hope for, "Great Fairy Fountain" among them. Hearing that crackle to life on a turntable is going to be a moment.

Prices, dates and the small print

The 8-LP box is £145 direct from Laced Records, plus a little over eight quid for postage, or £159.99 with free shipping from the My Nintendo Store. The 2-LP set is £36 from Laced. It went on sale on the 19th of June, though it is worth knowing that Laced's own page has listed an estimated shipping date closer to September, so do not expect it to land on the doormat overnight. And be quick: the limited box was already showing as sold out on the Laced site while I was writing this, so check stock before you get your hopes up.

You can find the full details in Nintendo's announcement and buy direct from Laced Records.

There is a quiet significance to this, mind. Bill Trinen at Nintendo of America told Nintendo Life it is partly a way "to gauge and understand what is the demand for physical soundtracks". So if you have ever wanted Nintendo's music on your shelf rather than a streaming app, this is the one to support. Zelda turns 40 this year, and I can think of few better ways to mark it than this.

Super Mario Bros Is Now The Most Expensive Video Game Ever Sold

2026-06-16T00:00:00Z

On the 12th of June, a factory-sealed copy of the original Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was sold at Heritage Auctions, fetching an unbelievable $3 million and securing its place in history as the most expensive video game ever sold.

What makes this game worth so much? Well, there are a few things to consider here.

The Rarity Factor

This isn't your standard copy of the iconic platformer. The game was awarded a near-perfect 9.8 A++ condition grade by WataGames, making it the highest-graded known example of this specific variant.

The cartridge hails from an incredibly brief "second-production run" in early 1986. During this narrow window, before Nintendo transitioned to their ubiquitous plastic shrink-wrap, the company used a distinct glossy sticker to seal its boxes. According to Heritage Auctions, only three sealed copies from this specific print run are known to exist globally, and this is the first to ever surface at a public auction.

A 40-Year Time Capsule

The game's immaculate preservation is largely due to where it spent the last four decades: hidden away inside an unopened launch-edition NES Control Deck console bundle.

Discovered just months prior to the historic auction, the cartridge had been entirely protected from light, handling and environmental damage since 1986. As a highly unusual bonus for the winning bidder, the $3 million price tag also included the unopened console bundle where the game was originally discovered (I mean, I think they deserve it!).

Smashing Previous Records

The sale completely redefines the upper limits of the retro gaming market, leaving previous milestones way behind.

Previously, the highest known price paid for a video game was a $2 million private sale of another Super Mario Bros variant in 2021. In the public auction space, the highest was a sealed copy of Super Mario 64, which sold for $1.56 million that same year. To put the climb in perspective, back in 2020 a sealed Super Mario Bros set a then-record at just $114,000.

After this record-breaking sale, I think we can say that highly coveted, culturally significant video games have firmly established themselves alongside fine art, vintage sports cards and rare comic books as elite, blue-chip collectibles. But it's a bit mad that no one will ever play it.

The LEGO Mega Drive Hides A Little Sonic Only The Builder Ever Sees

2026-06-01T00:00:00Z

I have got a real soft spot for this one, and it is because of a secret. LEGO has made a little brick-built tribute to the console that mattered most on our side of the Atlantic, and the loveliest touch is one that only the person building it ever gets to see.

The set is the LEGO SEGA Genesis Console, number 40926, part of the LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog range. It is 479 pieces, rated 12 and up, and it went on sale on the 1st of June. In the box you get the brick console, two detachable controllers, a Sonic cartridge and a sheet of stickers.

The bit for us

That sticker sheet is quietly clever. The model can be branded two ways, as the American SEGA Genesis or as the Japanese and European SEGA Mega Drive, so for once a set does not just default to the US name. We get to fly the Mega Drive badge we actually grew up with, which is a small thing that means a lot if you spent your childhood in front of one.

But the real charm is hidden. Lift out the cartridge slot and there is a tiny LEGO-mosaic Sonic face grinning up at you from inside, reminiscent of the 1-up monitor box from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. It is not printed on the box or shown in the marketing shots. It is a reward for building the thing yourself, which I think is a genuinely lovely bit of design. It echoes an earlier trick, too: the 2025 gift-with-purchase Genesis Controller set hid a little Green Hill Zone scene in much the same spirit.

An easy shelf piece

At £34.99 (or $39.99 in the States) with two controllers and a cartridge, this is not a big flagship build, and it is not trying to be. It stands about 4cm tall, 16cm wide, and it is the sort of low-stakes, satisfying afternoon build that ends up on a shelf next to the real hardware. That is exactly its appeal.

You can find it on the official LEGO page, and Jay's Brick Blog has a proper hands-on review.

A brick Mega Drive with the right badge on the front and a cheeky Sonic hidden inside. I know exactly where mine is going.

Retro-Bit Is Putting Arcus Odyssey And Psycho Dream Back On Real Cartridges

2026-04-21T00:00:00Z

Let me lead with the one that made me sit up, because it is a genuine collector's dream. Psycho Dream, a Super Famicom action-platformer from 1992 that never once left Japan, is finally coming West on a legitimate, licensed cartridge that actually boots on a PAL SNES. No grey-import Super Famicom, no dodgy repro, no guilt. Retro-Bit revealed it in April as part of a pair of Renovation-era reissues, and for anyone who has spent years hunting import carts, this is a lovely thing.

Two 16-bit cult classics, done properly

The headliner for the shelf is Psycho Dream. Developed by Riot and published in Japan by Nihon Telenet, it was actually lined up for a Western release decades ago and then cancelled at the last minute, so this is its first ever official outing in North America and Europe. Retro-Bit has given it a brand-new English translation by Nathan Deren, and crucially the cartridge is region-compatible with both PAL and NTSC machines, so it runs on a bog-standard UK Super Nintendo.

Alongside it comes Arcus Odyssey, an isometric fantasy hack-and-slash from 1991, made by Wolf Team and originally published by Renovation Products. It is a cracking co-op scrapper, playable solo or two-player across eight stages, and this is its return to cartridge after about 35 years, plus its European debut. Nice touch for collectors: it ships with a reversible inlay sleeve carrying both the American and Japanese cover art, and a full-colour manual.

Both are limited and individually numbered. Arcus Odyssey gets an embellished slipcover, and Psycho Dream comes as a numbered deluxe hardcover package. As Retro-Bit's Richard Igros put it, Psycho Dream was "canceled right before it was set to be released outside of Japan", so finally getting it onto a real Super NES cart is quite the full-circle moment.

The catch: you have already missed the pre-order

Here is the rub, and it is the reason I am flagging this as one to hunt down rather than casually buy. These are official, licensed re-releases, not repros, priced at $59.99 each in the US, with €69.99 in Europe. The pre-order window ran from the 21st of April to the 24th of May and has now closed, with stock estimated to reach retailers around September. Over here, Just For Games had the PAL Psycho Dream collector's edition listed at £66 before it sold out, which gives you a rough idea of the UK sting.

So it is a case of watching the retailers now. You can read the details in the Retro-Bit press release and on the Arcus Odyssey product page, and Time Extension has a good write-up.

Numbered runs of long-lost games are exactly the sort of thing that gets flipped, so if you want one for the right reasons, do not hang about. A Japan-only game from 1992, finally sat on a PAL cartridge. That is what we are here for.

A Pre-Tyson Punch-Out Prototype Turned Up In A Garage, Sold For $45,000, Then Someone Set It Free

2026-04-15T00:00:00Z

This is the find every collector plays out in their head. A lost NES cartridge, turning up decades on, still holding secrets. And the best part of this one is not the money it fetched, but what the buyer did next.

Earlier this year an early prototype of Punch-Out!! for the NES surfaced, reportedly from a garage sale held by a former Nintendo of America employee. What makes it special is the title screen: it reads simply "Punch-Out!!", because this build predates the 1987 deal that put Mike Tyson's face on the box. This is the game before it became Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, a glimpse of the road not taken.

The cartridge was graded, then sold through Heritage Auctions for $45,000, roughly £35,000, to an anonymous buyer. And here is the bit I love. Rather than seal it away in a display case, that buyer allowed the ROM to be dumped and released so preservationists could pull it apart for free. The changes have since been catalogued in detail over on The Cutting Room Floor. That is the physical-media ethos at its best: the object is preserved, and the knowledge is shared with everyone.

Ghosts in the machine

Poke around inside and you find the game working out what it wanted to be. Soda Popinski is in there under his original arcade name, Vodka Drunkenski, later changed for the retail release. Piston Hurricane and Pizza Pasta appear too, holdovers from the 1984 arcade Punch-Out!!; Piston Hurricane went on to become Piston Honda, while poor Pizza Pasta was cut entirely.

Strangest of all are two fighters nobody can place: "Rockyhead" and "Mongol Khan", who have no known counterpart in the finished game. Historians genuinely cannot say whether they became someone else or were simply dropped. As a playable thing the build is threadbare, just four opponents in order, Glass Joe, Bald Bull, King Hippo and Don Flamenco, before it loops back to the start.

Why the experts are stumped

The cartridge itself is an oddity. It uses mask ROMs, where prototypes normally use EPROMs, has no sound code at all, and carries an intact lock-out chip and an early Nintendo of America house-style label. Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation, a man who has handled NES prototypes for more than 25 years, said flatly: "I've never seen anything like this."

You can read the full breakdown at Time Extension, and the documented list of every change lives on The Cutting Room Floor.

The final game shipped in 1987, of course, and later got reissued as Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream once the Tyson licence lapsed. But this scruffy, silent, half-finished cartridge is the one I find myself thinking about. Forty years in a box, and now it belongs to all of us. That is exactly how it should be.

Anbernic's RG Vita Is The PS Vita Shape I Still Miss, With A Catch

2026-03-23T00:00:00Z

The PS Vita is the handheld I still mourn. A gorgeous OLED slab that Sony loved just long enough to abandon, and I have never quite got over it. So when Anbernic revealed a machine built in exactly the shape my hands remember, I felt that familiar tug. Two of them, in fact: the RG Vita, and the pricier RG Vita Pro.

Let me be straight about what these are, because it matters. They are not Vitas, and they are not blessed by Sony. They are Android and Linux emulation handhelds wearing the Vita silhouette, the wide body and dual flush analogue sticks, that you fill with your own game backups. A tribute, in other words. A lovely ghost of a machine that deserved better.

The specs, and the one that stings

The standard RG Vita runs on a Unisoc T618 chip with 3GB of RAM and a 5.46-inch 720p screen, on Android 12. The Pro steps up to a Rockchip RK3576, 4GB of RAM, a sharper 5.5-inch 1080p screen, dual-boot Android 14 and Linux, and, handily, video-out over mini-HDMI and USB-C so you can play on the telly. Both have Hall-effect sticks that should not drift, and both claim around eight hours from a 5000mAh battery.

Here is the catch, and it is the one detail a Vita fan will feel. Both screens are LCD, not OLED. The original launch Vita's headline feature, the thing that made it sing, was its OLED panel, and that is the one corner this tribute quietly cuts. Handsome screens, no doubt. But not that.

The price, honestly

Pricing is dollars-only, because Anbernic sells direct and ships from China. The standard RG Vita is $99.99 as a 72-hour early-bird price, rising to $109.99 after; the Pro is $139.99 early-bird, then $149.99. There is no official UK price, so any pound figure is a rough conversion, and you will want to factor in import VAT and duty on top. Pre-orders open on the 23rd of March.

Full spec is on the Anbernic page, and Retro Handhelds has a good breakdown.

So, clear eyes. For less than a boxed Vita game once cost, you can hold the shape you loved again, and load it with your own backups. Just do not mistake it for the real thing coming back. I will admire the silhouette, and keep mourning the OLED.

The C64 And ZX Spectrum Are Getting Official Handhelds

2026-03-01T00:00:00Z

If you were lucky like me and grew up in the 80s, you will remember most of your mates at school either had a ZX Spectrum or a Commodore 64. I was a Speccy kid (not literally).

Well, the rivals are back, with Blaze and Retro Games Ltd announcing official handheld versions of both, and they are being released in October this year.

First off, I'm liking the design of these, my preference being the Spectrum version (I did say I was a Speccy kid!) in the classic black with the rainbow stripe down the front. The C64 version is in the familiar beige. Both are built like a Nintendo DS, so they fold open and shut, and each one has 25 games built in.

Two handheld 8-bit machines

You get a 4.3 inch IPS screen, a D-pad and face buttons, a set of function keys along the top, USB-C charging, a headphone jack, and a MicroSD slot so you can load your own games on there too. There is even a full-size USB port for plugging in a keyboard or joystick, which feels right for a couple of classic home computers.

The built-in line-ups are proper greatest-hits stuff. The C64 gets the likes of Sam's Journey, Boulder Dash, Paradroid, Nebulus and Speedball 2, while the Spectrum brings Head Over Heels, Manic Miner, Skool Daze, The Great Escape and Starquake, and a load more besides on both.

Cost and where to buy them

The standard version is £109.99, or a fiver cheaper on Amazon at £104.95, and there is a collector's edition for each at £129.99. The collector's editions are limited to 2,000 of each, sold through Funstock, and come with a hard shell carry case and an exclusive magazine.

It's a nice touch with the magazines: the C64 one is done up as Zzap!64, and the Spectrum one as Crash. If those two names mean anything to you, you probably already know whether you are buying one!

Both are up for pre-order now and due in October 2026 (I've ordered both of the collector's editions!). You can grab THEC64 Handheld from Funstock or Amazon, and The Spectrum Handheld from Funstock or Amazon. There is more in the full Evercade announcement.

So, all these years later, you can finally settle the playground argument by simply buying both!

A Rare Super Pocket Is Coming, With Banjo-Kazooie

2026-02-27T00:00:00Z

Introducing the new Super Pocket Rare Edition, which has just been announced by HyperMegaTech and Blaze. It is due this June, coming pre-installed with 14 games.

The biggie with this one is that one of the games included is Banjo-Kazooie, the Nintendo 64 classic, on a little handheld that costs under fifty quid.

I've got the Taito and Capcom Super Pockets, and I reviewed them here not that long ago and rated them highly. They're cheap, feel nice in the hand, and they take Evercade cartridges, so you are never short of something to play. A Rare Edition, though, could surpass the versions I have.

The story of Rare, in one handheld

If you do not know Rare, they are one of the great British studios. They started out as Ultimate Play the Game, run by the Stamper brothers, and they have been making brilliant games for over forty years. What I love about this line-up is that it tells their whole story. There are 14 games built in, and they run right through the decades.

You get the ZX Spectrum classics they made as Ultimate, Jetpac, Lunar Jetman, Atic Atac, Knight Lore and Gunfright. Then the NES years, with Battletoads, R.C. Pro-Am II, Snake Rattle 'n' Roll, Cobra Triangle, Slalom and Solar Jetman. There is Battletoads in Battlemaniacs from the SNES, Conker's Pocket Tales from the Game Boy Color, and then the big one.

Banjo-Kazooie on a pocket handheld

Banjo-Kazooie. A full Nintendo 64 3D platformer, running on a little handheld, is an achievement. It's one of the best games Rare ever made, and being able to play it on the go on this belting device is top notch.

I am curious how it will play though. The N64 pad had that analogue stick, and Banjo leaned on it heavily, so I will be interested to see how they map all of that onto a D-pad. Even so, a proper N64 game on a Super Pocket is a nice surprise, and one I did not expect to be writing about this year.

Games included

Jetpac
Lunar Jetman
Atic Atac
Knight Lore
Gunfright
Slalom
Cobra Triangle
Snake Rattle 'n' Roll
Solar Jetman
Battletoads
R.C. Pro-Am II
Battletoads in Battlemaniacs
Conker's Pocket Tales
Banjo-Kazooie

The specs, and where to get it

It is the familiar Super Pocket shape (which is a good thing!), done up in Rare's blue, red and yellow, the Banjo colours. You get the 2.8 inch screen, USB-C charging, a headphone jack, and around four hours of battery. And as ever it is Evercade compatible, so any cartridges you already own or buy will slot straight in and open the door to hundreds more games.

It is priced at £49.99 and due out in June 2026. You can pre-order it on Amazon, and there is more detail on the official HyperMegaTech site and in the Evercade announcement.

A pocket full of Rare history, with Banjo-Kazooie sat on top of it, for the price of a couple of new games (Lee departs with another 50 quid!).

The Virtual Boy Is Back On Switch Online, With A £17 Cardboard Viewer

2026-02-17T00:00:00Z

The console nobody bought and everybody remembers is officially back. The Virtual Boy, Nintendo's red-tinted, neck-cramping folly from 1995, has been added to Nintendo Switch Online, and I have to say I am delighted for the daft old thing.

Virtual Boy – Nintendo Classics arrived on the 17th of February as a new app inside the Switch Online Expansion Pack, playable on both Switch 2 and the original Switch. It is the first official re-release of Virtual Boy software since the machine was quietly discontinued in the mid-90s, which makes it a genuine little moment for preservation. You no longer need to hunt down a boot-sale unicorn to see those eerie red-on-black games move in 3D.

There are seven titles at launch: 3-D Tetris, Galactic Pinball, Golf, The Mansion of Innsmouth, Red Alarm, Teleroboxer and Virtual Boy Wario Land. More are promised, and given only 22 Virtual Boy games were ever made, the service could end up covering most of the library over time.

The cardboard viewer is the lovely bit

To see the games in their trademark stereoscopic 3D, you slot your Switch into a physical viewer and look through the twin lenses, a knowing nod to the original's tabletop goggles. There are two options. The premium one is a dedicated replica at $99.99, about £67. But the one that made me grin is the budget version: a fold-up cardboard viewer, in the spirit of Nintendo Labo VR, at $24.99, about £17. Same optical job, fraction of the price. It is an affectionate, cheerful bit of design.

And crucially, nobody is locked out. Without a viewer at all, every game still plays in flat 2D on your normal screen, so you can have a go regardless. Just do not call the cardboard viewer "VR", mind. It is a passive stereoscopic viewer, not head-tracked virtual reality.

The small print

You will need a paid Switch Online plus Expansion Pack membership, which is the pricier tier, and it is sold separately. It is out across the UK and Ireland as well as North America, and prices are listed in pounds on the Nintendo UK store, so do check those against the live listings before you commit. One curio for the purists: the replica does not recreate the Virtual Boy's odd twin-D-pad controller, so you play with normal pads, which has already sent some modders off to build their own.

You can find it all on the Nintendo UK page, and VGC has the launch details.

A gloriously failed machine, preserved properly at last, and a cardboard box that lets anyone see what all the fuss was about. Preservation with a wink. I am here for it.

The Analogue 3D Plays Your N64 Carts In 4K

2025-11-18T00:00:00Z

There's no getting away from it: the N64 was a special console. It's funny how you remember random things. I was temping at Trafford Park Bakery in the 90s, having lunch in the canteen, when two lads came and sat at my table, going on about how they were going to play the most powerful console in the world later that evening: the N64.

A couple of weeks later I was working again in Trafford Park, this time doing nights at a delivery company. Someone had brought an N64 in to play on our break. I played the N64 for the first time here, and GoldenEye, and it blew my mind.

So N64 enthusiasts, like me, will be pleased to hear the Analogue 3D has finally started shipping, having gone out to the first buyers on the 18th of November. It's a modern console that plays your original Nintendo 64 cartridges, and the best bit: it's region-free.

No dodgy import cartridge, no region converter, no emulator that is "good enough". You blow the dust off a boxed PAL or NTSC-U/J N64 game, slot it in, and it just works, in 4K.

FPGA, not emulation

The heart of it is an FPGA, a field-programmable gate array, which rebuilds the N64 in actual hardware rather than pretending to be one in software. That distinction is the whole point for Analogue: the founder and CEO of Analogue, Christopher Taber, reckons software emulation "feels unjustly and wrongly aged".

Whether you buy the philosophy or not, the results have gone down very well: Time Extension gave the Analogue 3D 9 out of 10 and called it "the ultimate way to play Nintendo 64", and Digital Foundry called it the most impressive machine Analogue has made.

There are four proper controller ports on the front that take real N64 pads and accessories, the Rumble Pak and Transfer Pak included. Output is 4K over HDMI with variable refresh and HDR, upscaling most games about ten times over, and there is a set of CRT and PVM display filters if you want that old glow. It runs a 4K version of Analogue's own operating system. Worth flagging for the tinkerers: unlike the Analogue Pocket, this one does not support openFPGA, so it is not a homebrew-cores machine.

Gorgeous design

A special mention for the design of the Analogue 3D. It really is gorgeous, simplicity is the order of the day here. Moulded to the iconic silhouette of the N64 but stripping away the toy-like plastic feel, it is top-notch and something Dieter Rams himself would be proud of.

The catch

Here is where I have to be the mate who tells you the truth. This is a US, dollars-only, product that sells out in minutes. It launched at $249.99, and a restock a week later nudged it to $269.99, which Analogue blamed on tariffs. There is no UK price, so that $250 converts to roughly £190 to £200, but by the time you have added the 20 per cent VAT and duty for importing one, you are nearer £230 to £260. Resellers over here were asking for around £400. (Update: you can now get the Analogue 3D quite commonly second hand from CEX, and they tend to go from £325 to £380 boxed, so get trading for credit!)

A couple more things to know before you buy: there is no controller in the box, so you either plug in your old N64 pads or buy the matching 8BitDo 64 pad separately for about $40. And the "SD card" is a 16GB microSD that comes pre-installed.

You can read the full spec on the official Analogue page, and TechRadar's review is a fair account of what you are getting.

Import faff and all, this is a superb product and the perfect way to play your old N64 games in today's world.

The ModRetro Chromatic Relaunch

2025-11-16T00:00:00Z

One of the best documentaries I've watched recently is "Rams", which documents the life and work of the famous and influential product designer Dieter Rams. It's fair to say I'm a bit obsessed with good design.

So with that out in the open, imagine me hearing about the ModRetro Chromatic, which originally launched in 2024. It's a modern handheld, one might say a Game Boy built from the ground up, how it was meant to be built: no plastic, simplicity, beautiful design, and it plays your Game Boy cartridges.

Better still, no downloads, no logins. Just slot in your cartridge, turn it on and start playing. Now that's good design.

It houses an FPGA chip that behaves like the real Game Boy silicon rather than pretending in software, so your original Game Boy and Game Boy Color carts run as they should (unfortunately that doesn't include the Game Boy Advance, but you can't have everything).

Built proper

The shell is thixomolded magnesium alloy, not plastic, with a metal battery door, so it feels like a thing that will still work in fifty years. The screen was made from scratch to nail the exact colour cast of the Game Boy Color, and it hits up to 1,000 nits, so it is readable in direct sunlight (something the original wasn't, I might add).

It gets better: there is an optional sapphire-crystal screen, the same scratch-proof stuff on expensive watches. The base model uses Corning Gorilla Glass at £183, and the sapphire upgrade is £274. That extra hundred quid is purely the sapphire, not a different colour, so do not get the two confused.

Every console ships with a brand-new, officially made Tetris cartridge, and here is a nice touch: it is a real cart that also runs on an actual Game Boy Color. There is a proper Link port too, so you can connect via link cable to another Chromatic, a real GBC or an Analogue Pocket, plus a 3.5mm jack, a physical volume wheel and USB-C for charging, firmware, save backups and even video-out.

New colours, new games

The relaunch brought a new "Cloud" colourway, a white shell with SNES-style purple buttons, joining Midnight, Wave, Leaf, Inferno, Volt and Bubblegum. It also added five new first-party cartridge games. It runs on three AA batteries in the box, with an optional rechargeable pack sold separately.

Full details are on the ModRetro page, with a good hands-on over at Lon.TV.

The only design change I would have made on the ModRetro Chromatic is removing the logo and printed stripes on the front. No need. If they had done that, they might have got the seal of approval from Dieter Rams himself.

A great effort though, and nice to see good design as the differentiator.

Bitmap Books Gives The SNES RPG Its Coffee-Table History

2025-11-03T00:00:00Z

The publisher Bitmap Books needs no introduction to retro gaming fans. I'm a massive fan, and the next release, The Definitive Book of SNES RPGs Vol. 1, is something I'm looking forward to.

It's written by Moses Norton, and this first volume covers the games from A to K, with a second to follow for the rest.

The print-craft is the point

This hardback runs to 556 pages, with a sewn binding so it lies flat, edge-to-edge lithographic printing, a foil-blocked cover designed by Stephen Sitton, and a gold bookmark ribbon. There is a free PDF included with every copy, for reading on your digital devices.

The content is structured as a collection of essays, covering classics like Chrono Trigger, EarthBound and ActRaiser, through to hidden gems such as E.V.O., Inindo and Brain Lord. There's a lot to cover in here.

Two editions, and one already gone

There are two versions. The standard hardback is £34.99. The Collector's Edition is £44.99 and adds a heavy foil-blocked slipcase, limited to 1,000 units, which appears to have already sold out when I looked, so you may be after the standard now. Both are best bought direct from Bitmap Books, although they are on Amazon UK as well.

So, another Bitmap Books offering: 550-odd pages of foil-bound love for a genre that still tops best-of lists 30 years on.

The golden age of arcade celebrated on Atari

2025-10-13T00:00:00Z

The publisher and developer ‘PLAION REPLAI’ have announced they will release four arcade classics as ‘Unlocking 1982’ for the Atari 2600+ and Atari 7800+ on 21st November 2025.

The four titles from the iconic year are GALAGA, PAC-MAN Double Feature, Dig Dug and Xevious and will be available individually costing £24.99 each.

Ben Jones, the commercial director of PLAION REPLAI has said:

“These games aren’t just nostalgic releases, they’re cultural touchstones. With GALAGA as our flagship, and PAC-MAN, Dig Dug, and Xevious completing the set, we’re celebrating 1982 as the year that defined the golden age of arcades. We want fans old and new to unlock that moment in time and experience it all over again on Atari consoles”

As well as working on the new HDMI based Atari 2600+ and 7800+ the cartridges will also work on the original Atari 7800 system.

Have a watch of the announcement trailer .

The demand for retro gaming doesn't seem to be easing off, which pleases us immensely at Retro Delights!

Atari Game Station Go

2025-10-03T00:00:00Z

My Arcade’s Atari Game Station Go handheld looks a decent offering, especially if you’re an Atari fan (like me) or a retro gaming fan in general (also like me).

It comes pre-loaded with over 200 classic Atari titles from the 2600, 5200, 7900, some arcade classics and 5 games from Atari's Recharged series.

It has a 7 inch display, HDMI-out (so you can play on your TV), USB-C charging, microSD, blue tooth, Wi-Fi and a rechargeable battery with up to 4- 5 hours per charge.

My Arcade have gone all out with the controls with an integrated paddle, trak-ball and keypad, this should help to get the most from the games on offer.

It could be a tricky one to get hold of in the UK and will cost a small fortune in shipping, let’s hope we get a stockist over here.

First reviews look promising, it could be worth the wait, for more info on the Gamestation Go have a look at Atari's website.

PlayStation: The First 30 Years Book From Read-Only Memory

2025-09-29T00:00:00Z

This one has got my attention. Read-Only Memory, the London publisher behind some of the nicest games books going, has teamed up with Sony to produce "PlayStation: The First 30 Years", a 400-page official history.

It measures 375 by 295mm, weighs around 5kg, and is printed on heavyweight matt art stock using CMYK plus a silver ink. This is proper.

What's in it

The content is a visual journey through never-before-seen prototypes, concept sketches and design models, from experimental early mock-ups that never shipped, right through the original PlayStation to the PS5. It gets better: the people who shaped the machines are involved. Ken Kutaragi, the father of PlayStation, original hardware and DualShock designer Teiyu Goto, and PS5 designer Yujin Morisawa all give their account of the decisions behind the kit. Photography is by Benedict Redgrove, with art direction by Michael C Place.

Two editions

Firstly there is the Standard edition at £95, with an embossed case, foil detailing and four ribbon bookmarks. Then there is the Deluxe edition at £245, and this is where it gets next level. The Deluxe edition adds exposed binding, a foil-stamped clamshell box lined with five-colour neon ink, and a large photographic print signed by Teiyu Goto and Benedict Redgrove. Another nice detail is that the Deluxe is limited to exactly 1,994 copies, a nod to the year the PS1 launched. It reportedly nearly sold out within hours, so if you want one, get it ordered quick.

You can only purchase the books through Read-Only Memory, and they are scheduled for shipping in November 2026. There is a nice design feature over at Creative Review if you want to see more.

Some might say there is a touch of irony in Sony pouring this much devotion into a printed celebration of its physical past at the same time it has announced it is stopping physical discs.

It does look a beautiful book. As a designer I probably appreciate this more than most. The Deluxe edition is pricey though, although not for this kind of book. We need to get Retro Delights more established and get sent stuff like this to review!

Evercade Announce Giga Cart - Bigger Retro Games

2024-04-15T00:00:00Z

Today Evercade announced a new cartridge, the Giga Cart, which will hold bigger and more modern retro games with its larger capacity.

We've got the Evercade XP and Super Pockets which are great, the new Giga Cart is the same shape as existing cartridges so will work with current devices.

More modern Retro Games

Evercade have said the new cartridge is for larger modern retro games that we're released on consoles, which is promising.

Giga Carts will cost £22.49, which seems fair considering the extra storage and not much of an increase from the £17.99 of the normal cartridges.

Two Giga Carts coming in 2024

More good news is we will have two Giga Cart releases in 2024, so will keep our eyes peeled for what game collection will come with the initial releases.

Evercade is developing its offerings with the Giga Cart a good example of this, what a time to be a retro gamer!

For more info on Giga Carts, look on the Evercade website.

Three New SNES Games On Switch Online

2024-04-12T00:00:00Z

From today, if you have a Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Online, you will be able to play three classic SNES games!

The games are:

Amazing Hebereke
Super R-Type
Wrecking Crew 98

Amazing Hebereke

Released in 1994 and developed by Sunsoft in Japan, this was a fighting-style spin-off to the Hebereke series, which you could play in single-player or up to four players.

Super R-Type

R-Type needs no introduction, released in 1991, this classic shooter was based on the arcade version of R-Type 2, taking some of the levels from that and adding new ones as well.

Wrecking Crew 98

The sequel to Wrecking Crew came out in 1998 and featured Mario and Bowser in a game that was around puzzles in a Tetris and Puyo Puyo style.

Nintendo Switch Online & Expansion Pack

We think Nintendo Switch Online offers good value, for retro gamers, the expansion pack unlocks even more retro games to play, for more info on what you get with membership, have a look at Nintendo's website.

Fallout Series Pip-Boy Die-Cast Replica By Bethesda

2024-04-12T00:00:00Z

I was introduced to the Fallout series with the third instalment, Fallout 3 on the Playstation 3 when it was released back in 2008.

Starting in the underground vault 101, creating a character and heading off into the post-apocalyptic world gripped me.

Survival in this dark world depended on a few things, most notably the Pip-Boy 3000, a wearable personal information processor (PIP), worn on your left arm in the game and central to developing your character.

A Die Cast 1-1 Replica from Bethesda

Bethesda has created a Pip-Boy Die Cast 1-1 Replica which is based on the Pip-Boy seen in the new Fallout Amazon Prime TV series.

The front casing is made from die-cast metal, is wearable with a foam insert to make it more comfortable on the arm and has a functioning TFT LCD screen.

This replica looks like a big improvement over the pip boy that came with the Fallout 4 game limited edition release back in 2015.

Pre-order your Pip Boy

You can pre-order the Pip Boy Die Cast Replica by going to Bethesda gear International.

Hello From Retro Delights - Our Very First Post!

2024-04-08T00:00:00Z

A warm welcome to Retro Delights in the first post on our brand-new website!

I’m Lee Murray and in partnership with Alex Murray, we have set up Retro Delights to create quality content on retro games and products.

We’re both passionate about retro gaming and retro stuff in general, so why not join us on our journey to become the number 1 retro gaming brand in the UK?

So this is the very start of Retro Delights, we’re learning as we go, and the only rule we have set is to have fun creating, what we hope to be delightful retro content.

Lee and Alex Murray.

A Shelf for the Games I No Longer Own

2026-05-17T00:00:00Z

I sold Silent Hill on the PlayStation 1 to Grainger Games in Altrincham for a few quid in 2010; I think about it more than I should.

I was in my early 30s, my two daughters were born; me and my wife Sarah were going through bags and boxes of things we could get rid of to de-clutter the house whilst getting some extra money in the process.

I had a load of bits that were stored in the office, these ranged from VHS videos of Manchester United season reviews (when we used to win things!), old books (I remember again a Manchester United theme) to my old games collections.

Silent Hill and my former PS1 collection were no longer being used at the time, they were fair game to get rid of and this is what sensible dads did.

Memories attached to games

So I got rid of my old PS1 games, this was a practical thing to do and marked a different period of my life, making smarter decisions (well trying to!).

In recent years there have been newer Silent Hill games released, they took me back to the originals and reminded me of memories which were not just of playing the game.

Memories attached to the game are also of my life at that time and the different version of me back then. I remember me and Sarah lived in a terrace house, near Sale Town centre, we had no children at that time, going out partying more often was a highlight!

It's a funny one, it's not just the physical disc and memories of the game, it's a marker to where I was in my life and memories associated with that time as well.

Fast forward 2026

In 2026 a copy of Silent Hill goes for about £90 plus so there is that side of regret as well!

But it's not about the money, it's the memories that are attached to the games and where I was at that time.

I built a shelf

Silent Hill is one of many old Retro Games I have memories attached to, I'm sure I'm not the only one, so I built a shelf.

A shelf where you can add all the games you have previously owned as well as games and hardware you currently own all in one place.

You can share your shelf with other people and write memories you have on games if you want to, there are also links to buy the games you no longer own and even set up price alerts for them.

Have a look at my shelf and memories, Silent Hill is finally sitting on a shelf again, fifteen years late:

retrodelights.co.uk/member/lee/

If you'd like to create your own shelf and memories become a member and part of the Retro Delights community here:

retrodelights.co.uk/join/

Simple

2026-05-06T00:00:00Z

On the immediate clarity of 80s arcade design — five seconds to learn, a quarter to play, no tutorial required.

The Away Controller

2026-04-19T00:00:00Z

It would have been '99 I think, a weeknight and lads' night at Keith's. Bring your own booze to the main event: the ISS Pro Evo tournament.

I'd drawn Argentina; Batistuta's shot power was the best in the game, and I knew it. First round, Croatia. Decent side, but I was fancying my chances.

Then my first opponent, incidentally Keith himself with a glint in his eye, handed me the player 2 controller.

The away controller.

The controller had seen better days. It went beyond being 'well worn'; the left analogue stick was 'sticky' and the R1 button didn't always register. The away controller was the equivalent of a rainy away night at Stoke.

The boys knew but nothing was said, it was the luck of the draw. For now the challenge was to be on my absolute A-game to defeat Croatia and get off to a good start in the World Cup tournament with it, an achievement in itself.

Keith's bedsit

Keith lived in a bedsit above a restaurant in Sale, Manchester at the time. I remember when you went in, on the left wall he had a big Trainspotting poster with the 'Choose Life' dialogue from the film on it. The room was smoky. Usually there would've been about 6 of us, sometimes the chef from downstairs would join in, everyone squeezing in and making do with sitting on the sofa and chairs or floor.

The game kicked off. I made a strong opening, keeping the ball well. I tried to overwhelm opponents with quick play and my fast reflexes. A big part of Pro Evolution was knowing your player and their strengths, so with Batistuta and his shooting prowess it was about getting it to him and in the right position and letting his shots go.

We both had chances but it was pretty tight for most of the game. Keith had a couple of shots but I pulled off decent saves, which I let him know about. My controller nearly let me down as I tackled a player and it went too hard; Keith wasn't happy. The controller nearly cost me a red card, but I survived it.

The moment

The game, which we used to set to 10 mins of play time for each match, was nearing its end when I suddenly got the ball to Batistuta on the left-hand side, a few yards outside the box; perfect to cut in on his right foot.

This was it, the moment I'd been waiting for. I held down square and R2 to get the power just right, a goal was a formality…

Clunk went the R2 button.

And the shot flew way over the bar. Keith chuckled and then went on to score at the other end in the last minute, to earn a close, well-fought 1-0 victory. I'd been done by the away controller, proper done. I was wounded but I took my beating, opened another can of Stella and looked on to the next game.

The nights that stopped happening

There were a lot of those nights. Before everyone had a mobile in their hand, before the group chat replaced Keith's room, before we'd all drifted into our separate lives. Just mates, a telly, a PS1 and a shitload of alcohol, ripping it out of each other.

We haven't done one of those nights in over 20 years. Nobody decided. It just stopped happening.

Wayne, Martin and the Indestructible Spectrum

2026-04-18T00:00:00Z

This has got to be my favourite post title up to now for Retro Delights. It's an intriguing one, I'm sure, and has a certain feel of a Roald Dahl story about it.

So what's this all about then? Well firstly, Wayne and Martin are both my cousins. They lived on the same road as me growing up, literally across the road a few doors down in Sale Moor, Manchester.

With Retro Delights I wanted to include retro gaming memories, so I was writing a list of them and this came up.

Across the road

It brought a smile to my face thinking about it. Both mine and my cousins' families didn't have loads of money growing up. We went out on adventures on a daily basis, roaming the streets doing things we probably shouldn't have, but that's what kids did back in the 80s.

So as I said, money was tight. But I was very fortunate to get hold of my very first computer, a Sinclair Spectrum 128k. This was a result of saving up my paper round Saturday jobs money. It had taken an age to save up.

The Spectrum wasn't my first choice of the computer I wanted. That was an Amiga, like my mate Keith's brother Alan had, but that was a step too far and way too expensive. But I was well happy to get the Spectrum.

I told Martin all about it, the games and how it worked, and said he had to get one so that we could lend each other games and share them. My auntie got Martin a Sinclair Spectrum 48k for their first computer. We borrowed each other's games because the Spectrum 128K would play 48k games as well. They tended to be cheaper, which we were thankful for at the time.

So yes I remember this, but my standout memory around their Spectrum 48k was, as my title suggests, something different. That crossed my mind thinking back to this.

The throw

The Spectrum 48k must have been a pretty sturdy piece of hardware. Very sturdy in fact, because what I haven't mentioned up to now is Martin, like me, was an amateur boxer at the time. And Wayne, who was a couple of years older, was a bit of a unit and liked to scrap himself.

Basically it was kicking off with the pair of them, as brothers did on a regular basis. The thing is Wayne had a temper, and on this occasion I had come round to see them mid-fight.

I'd opened their front door, and Wayne was at the top of the stairs screaming at Martin with the Spectrum in his hands. He defo wasn't happy. Anyway all I then remember is him throwing the Spectrum down the stairs. It came down in slow motion, step by step, the keys from the keyboard coming off the unit with each bounce.

It finally reached the bottom of the stairs. The keys were everywhere. My thoughts were it's game over for the Spectrum, Wayne's had our Martin right over there. Martin quickly followed the Spectrum, he held it together well to be fair, and started picking up the scattered keys.

The brick

So you might see where this is going now. But yeah, amazingly the Spectrum was fine. It was more than fine, it didn't even have a scratch on it. Yes the keys had come off, but they were simple to put back on.

The Spectrum, a.k.a the brick, was as sturdy as they come. Imagine how a PS5 of today would have fared in the same scenario. I'm telling you now, there's no way they build 'em like they used to.

Tartarus vs. Mementos: A Persona Dungeon Debate

2026-04-15T00:00:00Z

GUEST PASSNO. 1644

Sarah Murray

POWER LEVELPersona Superfan

Alex's mum and my wife. Sarah has clocked over 400 hours across the Persona series and considers Persona 5 Royal to be the greatest JRPG ever made. She will fight you on this.

SARAH-MURRAY-2026

The Dungeon Debate

We sat down for a quick chat about two very different approaches to dungeon crawling in the Persona series.

Lee

OK so here's my hot take — Tartarus in Persona 3 is underrated. People call it repetitive, but that grind is the whole point. It's supposed to feel like an endurance test. You're climbing a tower with no idea what's at the top.

Alex

I get the vibe they were going for, but after 50 floors of the same green corridors I was falling asleep. Persona 5's Palaces are actual places with actual themes. Kamoshida's castle, the bank, the space station — every one feels completely different.

Lee

Sure, the Palaces look incredible. But Mementos is basically Tartarus with a subway skin. And nobody talks about how tedious Mementos gets. At least Tartarus owns what it is from the start.

Alex

Fair point on Mementos — it's the weakest part of P5 for sure. But the Palaces make up for it. The puzzle design, the set pieces, the way the environment tells you something about the villain. Tartarus doesn't do any of that.

Sarah

Can I just say — you're both wrong. The best dungeon in the entire series is Shido's Palace. A sinking cruise ship? The cognitive version of a corrupt politician's mind? That's peak Persona.

Lee

I'll give you that. If we could get Persona 3's atmosphere and tension with Persona 5's level design... that would be the perfect dungeon. Maybe Persona 6 will finally nail it.

Sarah

Persona 6 needs to bring back Social Links properly. The Confidant system in P5 was good, but P3's felt more personal. Less transactional.

Social Link Rank Up!AlexKnowledge

▲ ▲ ▲

The Magic Of Bubble Bobble

2026-02-24T00:00:00Z

The beginning of a fantastic story

It would have been around 1987ish, I was about 12, me and my pals would head off to Sale swimming baths at the weekend to cause mayhem and have fun in the pool.

The pool had a colour timing system, so your wristband would be a certain colour, and there were corresponding colour sirens. When your colour Siren went off, it was time to get out of the pool, but the best bit was yet to come!

We'd get changed and be straight into the cafe to get some chips; the swimming baths had a canny way of making you hungry.

Chips and arcades

It was the activity after bolting the chips down, which was my favourite, playing or watching other people play the arcade in the swimming baths.

In my time going to the baths in that period, it had five arcade machines that I could remember these were Pac Land, Double Dragon, Golden Axe, Robocop and the one that stood out above all, the magical Bubble Bobble.

Its catchy theme would draw you closer; I can still hear it clearly in my mind, the arcade cabinet had illustrations on the front of the main characters from the game Bub and Bob, who were both dinosaurs.

Released in 1986 from Taito, it was a two-player game, complete with two joysticks and corresponding push buttons, the 20p (2x10ps) coin slots had a red glow encouraging you to insert a coin and get started.

The game aimed to rescue Bub and Bob's girlfriends and, in the process, venture through the cave of monsters, which consisted of over 100 levels and different caves.

Bub and Bob weren't you're normal fire-breathing dragons; they fired out bubbles which would be directed at the many monsters that were in each platform level, once a monster was in a bubble, you could then burst it to kill it.

Burst all the monsters in a level, and you would move on to the next, along the way, you could also collect various power-ups, and you had a time limit as well; the words 'Hurry up' would appear if you didn't meet it and everything got a bit quicker and harder.

What was the appeal?

Bubble Bobble had charm and bucket loads. I've always been big on film and game scores, and this one was so catchy it was defo a part of the appeal for me.

It was also full of hidden secrets, and strategic play was important between two players, it was more fun to play with someone else, and the pacing was good with the time limits to make things get hectic.

The game was quirky as well; the character design was non-offensive, and Bub and Bob were a hit with a more unisex appeal.

For your 20p, you could get a decent amount of playtime out of a game. It was addictive, and the play was varied enough to keep you coming back, Bubble Bobble was also one of the first games to have multiple endings.

A success for Taito

Bubble Bobble went on to become one of Taitos biggest hits, with other games being released over the years on different platforms.

As an initial post to get content on Retro Delights so we can get it live, it felt only right to do a one on Bubble Bobble, I've enjoyed going back to the 80s to Sale swimming baths and the magic of Bubble Bobble.

Don't shoot the food - Gauntlet

2026-02-03T00:00:00Z

Arcades in the 80's

The golden age of arcades for most was in the 80's, what a feeling stepping foot into an arcade in that period.

You’d be greeted by a funky carpet, the different iconic sounds playing over one another would hit you, the imaginative cabinet art, neon lights, marquees lit up, the attract modes encouraging you to come and spend your coins.

Dungeons and dragons inspiration

Gauntlet was a popular game from that time, developed by Atari from the mind of Ed Logg and was released in 1985. It was originally titled Dungeons, which was inspired by the Dungeons and Dragons board game, but to avoid legal issues, Atari went for Gauntlet instead, and the rest is history.

The arcade was a four-player cabinet, which at the time wasn’t a common sight in arcades, you could choose from Thor the warrior, Merlin the wizard, Thyra the Valkyrie and Questor the elf (you can see the influence from Dungeons and Dragons).

Each character had its strengths and weaknesses; my go-to's would be Warrior or Wizard, it played like a shoot 'em up within a series of mazes, you had to find the exit to the level.

In every level, you’re character's health would always be counting down, so killing/avoiding enemies whilst looking for food and magic made Gauntlet a bit different to other arcades at the time, it was lots of fun.

Sound snippets to die for, literally

You can't mention Gauntlet without bringing up its sound, it had some classic soundbites, from the chime when you inserted a coin to the sarcastic "Who shot the food" or the warning "Wizard is about to die", for more sounds from Gauntlet have a listen at Basements Arcade.

Gauntlet games

Gauntlet (1985) (Deeper Dungeons expansion released in 1987)
Gauntlet II (1986)
Gauntlet III: The Final Quest (1991)
Gauntlet: The Third Encounter (1990)
Gauntlet IV (1993)
Gauntlet: Legends (1998)
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (2001)
Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows (2007)
Gauntlet 2014

The creativity of magazines - A Passion Ignited

2026-01-20T00:00:00Z

It started in the 80's

It was around 1984, and I would have been about nine years of age, at that time, my family lived on a council estate in a place called '7 Ways' in Stretford, Manchester.

At the top of our road, we had a row of shops, your typical, a corner shop that sells a bit of everything, a hair-dressers, a chippy, but the stand-out for me was the newsagents.

The magazine rack

Whenever I ventured into the newsagents, I would head straight over to the magazine rack and look for the video game section.

My only experience of playing video games at this point was in arcades on family trips to Blackpool and Cornwall, but now video games are well-established in people's homes.

Video games in the home

Because of the massive popularity of video games and magazines about them, we're also flying off the shelves, for me as a 9-year-old, the pages ignited my imagination of what the games we're like to play.

More creativity

I think there has always been something special about the written paper format and the possibilities it brings, too many times in digital, we go for functional, tried and tested, and we see ‘samey’ designs all over the web and less creativity than the in paper format.

Digital is getting better, though and keeps evolving. The new CSS grid is now widely supported by web browsers, and it does open up more possibilities with more advanced designs on websites and more opportunities for creativity.

A passion ignited

Going back to those early years, I did look forward to looking at the magazines to see the latest computer and video games that had come out.

In later life, I ended up choosing design as my career, but from an early age, I had an appreciation of the use of type, colour, illustrations, game screenshots and art-directed stories, which helped bring the games to life for me.