Retro - Timeline
Sunday31st Jul 2022
News Nintendo DS Firmware 'Prototype' Reveals System's Unique Boot Up Sound Effect
It even works on "real hardware"
Nintendo preservation website Forest of Illusion has managed to acquire another rare piece of gaming history. It's been able to archive a Japan prototype of the Nintendo DS X4 firmware - recovered from an X4 prototype unit. According to the source, "just about every aspect of this version is different from the final...
Saturday30th Jul 2022
Feature SEGA's Astonishing GameCube Rebound Following Defeat In The Console Wars
How SEGA turned its fortunes around and made friends with Nintendo
For gamers old enough to remember the turn of the century, the console landscape looked very different from how it does today. Everyone was excited for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo was getting the GameCube ready to succeed the Nintendo 64. Microsoft's Xbox was also in development...
Friday29th Jul 2022
News Analogue Pocket's Major Beta Update Is Live, Here's What's New
Memories! OpenFPGA! SpaceWar!
Analogue's major beta update to its handheld console, the Analogue Pocket, is finally live for users to download, and introduces much anticipated additions to the experience including Memories, Libraries, and openFPGA, Analogue's developer program. Detailed in an announcement post from Analogue itself, the biggest...
News Say Hello To Time Extension, The Newest Member Of Our Network
If you like classic gaming, you'll love this...
As you'll no doubt be aware, Nintendo Life is just one of three sites we operate here at Hookshot Media. We also operate Push Square and Pure Xbox, but it's been quite some time since we launched an entirely new site – but that changed this week. Say hello to Time Extension, the newest member of the...
Thursday28th Jul 2022
Random N64 Cart Album Composer Returns With A Funky GBA Follow-Up
Transport yourself back in time
Remute is back with another unique album release, but this time on a different console. The musician released an album on an N64 cartridge earlier this year, and he's followed this release up with a fantastic-sounding GBA cartridge. Yep, your tiny little Game Boy Micro (or whatever model of GBA, but we're going extra...
Random This Fan's Enormous Nintendo Collection Makes All Others Look Tiny
Years in the making
We at Nintendo Life love a good collection, but YouTuber Nintendo Downunder has truly blown us away. In a video uploaded yesterday, the mega fan shows off his collection of Nintendo consoles, games and accessories which is enough to keep even the biggest fan's jaw firmly on the floor for a long time. The video is the creator's...
News You Can Now Play Steam Games Using Your Retro Switch Controllers
Retro is the way forward
Steam received a brand new update yesterday that might interest some of you who own one (or multiple) of the Switch's retro controllers. VGC reports that Valve's digital platform now supports the NES, SNES, N64, and Mega Drive / Genesis controllers. So you can play classics like Glover, multiple Mega Drive games, Chrono...
Wednesday27th Jul 2022
News There's A Brand New Game Boy Platformer Coming Out This Summer
Pre-orders for Lost Terminal are now available
PixelHeart, the publisher behind Guns of Mercy and Liberated, has announced that its next game is to be compatible with Game Boy systems. Yes, you read that correctly, a brand new game is coming to the Game Boy in 2022. Developed by Maxime Schutz, Lost Terminal is an underworld-set platformer and it...
Friday22nd Jul 2022
News This Game Boy-Inspired Handheld Is A Budget Answer To Modern-Day Retro Gaming
Cheap and cheerful chip tunes
If you're a fan of all of these new retro handhelds but don't quite have the budget for them, then we might just have the thing for you today. RGhandhelds today revealed the Retro Pixel Pocket, a little Game Boy-esque machine with four buttons and a clear casing that is just what it says it is — pocket-sized! The...
Thursday21st Jul 2022
News Forgotten Gem 'Avenging Spirit' Is Making Its Way To Nintendo Switch
Game BOOy Horror
Right, get this — you're out on a nice date with your girlfriend until, annoyingly, you get horribly murdered by a crime syndicate. Now you're a ghost, and you have to team up with your girlfriend's dad to rescue her from said syndicate, but wait! There's more! The syndicate are one step ahead of you, because they're researching...
Tuesday19th Jul 2022
Random See How The World's Biggest Working Nintendo DS Was Created
Supersize Mii
We've all heard of the phrase 'go big or go home,' right? Well YouTuber and all-round tech wizard, Bigrig Creates, seems to have fully embodied its message with his latest video in which he assembles the world's biggest Nintendo DS. Sharing the video on his YouTube channel, BigRig assembles the system's iconic dual screens by...
Monday18th Jul 2022
Soapbox Correcting A Horrifying 15-Year Mistake By Finally Playing Elite Beat Agents
They don’t make rhythm games as bizarre as they used to
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've got on their minds. Today, Lowell makes amends for a poor life choice and finally gets down with that funky, funky beat... Rewind with me all the way back to...
Random Have You Seen This Cute, Unreleased Precursor To The Top Loader NES?
What could have been...
The North American version of the top-loading NES-101 All the way back in 1988, Nintendo would show to the media a brand new piece of hardware that would eventually become the Super Famicom, or the Super NES in the West. It was an exciting time for the gaming community as Nintendo entered the 16-bit era, though it seems...
Friday15th Jul 2022
Review Pokémon Puzzle League - A Thrilling Puzzler And A Heavy Nostalgia Hit
Panel de Pokémon
This review originally went live in 2008, and we're updating and republishing it to mark the game's arrival on Switch as part of the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack. For those who have dabbled with Puzzle League, this is obvious information, but please bear with us. Tetris Attack, the SNES game, was a westernized version of...
Thursday14th Jul 2022
News Namco Shmup Dragon Saber Is This Week's Arcade Archives Game
Dragon flight
If you love a good vertical shoot 'em up - Hamster's Arcade Archives collection has you got covered this week. The latest release for this library on the Switch is the 1990 Namco title, Dragon Saber. It's a sequel to Dragon Spirit, released in arcades back in 1987. In this game, the Huey and Siria, who have been transformed into...
Wednesday13th Jul 2022
News SEGA Genesis Mini 2 Confirmed For North American Release This October
Blasting to the West with SEGA CD games
Sega has announced that it's bringing the Genesis Mini 2 mini console to North America on 27th October. The mini console — which follows the original Mega Drive Mini and includes more Genesis titles and SEGA CD games to boot — was previously confirmed only for Japan, but we'll be enjoying the 50+ games it...
Random Voice Of Zelda In CD-i Games Would Love To Return To The Role
She's currently working on a homage to the CD-i series
The Legend of Zelda CD-i games might not have had much going for them, but one thing that was arguably impressive was the voice acting. Bonnie Jean Wilbur was the original Princess Zelda in the series - providing the voice for the character in the 1993 Philips CD-i releases Link: The Faces of...
Tuesday12th Jul 2022
Poll What's The Best Mario Kart Game?
Rate them Rainbow Roads
Some of us here at Nintendo Life Towers are convinced that your favourite Mario Kart game is simply the one you played first with three other players in the same room — or just one other player if you were there at the very beginning with Super Mario Kart on Super NES. We tend to think this because while we can all agree...
Friday8th Jul 2022
Random We Need To Play This Gorgeous Fan-Made Super Mario RPG Remake Now
A thing of beauty
Back in the '90s, whoever thought that Nintendo would team up with JRPG giants Square Enix (then known as Square or Squaresoft) to create a Mario RPG starring the Italian plumber, Princess Peach, and Bowser? Not us! But they did, and we're forever grateful for the existence of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Despite...
Thursday7th Jul 2022
Random This Fan-Made Mini TV With A Built-In Super NES Is Totally Adorable
Bite-sized classic gaming with a TV to match
One of our favourite console peripherals is the Joytech GameCube screen, a little attachable screen for the little box-shaped console that turned it into a portable console of sorts. Lots of mods for other consoles have been inspired by this little add-on, but today, we have something extra dinky that...
Wednesday6th Jul 2022
Review Zero Tolerance Collection (Switch) - A Significant 16-Bit FPS That's Hard To Take These Days
Virtual neutrality
Thanks to ray casting, an early form of graphics processing that allowed the rendering of a 2D map as a pseudo-3D environment, Zero Tolerance, a true First-Person Shooter, arrived on Sega’s Mega Drive in 1994. What makes Zero Tolerance Collection significant — particularly for fans of the original — is its boast of...
News Creator Of Philips CD-i Game 'Hotel Mario' Talks Getting Approval From Nintendo
"They were pleased as far as I knew"
The Philips CD-i is one of the rare consoles that has the distinction of having played host to a few officially licensed Nintendo games. And not just any old Nintendo licenses, either, but Zelda and Mario. The latter of the two only got one game on the system — Hotel Mario, which is often considered one of the...
News Microsoft Renews Trademark For Rare's Classic N64 Game Blast Corps
Viva Piñata, too
Video game trademark renewals are always happening, and while they don't necessarily mean something is on the horizon, they do tend to create some excitement whenever it's a classic game or series we haven't heard about for some time. The latest ones, as highlighted by Game Rant, are tied to iconic British developer Rare - owned...
Tuesday5th Jul 2022
Random Witness The Star Trek DS9 Intro In Glorious 64-Bit, Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Style
It is not linear
A little while ago we covered the incredible work of @SpinaSanctuary and their Zelda 64-inspired, low-poly Star Trek creations. The last batch focused on the crew of the USS Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation, rendering them in brilliantly blocky 64-bit form with a variety of instruments — Data with his violin, Riker...
Random This Incredible Super NES Manual Archive Will Get You All Nostalgic
All 844 English language manuals
We really miss physical game manuals. There was always a particular kind of joy that came from opening the box of a brand new video game and flicking through the pages of a manual to find out what the game was going to be like. Some of our favourites would get dog-eared, and torn up, but they were always well-loved...
Sunday3rd Jul 2022
Random Here's A Look At Masahiro Sakurai's Retro Video Game Collection
That's some neat filing
If you're looking for new ways to organise your retro video game collection, you might want to read on. Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kirby and director of the Smash Bros. series, recently shared an image on social media of his impressive library of retro games. As you can see he's got draws stacked with cartridges like...
Friday1st Jul 2022
Random This Browser-Based Version Of Mario Paint Composer Will Entertain For Hours
Face the music
What's the best part of Mario Paint? No, not the painting! The Composer mode! Who didn't spend hours on Mario Paint making tunes with fire flowers, mushrooms, coins, and boos? Mario Paint Composer has become something of an online hit in the years since the SNES game's release, with many budding musicians picking up their SNES mouse...
Wednesday29th Jun 2022
Movie Review GoldenEra - A Celebratory Examination Of GoldenEye 007's Creation And Impact
Worth its weight in gold
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." Ah, yes. The classic quote that may or may not have been uttered by Shigeru Miyamoto. With the gaming industry (understandably) experiencing an unusually high number of delays in recent years, the proclamation has been the subject of memes to the point...
Sunday26th Jun 2022
Feature Remembering Klonoa's Dreamy GBA Platformers - Empires, Champions, And Puzzles
It's not only a phantasy
The ‘90s and 2000s were a totally different era. I can’t tell you how many times I sat down playing the same demo discs over and over or replaying the same handful of games as a kid. Bandai Namco’s old mascot Klonoa — soon to return in the upcoming Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series — is the first-ever video game...
News Edia Crowdfunding Cosmic Fantasy Collection For Nintendo Switch
Campaign goal has already been met
Edia - the developer behind the recent Valis: The Fantasm Soldier Collection - has launched a crowdfunding campaign on the website Makuake for a special double-pack Nintendo Switch release. It's asking for 3 million yen (around $22,285 USD) to release Cosmic Fantasy: Adventure Boy Yuu and Cosmic Fantasy 2:...
