Retro Video Games
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s in the UK, a huge skills gap opened up that the various science, technology, engineering and mathematics Universities became worried about. Although the county had lucked into leading most of the world through the 1980s, with an army of “bedroom coders” using the early 8-bit home computers, a decade on most schools were only teaching children how to use word processors and spreadsheets – not how the actual computers work.
After a long and winding story, the “Raspberry Pi” computer was born – an entire computer on a small circuit board that cost less than a video game, ran open source software, and encouraged people to tinker – to find out exactly how the thing works – from the chips, through the operating system, right up to the applications you might run on it.
Fast forward a couple of years, and a chance convergence has occurred.
Back in the 1990s – while kids were busy learning how to use Word and Excel, and Microsoft was trying to buy the hearts and minds of a generation, the first wave of video games was already beginning to vanish from existence. Old arcade machines were being thrown away, along with the first generations of home computers and games machines. Suddenly thousands of software applications and video games were at risk of being lost to history.
I don't suppose anybody expected that when computers became fast enough, small groups of software developers would envisage using them to pretend to be older computers – to continue running the games they had grown up playing on virtualised recreations of long-dead hardware.
Where am I going with this?
On the corner of my desk at home sits a Raspberry Pi. A computer no bigger than a box of kitchen matches. Connected to the electrical socket via an old phone charger, and to the computer monitor via an HDMI cable, it also borrows an old wired USB XBox controller – and turns itself into a Nintendo, a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, an Atari 2600, a Gameboy, a Gameboy Advance, a NeoGeo, a Nintendo DS, an Atari Jaguar, a Nintendo 64, a Sony Playstation... I could go on (and on).
As soon as I got it working last night, my eldest daughter wandered into the room, and launched “Bomber Man” – a game she had last seen when she was perhaps 9 years old on the Nintendo DS. I didn't get a look-in for the next hour.
If you're wondering where I have acquired the old games from – a visit to the Internet Archive, and a few judicious searches turned up the ROM images of all the games I remember from my teenage years (essentially the content of the chips on the original cartridges or tapes) – Super Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Defender, Phoenix, Street Fighter, Excitebike, Mario Kart, Pilot Wings... the list goes on and on.
Anyway.
If you're wondering why the blog posts dry up for a few days, blame an italian plumber.