Let's share some nice websites about retro games: fan translations, fan sites and any other interesting stuff.
http://stargood.org
This site has a lot of fan translations for many old Japanese games.
https://www.smspower.org
This site has a lot of information and also hosts translations and hacks for Sega consoles.
This site has links to many retro game walkthroughs
http://hori3948.g2.xrea.com/link/link.html
The japanese don't have the same preservation-oriented culture as in the West, but I've found a pretty comprehensive database of cheats dating back to the NES:
http://urawaza.in
A lot of stuff from PS1/PS2 eras was only published in japanese magazines, so you can still find a lot of undiscovered codes in that site. I've found codes in there that even gamefaqs doesn't have.
https://dungeoncrawlers.org/
https://obscuritory.com/
Why does a retro game have a girl holding a tablet with a triple lens camera
It's not a retro game. It's a modern art based on the anime/manga 16bit, drawn by something that wanted to make it look like it was a game for the PC-98.
is there a version of the picture at proper resolution?
If you could read the text you'd instantly know it's modern vapid otaku pandering for pathetic losers and not a soulful 90s product.
Bumping for OP cause I love discovering new sites, so tired of the aggregation of everything
http://bio100.jp
Doujin game development group that released a lot of free games for PC-98. There's a lot of information and reviews and also a download page for some Windows games.
https://retroachievements.org
Lets you add achievements to old games using supported emulators. Personally I'm not a fan of achievements but some people like them and it can be an interesting way of playing old games.
I finished about a dozen games before realizing it was killing my enjoyment by encouraging autistic and OCD playing. Still cool for giving people a reason to play some games again though.
https://www.myabandonware.com/
Never read the comments. They're full of tech-illiterate zoomers that don't know how to install shit. Hate how these actual morons infest every corner related to old media.
I think https://www.vogons.com/ is a chill place however.
>https://www.vogons.org/
my bad.
They discuss everything about pre-2000s gaming.
Seriously. Why does everything that's from the 2000s and prior attract young kids nowadays? They're all into old OSes, old consoles, old TV shows. Why can't they form their own culture and leave ours?
It's totally fine if younger kids are interested in older tech, that's a good thing, it keeps things preserved outside of the immediate generation that grew up on it.
I'm just afraid these kids are gonna give all kinds of old media a bad look because of the type of shit they post on youtube and social media. I've seen it when it comes to things like old Windows.
Literally who gives a shit? The only people who would think this hobby has a bad look because of zoomers being zoomers would already be predisposed against it to begin with.
And your generation is into the 80s shit, it's the same thing really
Are you an idiot? they grew up with 00s shit. Your generation dickrides 80s and 90s video games. The irony of saying this on /vr/
Yeah this nostalgia bait affects all generations. The internet has just made your childhood more accessible. Plus as time goes on, there's much less lost media. You may have a fuzzy memory of some TV show from your childhood if you were a boomer but a kid born in 2003 will have almost every piece of media he's ever consumed documented somewhere. Though a lot of old internet has been scrubbed unfortunately.
There's Youtube videos that are just compilations of Saturday morning cartoon blocks complete with period appropriate commercials and they go as far back as the 70s. You never have to leave your childhood if you don't want to.
>Why can't they form their own culture and leave ours?
If they weren't interested, you would be whining about how kids these days don't appreciate the classics. Just shut the frick up already. You'll complain no matter what happens.
What culture? If anything I get why kids are more interested in stuff from decades before than whatever this gen has become.
Anon, there's always a ton of people who are interested in what came a decade or two before them.
T. 95gay who used to be obsessed with 80s music and shit
>RETRO GAMING IS MUH HECKIN WHOLESOME SECRET CLUB!!!!!!
have a nice day, boomer.
you will never belong. you missed out and can never replicate the feeling. you will never know what it felt like,.
Would you prefer them obsessing over gachashit, Vtubers, Twitter drama and among other cancereous shit killing everything nowadays?
Yes.
>Why does everything that's from the 2000s and prior attract young kids nowadays?
Because all the ones interested in their own culture died of tidepods, fell of a cliff taking a selfie, 46%ed, etc.
2015 is calling, they want their rage bait article talking points back
>Your facts trigger me. I will die in a totally different stupid way. Perhaps "fixing" a perfectly working thing or doing some zoomer mod
The darwin awards eagerly awaits your posthumous application
autism
Looking forward to reading your obituaries
School shooter response
>read reply chain
>it's a bunch of butthurt morons waiting who stops replying first
Shut up all you gays
I don't mind bumping this thread because it's a good resource
Don't do it anon. Go to school to learn. Things like reading comprehension. And how tide pods aren't a food group.
>reading comprehension
I didn't misunderstand anything in your statement, I dismissed the content of your statement as moronic
>I didn't misunderstand anything in your statement
>I just replied as if I did
Sure thing bucko
U R not smart
Zoomer here, I can give you my own perspective. The simple answer is that old games are still fun, and have different design principles from modern games which gives them novelty. Interest in old hardware and operating systems exists downstream from that. I enjoyed programming a little tower defence game for the VIC20 and trying to figure out how squeeze as much power as possible out of the 6502.
I have a coworker who collects typewriters. I'm not interested in typewriters but I understand the fascination with outdated technology.
Because it had soul and absolutely everything is soulless shit now
>Using the moronic soul meme
homosexual detected
Old good, new bad. Unironically.
I feel the same way about you millennials.
2000s had peak web design and debatably peak OS UI design, it's where websites looked good and didn't insist on gay ass minimalism and wasn't primarily for some moronic smart phone. Similarly, old UIs on OS's and programs looked good, having some actual depth to the aesthetics and had customizable themes. Now you're basically just limited to having boxes on your monitor either being black or white.
I'm a zoomer and don't care about 00s nostalgia much, but I do appreciate more packed information with less minimalism. Wish websites in general looked more like the monobook theme on wikipedia. Not on mobile though ofc
>gay ass minimalism
modern site aren't "minimalism". even "legit" news sites are full of ads and pop-ins and 1000 scripts tracking you.
old "wild west" of 90s and 2000s webz was as minimal as it got, with exception to some Flash-based websites which no longer work now.
I think they were using it as a buzzword for "boring and lacking personality" which is a more accurate description. All sites have the same "sleek" look with no individual expression
myabandonware is dogshit and the people who run the site are fricking morons
>remake of game comes out that has nothing to do with the original
>PLEASE BUY THE GAME
Yeah it's fricking stupid. Especially when re-releases are inferior to the original game. I guess MA are scared of getting DMCA strikes or somebody going after them.
Worse. GOG released the DOS version, they decide to remove all versions, even when the DOS version is always inferior.
Yeah, at this point it's probably better to use something like eXoDOS or even fricking archive.org for old DOS shit.
https://www.beep-shop.com/
https://www.beep-shop.com/ec/ (store)
https://www.beep-shop.com/blog/ (blog)
BEEP, a famous retro game store from Akihabara. They have an active staff-run blog where they talk about old games and hardware. There's also an online shop with new and used stuff.
Woah crazy, I just stumbled into this store a couple days ago. Grabbed a PC-9801 copy of Eve: Burst Error. The online catalog is a lot larger, I wonder if I could go back and request a few of the items on it.
Off-topic but do you have any recommendations for retro-related shops in Akiba (and Tokyo more broadly)?
Unfortunately I can't say much since I went to Akiba my first time ever just the other day. BEEP was probably the best out of the ones I stumbled into, at least for the retro PC games I was looking for. Super Potato was pretty good as well. Didn't go much beyond searching Google Maps for nearby retro game stores and seeing where I ended up.
Oh shit I forgot about Beep, I'm gonna be there Sunday so I'll be sure to check that place out.
>Didn't go much beyond searching Google Maps for nearby retro game stores and seeing where I ended up.
I've been doing the same in prep for the trip, found some decent looking places like Friends, Retro Game Camp, and a few non-gaming centric places like JUNGLE Akiba, Mandrake Complex, and such.
Website dedicated to platform adventure games https://alexlandgren.wixsite.com/platform-adventure, overloaded with autism.
>Platform Adventure is a subgenre of Action Adventure and Platform games. In short, these are games that focus on platforming (or an equivalent movement focus), exploration, gradually making the player character better able to traverse the world that they're exploring by acquiring various upgrades, and (usually light) puzzle solving. They feature interconnected worlds with some degree of persistence, that are gated in content by persistent abilities or tools acquired by the player (as opposed to just keys, non tool/ability-based puzzles or combat) and which gradually open up more as the player overcomes their obstacles. Generally these games have some degree of non-linear progression while subtly guiding the player towards the next intended path, and to some extent a "loopback" structure where the player happens upon ability gates that they'll come back to later on with the required ability to progress. Historically they have been side-scrolling and in 2D but they can be top down view, third-person or first-person and in 3D as well.
https://alexandria.rpgclassics.com/alpha.shtml
Shrines/Guides for a number of retro RPGs. The Web 1.0 design has lots of SOVL as they say.
https://huguesjohnson.com/
A personal site for a guy. It's been posted here a few times but he has some interesting articles and scans. Has a neat memoir about his time as a EB employee in the 90s.
https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor
A wiki documenting cut material from games as well regional differences, revisional differences etc.
https://legendsoflocalization.com/
People seem to not like Mato around here for whatever reason but I think his site is pretty good. Lots of in depth translation comparisons here. Hasn't seen an update in quite a while though. I sort of wonder if the recent AI advances in translation has got him(and other people in that field) rethinking their careers but that's speculation.
i still use rpg shrine today. better than any other resource out there.
Yep, much easier to navigate than GameFAQs and easier on the eyes to boot.
I don't really think a translator that good would be threatened by AI. Especially not at this extremely early stage in the tech. Give it 15 years
Just like some anon said, I still use shrines when I'm playing 16/32-bit RPGs. Alot of good info is still there, and it's visually more pleasing than some GameFaqs txt.
In fact, I even backed up all the shrines I'm interested in a while ago, for offline usage and in case those are purged from the internet one day.
>People seem to not like Mato around here for whatever reason but I think his site is pretty good. Lots of in depth translation comparisons here.
I always like that website. There are so many shitty official translations out there, that it's always fascinating to see just how bad they can be.
Website for 3DFX-related content
http://falconfly.3dfx.pl/3dfx.htm
Also what do people like about 3DFX? What's so different about it compared to DirectX and OpenGL?
nostalgia for a time when 3dfx card where the hottest 3d accelerator you could get. Their popularity meant a lot of developers targeted 3dfx compatibility in 97-98
A couple of these are probably obvious but:
https://lparchive.org - LParchive. Step by step lets plays of old games with the personable tone that old LPs had. I use this for megaten games and to get screenshots to put on wikis
https://www.retromags.com - Scans of old vidya mags
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net - Gr8 historical resource with very well written reviews and rankings of old games. I heard they're a bit flawed and there was some debacle where they fcucked over a megaten fan translator but other than that still useful
https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk - Obscure website I found which had a Dreamcast fishing guide and seems to cover others
https://www.honestgamers.com - Really old retro game review site with good writing and 00s style web design
HG101 is not good for anything beyond a superficial representation. If you actually play those games, the narratives they try to spin fall apart completely. And game mechanic wise, they rarely go in depth. I know the STG community has a huge problem with them. That said, I still appreciate them having articles about obscure games when no one else cares to, so people can also use it as a tool for discovery and start somewhere. Just don't take it as gospel, because it's very clear when they haven't played a game fully.
HG101 was one of my favorite sites for years and I would re-read articles when I was bored. Unfortunately, they went and "upgraded" to a new web 2.0 design which is really gross visually and ad-choked. And yeah Kurt caused initiated a twitter dogpile on a guy because he used a no no word in his (excellent) Goemon translations. He also went back and censored a bunch of his old articles.
Despite these complaints it's still a decent site.
>https://lparchive.org
Recommend me some of those old screenshot LPs, please.
nta. but I always liked this one
https://lparchive.org/Breaking-Final-Fantasy-VI/
https://lparchive.org/Exile-Escape-from-the-Pit/
This motherfricking unsufferable absolute autism
Boatmurdered. But im biased because i posted in that thread
The danganronpa lp is probably the most famous lp of the pre-youtube era but its weebshit
>The danganronpa lp
>The
There's three of them...
Not retro. But the game is good. I hate that /vr/ is so Western biased that anything Japanese gets these kinds of posts.
You may have a victim complex if you think /vr/ is Western biased.
/vr/ at most has the lone "weebshit" autistic who shrieks anytime a game published by a Japanese company is mentioned.
The Battle network ones are classics
Princess Maker II was wild.
>Princess Maker II
Hell yeah. This one is hilarious.
Paladin Quest's LP is also pretty good.
There was some guy called "TheDarkid" or something like that. I liked his Resident Evil lp's, they were silly but fun
TheDarkId introduced me to Drakengard and Nier back in the day. I loved his snappy wit.
This one is a classic
https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/
Be sure to check the last bit about Citan shit always crack me up
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3771899
HG101 went full SJW years ago and now they only complain about how problematic old games are
As others have said, HG101 is no longer any good. Maybe there are some articles that haven't been updated, but ones like Valis where they nuked it and now say it's an icky otaku series full of evil fanservice.
That sounds gay as frick, I know HG101 is basically just Resetera but different name, but holy shit.
Shame. I used to really like this site for more obscure PC games write ups.
As an older zoomer, part of it is growing up with second hand electronics due to being poor. My first PC was a Windows 95 machine and my first console was a SNES. The proliferation of the internet and things like AVGN exposed me to an entire world I wasn't aware of. That's how I imagined worked for a lot of people.
The only HG101 article I can recommend is the one on the history of Korean games.
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/korea/korea.htm
>https://www.honestgamers.com - Really old retro game review site with good writing and 00s style web design
good choice but they hardly review stuff now?
I mostly look up a game on their site when I'm considering emulating it rather than keeping up with new stuff, but it seems like they have recent reviews this year
All the english ones I know have already been posted, so here's some nip stuff:
https://w.atwiki.jp/gcmatome/
>Huge wiki of user reviews for retro and modern games
http://gemanizm.main.jp/retrogamejaxx/review.html
>Personal website full of reviews and guides for games with cute girl protagonists
Search engine-ing [name of game in japanese] followed by 攻略サイト
>Will pretty much always find you a guide fansite for your game of choice, man the japanese made a lot of these and I love browsing them
Everything else I have is just youtube channels I use to discover games.
Yes I will shill my favorite retro freeware
spheresofchaos dot com
recwar dot 50webs dot com
http://www.caiman.us/
https://www.racketboy.com/
https://retro-sanctuary.com/
https://www.vgmaps.com/
https://vsrecommendedgames.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page
https://www.arcade-projects.com/
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/Main_Page
https://www.retrorgb.com/
Every time I try to make this kind of thread on Ganker it dies. Does anyone have sites for modern fangames or similar things?
I forgot some more obvious obligatory choices
https://www.romhacking.net - Self explanatory
https://gamebanana.com - Also a romhacking/modding website except somewhat wider scope as it includes PC and newer games. Mostly still nerd stuff though. The UI is fricking awful not in the sense of being ugly but its so obtuse and odd to navigate
https://www.uffsite.net/
http://www.ff7citadel.com/
https://www.audioatrocities.com/index.html
>Archive of bad dubs
https://fantasyanime.com
>Fun website dedicated to old RPGs
https://www.gamingalexandria.com/wp/
>Video game preservation
https://www.guardiana.net/
https://segaretro.org/Main_Page
https://www.satakore.com/
>SEGA websites
https://www.eoinstanley.com/nintendo/logos.htm
>High quality Nintendo logos
https://shmuplations.com/
>Old magazine interviews translated
>https://fantasyanime.com
This one is great, thanks for sharing it.
Nice pixel art but would it have killed the artist to draw the girl in a style of the time period?
That's about as period as you can make her without totally missing the point.
So pretty
>t. Homo
That stated. What the frick is even going on now after episode 9?
Basically the story of the anime is the same "just throw everything in there" approach as Kotoha's game because I guess at least someone in the production considers total lack of filter or restraint part of the romance of PC bishoujo games which often turned mundane slice of life premises into crazy plot twists.
Thanks for explaining that!
I like this anime
that's actually part of the show, she's a girl out of time
https://tss.asenheim.org
Stumbled across this while reading about a PC-98 eroge, has a lot of pictures of non-eroge and other platforms, though of course be weary of R18 content.
https://refuge.tokyo/
Awesome website, used it to sort my romset for PC-98 and X68000 just now, I'll be doing MSX next. Also found a PC eroge that I played decades ago and considered lost forever lol (it was this one https://refuge.tokyo/windows/00049.html)
Does anyone have a similar database covering PC-88 and FM Towns games?
I guess I found it myself, not as fancy but it's a big database
https://www.gamepres.org/pc88/library/frame1.htm
https://noclip.website/
Some guy ripping maps from 3D games and uploading them as explorable 3D areas that you can fly around in the browser. Mostly /vr/, some newer
>he now uploaded the GTA maps
Very cool
Wow. I'm very excited to zoom around the Katamari maps.
I'm so glad I kept all my downloads from abandonware sites before they started trying to make me buy them.
No, I will not "buy" a download of a 30 year old game.
they will always be easily available in some place
I could tell by the character design lol
I found another
https://www.dungeoncrawlers.org/ - Database of old first person dungeon crawlers
Someone already posted that
whoops
Just gonna shotgun a couple of them:
https://www.gamingalexandria.com/wp/
http://www.thecoverproject.net
http://pixelmenu.22web.org/index.html
https://www.gaminghell.co.uk
https://cdromance.com/translations/
The old games database at https://seesaawiki.jp/chitentai/ covers various systems, probably more interesting for their coverage of the non-typical Japanese computers. The lists aren't exactly exhaustive, but should give some simple data and a link to a youtube video.
However there are also regular articles for games with some pages for old ads, gifs and a sound sample as well as some small bits of information which make it a bit more interesting. You'll have to use the search function for those though.
https://flyers.arcade-museum.com/
Archive of flyers from arcade games, pinball machines, and other electromechanical games, dating as early as 1930s.
https://www.msx.org/
MSX community with lots of info on homebrews, translations, events, etc.
https://mahjonginmame.com/
Info on learning how to play computer mahjong plus some game recommendations.
http://www.oldgamesfinder.com/
Search engine that links to various romsites/archives.
Wow thanks anon
Anyone remembers this place?
http://ukresistance.co.uk/
I guess only some of it is retro but it sure is old
I remember the SONY LIE WATCH
I wonder what he's up to these days, when he dropped it he started a tech blog but that's dead now as well.
Not a "site" necessarily, but the old SRK forums have has one of the developers of the Street Fighter Movie game (the digitized fighter) recount his time working on the game. Read every post by anoon here. Interesting stuff.
https://archive.supercombo.gg/t/street-fighter-the-movie-broke-my-heart/21076
>https://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide
not 2D eroges but Nglide, it just werkz for Voodoo games.
were there even any nippon-only Voodoo games from the late 90s to 2000s?
http://www.kobash.com/tetris/tetris.html
https://www.fireemblemwod.com
Spanish Fire Emblem fansite with a lot of information, guides, tricks and more. There is an English translation available too.
https://b-cat.hateblo.jp
One-person doujin circle that makes games for old platforms like PC-88, MSX and Sharp X68000, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME3V37--F8w
Some of the English guides are basically incomprehensible like Fe6, but others are pretty good
https://incube8games.com
Publisher for new Game Boy games by indie devs.
https://www.spacebot-interactive.com
One of such indie devs, they're releasing a new RPG soon that looks pretty nice.
>Publisher for new Game Boy games by indie devs.
Nice.
An actual game that looks like it could have been made at the time
nice
This is what the devs use, it's a great tool: https://www.gbstudio.dev
Music
https://vgmrips.net/packs/
https://vgm.hcs64.com/
http://snesmusic.org/v2/
https://project2612.org/
https://downloads.khinsider.com/
https://www.zophar.net/music
https://github.com/vgmstream/vgmstream
https://github.com/mcfiredrill/libgme
https://github.com/ValleyBell/libvgm
https://github.com/vgmtrans/vgmtrans
https://github.com/nmlgc/aosdk
https://github.com/derselbst/lazyusf
>Zophar's is still around somehow
Nice links though
Getting a lot of nice bookmarks out of this thread
Does anyone have the link to the /vr/ gauntlet site? I'm thinking about having another go.
I found an old fandom page with the site links but they time out, and the IRC doesn't seem to exist. Is there a good site to pick a random game from any system?
Shiet, found one.
I keep thinking of making one for my own purposes, but I'd try and get all the list of all the systems. I just settled for a random button in my OS instead.
I like the idea of these but in practice you just get 15 kusoge for every decent to good game because it’s the whole goddamn library
Playing kusoge is fine with me as I'm a game dev and it's good research. Playing bad games really helps you appreciate good games more.
vizzed.com
Kickass music library.
Anyone know where I can find dumps of MSX doujinsoft? I'm looking for one game in particular and I don't want to believe it's lost to time :'(
>Anyone know where I can find dumps of MSX doujinsoft?
Yes
>I'm looking for one game in particular and I don't want to believe it's lost to time :'(
Good thing you didn't ask where to find that then
You must be great at parties.
You must be at least 18 to use Ganker
Why are you like this? What do you gain from acting like a child?
Why are you like this? What do you gain from acting like a child?
SegaRetro never ceases to amaze me, not only is it filled with information, but there are manuals scanned from all regions of the world for anyone to download, which is fantastic. I hope it never goes down, it'd be a huge loss.
http://kwhazit.infinityfreeapp.com/trans/index.html
Side-by-side translations of Japanese games (Japanese text alongside English translation in two columns). Useful for playing in Japanese (for language practice) as a reference in case you don't know the meaning of some sentence.
this was the guy who got me into Slayers
thanks, guy
http://www.vgmuseum.com/
Site that contains scans for box art, ads, in-game screenshots and other goodies for a wide arrange of platforms. Of note are the translated endings for som jp only titles.
I used to spend hours going through the endings section. I also miss how old websites would just slap character sprites everywhere.
kinda cool for searching some of the hard to get multiple endings on some autistic games like Ogre Battle.
I remember a while back someone posted a big archive containing GBA eroge ports like pic related here on /vr/. If someone knows please post it. Could only find the following via reverse searching:
https://archive.org/details/crosschange
https://archive.org/details/kodama-suika
That's interesting but I can't imagine why anyone would actually want to play Cross Channel that way
>GBA eroge
What
GBA used to have a pretty kicking homebrew scene back in the day with public domain shit, inevitably that included hentai.
I'm less surprised about the homebrew and more surprised people were jerking off to GBA sprites. Now that I think about it though they could've used full illustrated images with pixelation
There was even an officially licensed Tsukihime port: https://gbatemp.net/threads/would-anyone-be-interested-in-joining-me-to-translate-the-official-gba-port-for-tsukihime.607250/
If you're interested here's a download link (Kagetsu Tohya is the sequel): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MVEtAd_3K8T8L377nSYPf-hzPgzMRPRg
i don't read nippon runes, archivenons.
I've got you anon
https://archive.org/details/gbaunlicensedroms99759998
Thanks anon. Good stuff.
oh stargood are the guys who made the Yumimi Mix Remix translation. they're good.
Theres a site from the 2000s I've been trying to find with no luck. It was called Nintendo HQ or something similar to that. It had a blue background
Maybe this one? https://www.angelfire.com/wa/nintendopokehideout/nintendo.html
You know what would be neat? A website for comparing different versions of games, listing differences in autistic detail and with examples. Always annoying trying to find that perfect version when you have a bunch available. There's a few youtubers doing a good job comparing versions but this needs to be a larger scale effort.
Cutting Room Floor sometimes has that. I've used it when picking revisions for ROMs.
http://personalcopy.com
Not exactly videogames but I used to grab soundfonts from here and replaced the instruments in midi files from old PC games. It was really entertaining listening to some old game music with different instruments.
However seems like the website is gone and the download links seems to direct to a ftp server which is also down. Shame
https://otakuworld.com/
For those who remember Kisekae Set System, Kamishibai (VNs lite) the janky games (often porn) people tried to make beyond just dress up from the 2000s.
This guy made some pretty notable stuff.
http://www.followtheowl.com/dir/main.htm
https://www.vipvgm.net/
Weird that Ganker still exists but all boards link to Ganker.