Games, computer, recreational

2020-01-22 — 2026-04-03

Wherein various methods of emulation are surveyed, and browser-accessible archives of vintage software are noted, alongside tools for the construction of new recreational diversions.

computers are awful
lua
mind

Miscellaneous notes on games (of the recreational/fun variety) that did not fit elsewhere.

1 Tooling

Open surge is a 2D platformer with integrated scripting language and level designer. Cute. cf LÖVE, the Lua-scriptable game engine. Here is chr15m’s Roguelike Browser Boilerplate and there are probably other excellent things on itch.io.

2 Narrative games to my taste

3 Games that sound cool but are cans of worms that I will not open

4 Retro games

4.1 Lazy in-browser

We can play a bunch of retro games in the browser; e.g. the Archive.org DOS Games collection includes classics (Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2). Similar, but with more suspect provenance, Classic Reload.

4.2 Emulate classic games

  • RetroPie is a miniature distribution that turns a Raspberry Pi into a polymorphic games console

4.3 Arcade machines

Turns out they were all weird bespoke platforms and emulating them is hard. The most prominent emulator is MAME.

  • MAMEdev.org
  • SDL Supported Platforms
  • Many confusingly labelled ancient ROMs are available in various archives, e.g.. Check copyright laws in your jurisdiction before downloading if you don’t want to be violating them.

4.4 C64

VICE - the Versatile Commodore Emulator Many games are on the Internet Archive.

5 Incredibly retro games

Games from previous centuries, previous millennia