PickVidsBest Game history & retro gaming Videos
The 106 Game history & retro gaming videos here were recommended by different people across different months. Choose by who it is for: 1 introductory, 23 intermediate, 78 for a general viewer, and 4 for someone who wants the harder derivation. Most of them are a demo. What they share is that you see the result first and only then decide whether to follow the detail. Channels you will keep seeing include GDC Festival of Gaming, Ars Technica, Ahoy.
8 Bit & '8 Bitish' Graphics-Outside the Box
Mark Ferrari, the LucasArts background artist, explains in a GDC 2016 talk how he draws 8-bit graphics.
Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS!
Tom Murphy (suckerpinch) shows 'reverse emulation', using a Raspberry Pi in an NES cartridge to give an unmodified NES new abilities such as playing SNES games.
The Ultimate Game Boy Talk (33c3)
Michael Steil's 33c3 talk explains essentially everything about the Game Boy: CPU, video hardware, peripherals, and the tricks used by games and demos.
How Crash Bandicoot Hacked The Original Playstation | War Stories | Ars Technica
In Ars Technica's War Stories, Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin explains how the team squeezed Crash Bandicoot onto the original PlayStation.
The Engoodening of No Man's Sky
Internet Historian tells the story of No Man's Sky, from its over-hyped and badly received launch to years of updates by Hello Games that redeemed the game.
Computer program that learns to play classic NES games
Tom7 explains and demos software that learns to play NES games by finding score patterns in memory and then searching for inputs that raise it.
SNES Code Injection -- Flappy Bird in SMW
SethBling uses Super Mario World glitches to inject and run Flappy Bird code on an unmodified SNES, entering it purely with controller inputs.
'Diablo': A Classic Game Postmortem
David Brevik's GDC 2016 postmortem of Diablo covers how it went from a turn-based claymation DOS concept to a real-time action RPG, plus the story of Blizzard North and development anecdotes.
FIXING the ENTIRE SM64 Source Code (INSANE N64 performance)
Kaze Emanuar explains how he rewrote and optimized the Super Mario 64 source code so it runs far faster on real N64 hardware.
How we fit an NES game into 40 Kilobytes
Morphcat Games explains how they fit Micro Mages, a full-featured NES game, into 40 kilobytes.
Old pinball machines are amazingly complex
Technology Connections takes a long, detailed look at how a 1970s electromechanical pinball machine works, from relays to stepper motors and mechanical logic.
Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization
A 2017 GDC postmortem in which Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley tell how Civilization came together from board game design and sim game experience.
2 1 1 Jason Scott Rescuing The Prince of Persia from the sands of time
Jason Scott's DerbyCon 2012 talk on rescuing the Prince of Persia source code from old floppy disks, working with the game's author Jordan Mechner.
Classic Game Postmortem: Ultima Online
A 2018 GDC panel where Raph Koster, Starr Long, Richard Garriott and Rich Vogel look back on what went right and wrong building and running Ultima Online.
"Games as a service" is fraud.
Ross Scott of Accursed Farms makes a 76-minute argument that selling video games as a service is a form of consumer fraud.
MC Frontalot - It Is Pitch Dark
MC Frontalot's nerdcore rap about the text adventure Zork, made for Jason Scott's Get Lamp documentary and featuring a cameo by Steve Meretzky.
GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary
Jason Scott discusses making his documentary GET LAMP at a Google Tech Talk and screens part of the film.
Doomed: The Embers of Amiga FPS
A documentary by Stuart Brown (XboxAhoy) on the history of first-person shooters on the Amiga and how Doom's arrival affected the platform.
The Road to PS5
PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny gives a deep dive into the PS5's architecture, covering its SSD, I/O, audio and design goals.
How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations | War Stories | Ars Technica
In an Ars Technica War Stories episode, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner describes how he made the game on the Apple II, fighting hardware memory limits and the platform's decline.
How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM | War Stories | Ars Technica
Myst co-creator Rand Miller recounts how the HyperCard-built game struggled to run on 1x CD-ROM drives.
The Making of: ROM City Rampage (Retro City Rampage)
Making-of video about ROM City Rampage, the NES version of Retro City Rampage, covering how the game's core was crunched to run on real 8-bit hardware and how NES games are made.
Pitfall Classic Postmortem With David Crane Panel at GDC 2011 (Atari 2600)
David Crane, designer of Pitfall for the Atari 2600, gives a GDC 2011 postmortem on the game's design challenges.
[TAS] Pokémon Yellow - Arbitrary Code Execution
A tool-assisted speedrun of Pokemon Yellow by MrWint that uses arbitrary code execution to push Game Boy hardware to its limits.