Current Retro Projects

Since the 2014 project is building a 2D platformer in Java we must do one thing as part of the project - play 2D games. The 2D platformer had it best days in the 1980's. But, that does not mean the genre is dead or gone. There are many new games being created by mostly Indie developers that re-create the fun and imagination that many designers and developers exhibited in the 1980's. So how do we get to play any of the classic 2D platformers?

You will need two things:

• * An emulator
• * ROMS or games to play on the emulator

An emulator is an software application that will run on your current machine a older machine or console so you can enjoy a retro-game without having to go out and purchase the arcade cabinet for Donkey Kong or Robotron. For classic arcade games go to the MAME website. If you want to enjoy some of the best Apple II games head over and get the Apple IIe Emulator for Windows. If you plan on checking out some Atari 2600 games then you will need to download the simulator Stella from sourceforge. I highly recommend the C64 emulator CCS54at www.ccs54.com. Of course if you have a strong interest in trying these games first hand you can head over to ebay and pick up a classic machine and games for a reasonable price.

A quick search on any search engine will help you find ROMs for any of the above systems. I usually use Console Classix to play Atari or NES games. You can also obtain NES emulators and play your own copy or great NES games.