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August 17, 2024
Inside this edition: Groundhog games, Art of the State, pawpaw patrol, ice cream officials, Squonkapalooza, and the new old-school. |
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Little League Baseball was founded in which Pennsylvania city?
A. Allentown
B. Erie
C. Scranton
D. Williamsport
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Forty years after the cinder block-sized Nintendo Entertainment System introduced America’s youth to virtual duck hunting and Mushroom Kingdom plumbing, devotees remain — and not just behind the controller.
Pennsylvania video game developers are making new games and cartridges for the NES nearly three decades after it was officially discontinued. They’re also making games for other bygone consoles like the Sega Genesis. Why?
James Deighan of Pittsburgh’s Mega Cat Studios told PA Local, “For many of us, it's the era that inspired us to join the industry. So there's a very strong nostalgia attached to it that kind of fuels that fire.”
There’s also this: Like vinyl, retro video games are cool again. In April, The Guardian reported #retrogaming videos have amassed over 6 billion views on TikTok, YouTube uploads have increased a thousandfold since 2007, and Spotify users have upped their creation of playlists with throwback game music.
As someone who recently spent half a day and a startling amount of quarters on antique pinball machines at Las Vegas’ Pinball Hall of Fame, I understand the appeal. I also agree with esports talent agent Britt Rivera, who told The Guardian that in a world of relentless technological advances, old-school games are reliably stable and contained.
Classic games are surging for more practical reasons too.
Modern video games are often blockbusters with massive audiences and expansive narratives, from the open world of FromSoftware’s challenging fantasy epic Elden Ring to the almost-infinite feel of Bethesda’s space opera Starfield. Deighan argues retro games like Mega Cat’s are “more snackable” while still offering a satisfying challenge: “Players want something to kind of balance their Elden Rings, right? It's not one or the other.”
Greg Caldwell of Retrotainment Games, a Pittsburgh-based developer that collaborates with Mega Cat, agreed, noting of cartridges in particular, “There's no loading times and there's no download stuff, right? It's simple.” (If you’ve ever lost your Xbox Cloud connection mid-game, this likely speaks to you.) |
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Team Mega Cat during the Philippine GameDev Expo. (Photo submitted) |
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Of course, retro games still require painstaking coding and design.
“If you wanted to get a cake for your wife's birthday, you might just go to a nice bakery. You probably wouldn't buy a chicken, hatch it, you know, feed it, get some eggs, mill some flour,” Deighan said of the “artisanal process” of retro game development. “And that's kind of what it's like when you make the cartridge based-games. We’re buying the chickens. It's drastically faster to make new games with new platforms and new tools.”
Playing cartridge games can also be difficult without the right equipment, namely an older TV or smart TV adapter. Not to mention controllers.
Development can take years from yolk to screen, and cartridges are only one part of it.
Mega Cat and Retrotainment also develop their old-school games for use across multiple generations of consoles — everything from NES to Xbox, and sometimes even smartphones. Cartridges, not surprisingly, remain a relatively small driver of sales, functioning more like collectibles.
“I would say a good way to frame it would be that a high-performing cartridge has the opportunity to sell like 5,000 copies,” Deighan said. “The digital versions are infinitely scalable.”
The digital mandate has also reared its head at Retrotainment, which Caldwell started with Tim Hartman while running retro gaming stores in the Pittsburgh area. The pair, who have been best friends since third grade, released their first “homebrew” NES game in 2015.
Caldwell recalls playing the console in its heyday, and appreciates its limitations. “That's what Tim and I grew up on,” he said.
“We think it's a sweet spot in gaming where the graphics are just good enough that you can make things look like what they’re supposed to, but your mind still has to fill in gaps.”
But the cartridge community is niche, he admits. “That's part of what pushed us into the digital arena and forced us to get on the modern consoles, because we were up against a ceiling. Next, we're trying to get to mobile, just to be able to reach more people and let them know: ‘Hey, people still love these old consoles, and we're still making games.’”
Retrotainment now has several other employees — artists and programmers among them. You can browse their Halloween- and Garbage Pail Kids-themed creations here. Mega Cat Studios, meanwhile, released a new retro-style Five Nights at Freddy's game last week that became a top seller on the global video game distribution platform Steam.
Needless to say, Deighan is pretty happy about it and what he does for a living.
“Somewhere 10-year-old James wants to high-five 38-year-old James because he's like, ‘Hell yeah, dude, you did it!’ There's a little bit of that.”
—Colin Deppen, newsletter editor |
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The answer to this week's trivia question — "Little League Baseball was founded in which Pennsylvania city?" — is "D. Williamsport."
Via LittleLeague.org:
In 1938, a man named Carl Stotz hit upon the idea for an organized baseball league for the boys in his hometown of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Carl had no sons of his own, but he often played ball with his young nephews, Jimmy and Major Gehron, and wanted a way to provide an organized program for them.
On June 6, 1939, in the very first Little League game ever played, Lundy Lumber defeated Lycoming Dairy, 23-8. Lycoming Dairy came back to win the season’s first-half title, and faced second-half champ Lundy Lumber in a best-of-three series. Lycoming Dairy won the final game of the series, 3-2.
The Little League World Series got underway in South Williamsport this week, with a Pennsylvania team in contention. The annual tournament also serves as the backdrop for a new movie starring Luke Wilson. |
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