Hey all! I just wanted to say 'hi' & introduce myself. My name is Gabe. I'm a 30-something retro-gaming enthusiast & at one point was a collector, but can no longer afford the cost of acquiring & maintaining actual hardware. Regardless, I haven't let it stop me. Emulation of course, keeps my hobby alive. And I love seeing new games come out for or are inspired by older systems, by all the avid hobbyists & professionals that still adore the systems of yesteryear.

My first system was the Atari 2600, which my father won as the prize for being the top salesman on the car lot he worked on. It was one of numerous prizes he won for various contests on the multitude of car dealerships he worked for over the years. I have fond memories of playing games like Combat, Pitfall & Pitfall II, Enduro Racer, Ms. Pacman & others, but I was far more enamored of computers & the NES.

My father eventually went onto networking & computer sales and we got a family pc--an IBM AT 286 clone. It only had a monochrome screen with Hercules graphics adapter & wasn't so hot for playing games. I remember using some program that somehow tricked the PC into thinking it had a CGA adapter, & allowed you to use CGA games & apps on it. Regardless, everything I had was shareware & pretty much sucked. Eventually I did some odd jobs at my father's business & saved up enough money to buy a VGA adapter. I got in trouble many a time after that for missing chores, playing games like Quest For Glory I-III, Space Quest I-V, King's Quest 5-6, The Red Baron, Wing Commander, etc.

Eventually I also got my own NES, though for years I would brag to everyone how much better my PC games were than the ones people were playing on the NES. Still, PC games were expensive, I didn't know all that many people who had new PC games I could copy, & the hardware requirements for newer games got steeper & steeper as they came out. It became a serious battle to have enough funds for both new games AND new hardware. Eventually I just gave up. With an NES I could just rent all my games & not worry about having to buy them all or new hardware upgrades.

A few years later, I got myself an SNES for similar reasons, not to mention it had seemingly amazing games like Super Mario World.

It took me a while to figure out my favorite game genres. As a kid I loved Sierra adventure games, but as I got older they started to lose some of their charm. I discovered in fact my favorites are western rpg's (& the odd jrpg, though primarily action/rpg hybrids)& metroidvania's. I love the Metroid series of games, but really, ANY metroidvania is fine for me, as long as it's good (Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kane? Hello!). And the picture for my profile avatar is ripped straight out of one of my all time favorite DOS rpg's, Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos.

These days, as I mentioned, I can't really afford the classic gaming hobby hardware-wise, so I do most of my classic gaming via emulation. But what peeks my interest even more these days, rather than just playing the classics, is new games made for or inspired by classic systems. I've recently been playing a buggy but highly enjoyable freeware title for PC called "Treasure Adventure Game". It's a dynamite metroidvania, inspired by classic game consoles like the NES and Sega Master System. If you can put up with the bugs & get it to run, I'd highly recommend it. Otherwise there's others like Lyle In Cube Scector, Akuji The Demon, Cave Story, etc.

Anyway, if you made it this far, thank you for reading my intro! If you'd like to swap stories of what's happening in the classic & classics inspired game dev scene, hit me up! I'm always looking for more things to get my hands on & happy to share what I know, & knew things as I discover them.