Graphics weren’t really up to much in 1981, but shaders can even make Super Tank look more beautiful.
THERE’S BEEN A RESURGENCE in retro gaming lately. The C64 and NES (launched in 1982 and 1983, respectively) both saw mini editions launched back in 2018 and both enjoyed plentiful sales. A SNES edition appeared last year too, priced rather steeply at $265 (that’s relatively more than the original’s RRP). This was followed by the Amiga A500 Mini at the start of 2022 (RRP $130).
All of the above are just open-source emulators running on commodity hardware in a designer shell, so you might think the prices are a little overboard. What you’re paying for though, mostly, is the license to run these retro ROMs and disk images legally. Nintendo, in particular, will strike down with great vengeance if it catches you distributing any of its intellectual property. Just ask RomUniverse or LoveRetro.co. They might sue us for saying that, so we won’t mention their name again.
But there are a huge number of titles spanning the past five decades that you can run for free on cheap, modern hardware. If you have access to old tapes and disks, there are open-source solutions (of varying complexity) for extracting data from these, too. Running the emulators as they are will give you the best gaming experience and maximum customization opportunities. And the Raspberry Pi is a great platform on which to do this.