The TI-99/4A looked like a beige toy. Under the lid it was quietly ambitious: a 16‑bit CPU, a discrete video co‑processor, ROM‑based GROMs and a speech module that made machines talk. This post traces the machine's lesser-known innovations and how they quietly shaped later hardware and the modern retro‑dev renaissance.
Dust off an IBM PC XT (or fire up an emulator) and discover how the machine's severe limits force beautiful, surprising creativity. Practical setup tips, GW-BASIC tutorials, sound and graphics examples, and project prompts to get you started on a retro creative-coding journey.
Lycos was once a dot‑com superstar - this essay compares its early strategies with Google and Bing and argues what Lycos should have done to survive and thrive.
Emulation has given a second life to the Sega Master System - but at what cost? This article examines how emulators and ROM circulation affect preservation, copyright, and the culture surrounding one of gaming's most overlooked consoles.
A grassroots movement is turning dusty VCRs and spools of tape into instruments, installations, and collage material. Learn practical steps for digitizing tapes, building tape-loop instruments, making kinetic sculptures from VCR guts, and doing it responsibly - with sustainability and safety front of mind.
The Watara Supervision was a cheap, oddball challenger to Nintendo's dominance - a little plastic provocation whose ragged library taught an accidental lesson: constraints breed invention. This piece traces how the Supervision’s aesthetics and “make-do” mechanics anticipated and continue to inform modern indie design, and points to contemporary titles that embody the same spirit.
LaserDiscs feel like holding a piece of analogue cinema - but nostalgia has a price. This deep dive breaks down market trends, player maintenance costs, emotional traps, and whether collecting LaserDiscs is a sustainable hobby or an expensive, sentimental liability.
How a short-lived, underdog handheld pushed color, scale and texture into compact cartridges - and how artists and fans keep its bruised-but-brilliant aesthetic alive.