PickVidsBest Game history & retro gaming Videos
The 106 Game history & retro gaming videos here were recommended by different people across different months. Choose by who it is for: 1 introductory, 23 intermediate, 78 for a general viewer, and 4 for someone who wants the harder derivation. Most of them are a demo. What they share is that you see the result first and only then decide whether to follow the detail. Channels you will keep seeing include GDC Festival of Gaming, Ars Technica, Ahoy.
TiTAN - Overdrive 2 (RGB 50fps) - SEGA Mega Drive - Revision 2017 (1st Place)
Overdrive 2 by TiTAN, a Sega Mega Drive demo that won first place in the Oldskool competition at Revision 2017.
Atari's Quadrascan Explained
Retro Game Mechanics Explained dissects how Atari's Quadrascan vector displays and vector generator hardware drew games like Asteroids and Tempest.
The First Video Game
An hour-long, carefully sourced video essay from Ahoy asking what counts as a video game and which one was truly first.
RetroAhoy: The Secret of Monkey Island
A roughly 75-minute video essay from Ahoy's RetroAhoy series on the making and history of The Secret of Monkey Island.
How Gamers Killed Ultima Online's Virtual Ecology | War Stories | Ars Technica
An Ars Technica War Stories episode in which Richard Garriott and Starr Long describe Ultima Online's planned virtual ecology and how players wrecked it.
Did Nintendo really forget to Optimize Super Mario 64 ? | MVG
Modern Vintage Gamer examines the claim from the Super Mario 64 decompilation project that the game shipped unoptimized, and puts it in the context of 1996 N64 development.
[Epilepsy Warning] Choco Mountain: The History of Mario Kart 64's Most Infamous Track
Summoning Salt traces the speedrunning history of Mario Kart 64's Choco Mountain track and its famous shortcut, through the successive record holders and discoveries.
Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Documentary
Valve's two-hour documentary for Half-Life 2's 20th anniversary, with team members discussing development, nearly running out of money, being hacked, the publisher lawsuit and the birth of Steam.
Alpha Centauri Quotes: Intro and Tech's 0-24
Audio clips of the intro and technology quotes from the 1999 strategy game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, in male and female voices, covering techs 0 through 24.
QuakeCon 2011 - John Carmack Keynote
John Carmack's keynote at QuakeCon 2011, an hour and a half of wide-ranging talk about id Software, Rage, engine open-sourcing, patents and programming practices.
Classic Game Postmortem: Fallout
Timothy Cain's 2012 GDC postmortem of the original Fallout, covering how he helped build the game and set the template for open-world RPGs.
what did you do
Noodle explores how retro pixel art was designed for CRT displays and why games look different on LCDs, with input from pixel artists and CRT researchers.
Sega Saturn CD - Cracked after 20 years
A look inside Dr Abrasive's lab as he engineers a flash-card replacement for the Sega Saturn optical drive after cracking its CD protection 20 years on.
The Untold Story of Online Gaming on Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis | XBAND
A one-hour documentary on XBAND, the 1994 modem network for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.
Fast Inverse Square Root — A Quake III Algorithm
A walkthrough of the Quake III fast inverse square root, explaining where the constant 0x5f3759df comes from.
Super Mario World -- Credits Warp in 5:59.6 (First Time Ever on Console)
SethBling performs the first credits warp in Super Mario World on a real SNES console, a glitch that plays the ending without beating Bowser.
How We Solved the Worst Minigame in Zelda's History
Linkus7 explains how a community reverse-engineered The Wind Waker to predict its random number generator and beat the Sploosh Kaboom battleship minigame consistently.
Classic Game Postmortem - Another World
Eric Chahi's GDC 2011 postmortem of Another World (Out of This World), describing how he built the game.
Diablo: Original Game Development
David Brevik's GDC 2016 post-mortem of the original Diablo, covering how it evolved from a turn-based claymation DOS game into the genre-defining action RPG.
How "oldschool" graphics worked Part 1 - Commodore and Nintendo
The 8-Bit Guy explains the color limitations of 1980s computers and consoles such as the NES and Commodore 64.
POLYBIUS - The Video Game That Doesn't Exist
A 69-minute documentary on the Polybius arcade-game legend.
The Story of Tetris
Gaming Historian recounts how Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in the Soviet Union and how a fight over publishing rights spanned the West, Mirrorsoft, Nintendo and the Cold War.
Classic Game Postmortem: Alone in the Dark
Frederick Raynal gives a GDC postmortem of Alone in the Dark, the game that helped create the survival horror genre.
Transport Tycoon 2014 Soundtrack (remaster with real instrument from original creator)
A complete remastered soundtrack for the Transport Tycoon 2014 mobile game, re-recorded with real instruments rather than the original MIDI.