I recently had to chat with Patrick, the founder of Afterplay, along with James, the platform’s Head of Emulation, to talk about one of the more interesting projects I’ve spotted lately in in the retro gaming space specifically.

Afterplay’s a browser-based retro gaming platform that lets you play classic games on desktop and mobile with cloud saves, cross-device syncing, and a focus on making retro gaming accessible.

More recently (and more interestingly to me), it expanded into a storefront where indie developers sell browser-playable games, which I think is an fascinating topic and angle for an article.

In the interview here we talk about how Afterplay began, the technical challenges of browser-based emulation, where the idea of becoming a “Steam for retro games” came from, the new storefront, the future of the platform, and plenty more.

I hope you enjoy the read, and as always I’d love to hear your thoughts here!

https://gardinerbryant.com/afterplay-and-the-push-toward-a-steam-for-retro-games/

  • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    Regarding the “click and play” nature, not every game will load in under 10 seconds, especially as they’re planning for Dreamcast and PSP next. It works for most platforms, but not as well for CD/DVD based ones

    The store for indie ROMs is interesting.

    Garou: Mark of the Wolves shocked me. I was testing the Neo Geo core and ended up playing it for way longer than I meant to. The sprites are massive, the animation’s great, it still looks good now. The thing that surprised me most was the sound, actual voices and an announcer, not the bleepy chip stuff you’d expect from that era. The Neo Geo came out in 1990 and you could buy one for your living room, I just didn’t expect it to sound that good.

    The hardware was old, but G:MW is from 1999 and not too different from what King of Fighters 94 offered in terms of graphics and sound, 5 years prior. Also, only rich kids could buy the Neo Geo, it was expensive as hell, the huge cartridges too.