Active Retro Consoles

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today⁩ to ⁨retrogaming@lemmy.world⁩

What retro consoles still have the most active game development? The most games still being released physically? The best and most popular time-tested consoles?

I’m excited to start learning programming and had a thought to make a game (having an objective makes it easier to learn). I wrote up an entire plan already for the mechanics and it seems incredibly viable for a fun and full experience. I would like to have it playable on real hardware and am just trying to figure out which system to make it for.

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PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
So I did a quick search on MobyGames looking for new release since 2020, and:

Atari 2600: 10 new games

Atari ST: 7 new games

DOS: 33 new games

Commodore 64: 55 new games

NES: 72 new games

SNES: 12 new games

Gameboy: 42 new games

Gameboy Advanced: 9 new games

Master System: 6 new games

Genesis: 49 new games

Dreamcast: 23 new games

I believe those are the most active
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- Venator@lemmy.nz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I sorted your list by number of releases:
  
  NES: 72 new games
  
  Commodore 64: 55 new games
  
  Genesis: 49 new games
  
  Gameboy: 42 new games
  
  DOS: 33 new games
  
  Dreamcast: 23 new games
  
  SNES: 12 new games
  
  Atari 2600: 10 new games
  
  Gameboy Advanced: 9 new games
  
  Atari ST: 7 new games
  
  Master System: 6 new games
  
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- bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Commodore 64 and DOS are probably the easiest to actually release your game on physical media for. Especially with the new C64 Ultimate. The list would probably look vastly different if you reduced it to the ones you could play on the real hardware.
  
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  - PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There were also a lot of collection packs in the middle but I was too lazy to count and exclude them :P
    But even if they released just roms instead of physical media, wouldn’t you still be able to play on the actual hardware using Everdrive or something?
    
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- Redkey@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  As someone who’s currently interested in Atari 2600 development, I can tell you that MobyGames is way off in their count, even if you limit the count to physically-released games. There were well more than 10 new physical releases in 2025 alone.
  
  It helps that developers do licensing deals with a few companies that produce physical cartridges with boxes and manuals on demand, but there are also still a surprising number of people making physical copies of games for sale in advance.
  
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  - sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    That’s good to know. However even just the Moby games count I’m pretty surprised that these systems are so active
    
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raina@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The Sega Mega Drive or Genesis scene is probably the most active as of now with several big commercial titles relesing yearly followed by ton of ROM-only smaller projects and ports released on itch.io. This is largely thanks to the still fairly recent release of the unofficial SGDK development kit making development much more accessible to those not into learning 68k assembler. SGDK itself is still actively developed, releases somewhat regularly and the number of 16-bit Sega game projects keeps growing, as tracked by Pigsy, a developer themself who has taken on porting Castlevania: The Symphony of the Night from the PS1 to the Mega Drive amonh other things.

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- sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Thanks for the info! That’s all really interesting and I’ll look into it
  
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bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If you’re looking to learn programming, I’d honestly recommend the PICO-8. It’s not got any physical hardware, so I know it wouldn’t be quite the same, but it’s pretty hard to go from nothing to making a game for a console!

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- datavoid@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Picotron is amazing, someday I’m gonna actually sit down and make something other than terrible music.
  
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- sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I considered that for sure but I do think I want the ability to have more detail in my game world
  
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emb@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Game Boy Studio looks like a pretty slick IDE to facilitate making GB games, might be a good entry point. Is there something similar for other platforms? Gotta be, right?

But if you are going for a very old platform like that, technical limitations might start to crop up. You’ve planned a game, does the concept scale down well?

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- sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I was thinking about that limitations would exist although I don’t know what they are at this point. Just getting options here from other people. I do think I want to create something 16bit or even have more detail with 32bit (still a 2D game). It seems like all my interests are coming together around Python and saw that GoDot has a plugin to allow the use of Python over their in-house scripting language. So with GoDot via Python I could make my game have neat new abilities such as the depth of field and particles from games such as Octopath Traveler and Songs of Conquest. Then I would be limited to New consoles but with a retro pixel art aesthetic and forego retro console releases. This way I can really learn and apply Python knowledge and it would benefit my various interests/hobbies.
  
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mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Ypu can check out itch.io and see a bunch. Its fun to buy/get and throw on real hardware.

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- sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  That’s a great idea
  
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  - mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It works great on an everdrive or eq.
    
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