A Super Mario Bros. figurine. (Credit: Tom Newby / Flickr)
Retro and classic video games are resurgently cool. These Pennsylvania companies are working so the rest of us can play.
This story first appeared in PA Local, a weekly newsletter by Spotlight PA taking a fresh, positive look at the incredible people, beautiful places, and delicious food of Pennsylvania. Sign up for free here.
Forty years after the cinder block-sized Nintendo Entertainment System introduced America’s youth to virtual duck hunting and Mushroom Kingdom plumbing, devotees remain — and not just behind the controller.
Pennsylvania video game developers are making new games and cartridges for the NES nearly three decades after it was officially discontinued. They’re also making games for other bygone consoles like the Sega Genesis. Why?
James Deighan of Pittsburgh’s Mega Cat Studios told PA Local, “For many of us, it's the era that inspired us to join the industry. So there's a very strong nostalgia attached to it that kind of fuels that fire.”
There’s also this: Like vinyl, retro video games are cool again. In April, The Guardian reported #retrogaming videos have amassed over 6 billion views on TikTok, YouTube uploads have increased a thousandfold since 2007, and Spotify users have upped their creation of playlists with throwback game music.
Esports talent agent Britt Rivera told The Guardian that in a world of relentless technological advances, old-school games are reliably stable and contained.
Classic games are popular for more practical reasons too.
Modern video games are often blockbusters with massive audiences and expansive narratives, from the open world of FromSoftware’s challenging fantasy epic Elden Ring to the almost-infinite feel of Bethesda’s space opera Starfield. Deighan argues retro games like Mega Cat’s are “more snackable” while still offering a satisfying challenge: “Players want something to kind of balance their Elden Rings, right? It's not one or the other.”
Greg Caldwell of Retrotainment Games, a Pittsburgh-based developer that collaborates with Mega Cat, agreed, noting of cartridges in particular, “There's no loading times and there's no download stuff, right? It's simple.” (If you’ve ever lost your Xbox Cloud connection mid-game, this likely speaks to you.)
Of course, retro games still require painstaking coding and design.
“If you wanted to get a cake for your wife's birthday, you might just go to a nice bakery. You probably wouldn't buy a chicken, hatch it, you know, feed it, get some eggs, mill some flour,” Deighan said of the “artisanal process” of retro game development. “And that's kind of what it's like when you make the cartridge based-games. We’re buying the chickens. It's drastically faster to make new games with new platforms and new tools.”
Playing cartridge games can also be difficult without the right equipment, namely an older TV or smart TV adapter. Not to mention controllers.
Development can take years from yolk to screen, and cartridges are only one part of it.
Mega Cat and Retrotainment also develop their old-school games for modern consoles like Xbox and sometimes even smartphones, which requires additional engineering. Cartridges, not surprisingly, remain a relatively small driver of sales, functioning more like collectibles.
“I would say a good way to frame it would be that a high-performing cartridge has the opportunity to sell like 5,000 copies,” Deighan said. “The digital versions are infinitely scalable.”
The digital mandate has also reared its head at Retrotainment, which Caldwell started with Tim Hartman while running retro gaming stores in the Pittsburgh area. The pair, who have been best friends since third grade, released their first “homebrew” NES game in 2015.
Caldwell recalls playing the console in its heyday, and appreciates its limitations. “That's what Tim and I grew up on,” he said.
“We think it's a sweet spot in gaming where the graphics are just good enough that you can make things look like what they’re supposed to, but your mind still has to fill in gaps.”
But the cartridge community is niche, he admits. “That's part of what pushed us into the digital arena and forced us to get on the modern consoles, because we were up against a ceiling. Next, we're trying to get to mobile, just to be able to reach more people and let them know: ‘Hey, people still love these old consoles, and we're still making games.’”
The Video Game History Foundation, a nonprofit founded by video game historian and developer Frank Cifaldi, says 87% of classic video games released before 2010 are no longer commercially available. A foundation summary of the findings reads: “Imagine if the only way to watch Titanic was to find a used VHS tape, and maintain your own vintage equipment so that you could still watch it. … It sounds crazy, but that’s the reality we live in with video games, a $180 billion industry, while the games and their history disappear.”
How big is Pennsylvania’s video game industry?
The online tool gamedevmap counts 58 video game development companies in Pennsylvania, and not just in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Small firms are tucked away in Bucks, Delaware, Erie, Luzerne, Lancaster Counties, and beyond.
By comparison, the top state for the industry, California, has 868 firms total. (The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t collect data on the video game industry or its jobs, only the overarching categories of software developer and computer programmer.)
Pennsylvania wants more game development here. The state has awarded upward of $6 million in Video Game Production Tax Credits to a combined 32 recipients since 2016, according to figures provided by the Department of Community and Economic Development. The credit has maxed out its $1 million budget allocation five years running.
Jesse Schell of Schell Games, a Pittsburgh-based maker of virtual reality, augmented reality, and educational titles, said his company is one of those recipients. Schell explained that while Pennsylvania is just an industry outpost for now, it has the right ingredients to grow: namely a relatively low cost of living and a high number of colleges.
“Pittsburgh, in particular, has been an excellent place, because with the number of universities here and the focus on both technology and art, there's a lot of great talent in town,” Schell noted. “So it's been a very friendly place for game development.”
People will continue to spend their time and money on video games. Schell said the draw is innate.
“Everybody wants to achieve goals and face challenges and test their skills and make progress,” he added. “There are certain things that games provide that you can't get any other way.”
Caldwell is confident that retro games — with their two-dimensional planes and vintage aesthetics — will remain a part of the pastime, even as technology takes quantum leaps.
“It's kind of been over a decade now since retro gaming really started to catch fire, and I feel like it's here to stay.”
Retrotainment now has several other employees — artists and programmers among them — and a growing list of games, including Halloween- and Garbage Pail Kids-themed titles. Mega Cat, meanwhile, released a new retro-style Five Nights at Freddy's game in early August that became a top seller on the global digital video game distribution platform Steam.
Needless to say, Deighan is pretty happy about it and what he does for a living.
“Somewhere 10-year-old James wants to high-five 38-year-old James because he's like, ‘Hell, yeah, dude, you did it!’ There's a little bit of that.”
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