Retro gaming is such a big deal that the UK’s postal service, the Royal Mail, has unveiled a stamp collection to acknowledge the classic titles designed in the UK in the 1980s and 90s. I’ll be reviewing them after they come out next week.

The love of classic gaming is a global interest and people all over the world want to be able to play the titles they adored in their youth. As some gaming systems start failing or become harder to get hold of, people obviously turn online to play games. Let’s look at a few options to satisfy your online gaming hunger.

Classic card games
It’s not just video games we’re talking about in this post. The first stop for online gaming for many people is often classic card games. You can’t get more retro or old school than that. We all love a bit of Solitaire for example, don’t we?

But if you’re a fan of casino card games then there are obviously lots of online gaming sites to choose from with games like Poker, Blackjack and the aforementioned Solitaire. But while you might be able to use card-counting in Blackjack, if you’re mathematically inclined, don’t be suckered in by software that offers card-counting for Poker – it’s likely it will be a scam. However, you can read more about how to apply some of the principles of card-counting to Poker – if you change its definition.

Emulator.Online
For many people it’s video games that they want to play online. One of the first sites you’ll find when searching for a games “emulator” is Emulator.Online, and with good reason – it has many of the best retro games consoles playable, along with some of the most popular titles ever released. The systems on Emulator.Online’s list includes:  

  • Super Nintendo
  • SEGA Genesis
  • Game Boy
  • NES

This means you can get your fill of Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Zelda and many more great games series. Emulator.Online also has a useful recommendation engine, meaning you can play some games you may have completely forgotten about or perhaps even ones you’ve never played before.

Free80sArcade
Classic games don’t begin with Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog of course – before either of those franchises were released there were a number of great arcade games and Free80sArcade allows you to play some of the best ones. There’s a massive list of arcade games that you can play using Free80sArcade including the following classics:

  • Space Invaders
  • Asteroids
  • Donkey Kong
  • Pac-Man
  • Galaga

Free80sArcade even has Sonic and Zelda in its catalogue, so you can play the arcade games that made the leap onto classic games consoles. You obviously don’t get the fantastic background noise, neon lights and often smoky smells that you remember from arcades back in the 80s but the nostalgic gameplay more than makes up for that.

RetroGames.cz
If you’re seeking a website that offers you a good mix of old and new retro games then RetroGames.cz is perfect – it ranges from titles on the Atari 2600 to some of the finest games made for the Nintendo 64. RetroGames.cz gives you the chance to play the best games from the top classic games consoles including the following:  

  • Atari 2600
  • Sega SG-1000
  • NES
  • Game Gear

But RetroGames.cz isn’t limited to games console and arcade titles alone – it also has a few top PC games (MS-DOS) titles, such as Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. One of the things to keep in mind is that all the games are e­mu­la­ted in Flash, Java or Java­Script. This doesn’t water-down the gameplay noticeably (almost all of the titles are near-identical to the original) but it is something for you to keep in mind.

My Emulator Online
Love old school Nintendo, SEGA, and Neo Geo games? Then look no further – MyEmulator.Online has an incredible library of games for all of the classic consoles made by these incredible games companies (and more). You’ll find an extensive collection of the following franchises on MyEmulator.Online:  

  • Mario
  • Pokémon
  • Sonic the Hedgehog
  • Zelda
  • Kirby

But while these are some of the headline-grabbers, football fans might be particularly pleased with the footy games you can play at MyEmulator.Online, including EA’s FIFA series and also the brilliant International Sensible Soccer (among others).  

Torinak
And one more for luck. Torinak.com is an amazing resource for playing classic ZX Spectrum games. A lot the big Speccy classics are available for your enjoyment and I believe it runs in HTML5 which gives a great gaming experience. Some personal standouts for me are Manic Miner, Bruce Lee and Penetrator.

I think it’s always best to play games on their original hardware and with the original controllers if you can. But not everyone can, so it’s great to have other options. These are just some of the great ways to play games online. There are many other sites out there, helping to keep the retro gaming experience alive.