Egregoros

@Velveteen i think a lot of people into retro games should learn a lot more about the japanese gaming industry of the time because it's really completely different and really fascinating. i've never been huge into the NES but something about the famicom really hits the spot for me. the console design is way better, the cartridges have way more personality, there are a bunch of weird and cool variants like the twin famicom, there's the famicom disk system which is like its own console, and there's even stuff like a full on BASIC programming environment with a keyboard add on (which i do have!) there's also a lot of fascinating stories to be heard from countries such as post-soviet countries and china where nintendo never officially sold their consoles, so companies made their own clones and bootleg games (although i think calling them all "bootlegs" is really doing a disservice to the effort a lot of developers put into making some unlicensed games). i should also try to learn more about the european market, i've learned a bit about british home computers (and i really want to sit down and play elite some day) but i don't know as much about the console market

@Velveteen i do also kind of disagree on his opinions on atari 2600 games, i don't think he really "gets" them, i see them as amazing feats of engineering that miraculously end up being really fun and complex despite the ridiculously weak hardware available, but i get the feeling he doesn't really see them that way. i believe scott has said he plays atari 2600 games on a composite modded atari 7800, which i think kind of hurts the magic a bit. playing on an original 2600 with RF video is something else, it just feels a lot cooler to me than playing on a newer console with significantly better video output

i think every game that could theoretically run on an old computer or console should be ported to it

think about it, say you make a game for the game boy advance. not only can you play it on a GBA, but on any platform that can emulate or natively run GBA games (PC, mobile, DS, 3DS, gamecube, wii, wii u, etc)

the simpler the console, the more platforms could run the game. if you develop a game for the NES, you can play it on basically every console from the N64 onwards. if your game runs on a game boy, it can run on anything from a top of the line gaming PC to a 30 year old PC to a SNES

conversely, if you make a game that's really no more complex than an NES game but you develop it in unity or something, then you can probably only play it on a PC released in the last ~10 years