Game History & Retro Gaming Videos Hacker News Recommends
Game history & retro gaming videos on HackerTube: the talks, lectures and explainers Hacker News commenters keep sharing, covering arcade, Atari, NES, early PC games, Doom and Quake development, console history, retro gaming preservation, classic game postmortems, hardware of old consoles.
92 videos · ranked by HN recommendations · showing 1–48
Most recommended game history & retro gaming videos
The ones HN returns to most often when a thread turns to this topic.
talk#68 Bit & '8 Bitish' Graphics-Outside the Box
GDC Festival of Gaming
“I recommend this talk to anyone who is interested in the details and history of working on limited colour palette games!”
13 HN recommenders · 2018–2026
talk#43Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS!
suckerpinch
“are a must watch.”
12 HN recommenders · 2018–2025
talk#112The Ultimate Game Boy Talk (33c3)
media.ccc.de
“I'd recommend watching The Ultimate Game Boy Talk [1] before trying to dive into any code.”
10 HN recommenders · 2017–2026
interview#148How Crash Bandicoot Hacked The Original Playstation | War Stories | Ars Technica
Ars Technica
“Immensely interesting video!”
13 HN recommenders · 2020–2026
documentary#160The Engoodening of No Man's Sky
Internet Historian
“surprisingly a well told, heart-warming (albeit quite long) video telling the story of No Man's Sky”
9 HN recommenders · 2020–2025
demo#169Computer program that learns to play classic NES games
suckerpinch
“Watch the whole thing, it's delightful.”
9 HN recommenders · 2015–2025
demo#255SNES Code Injection -- Flappy Bird in SMW
SethBling
“By hand. No savestates. It took forever and the run through is really and truly fascinating”
9 HN recommenders · 2016–2025
talk#354'Diablo': A Classic Game Postmortem
GDC Festival of Gaming
“heartily recommended if you want to know about the human aspect behind game dev”
8 HN recommenders · 2018–2023
explainer#376FIXING the ENTIRE SM64 Source Code (INSANE N64 performance)
Kaze Emanuar
“amazing video about refactoring Mario 64 to reach 30 FPS and render 6x faster on N64”
7 HN recommenders · 2022–2025
talk#482How we fit an NES game into 40 Kilobytes
Morphcat Games
“Here is my favorite video about 8-bit era optimisations. Makes you appreciate games from this era even more.”
6 HN recommenders · 2019–2026
explainer#607Old pinball machines are amazingly complex
Technology Connections
“I shared it with everyone I know, and now I'm sharing it with you”
6 HN recommenders · 2023–2026
talk#625Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization
GDC Festival of Gaming
“Check out this great GDC talk by Sid and Bruce on the history of the development of the game.”
4 HN recommenders · 2017–2021
talk#7422 1 1 Jason Scott Rescuing The Prince of Persia from the sands of time
Adrian Crenshaw
“My favourite example of digital archaeology from recent years”
3 HN recommenders · 2014–2026
talk#812Classic Game Postmortem: Ultima Online
GDC Festival of Gaming
“This is a much watch if MMOs fascinate you. They're very transparent. Absolutely great video.”
5 HN recommenders · 2018–2024
commentary#832"Games as a service" is fraud.
Accursed Farms
“Just watch this video so that you get up to speed with what we are talking about”
5 HN recommenders · 2019–2024
music#860MC Frontalot - It Is Pitch Dark
MC Frontalot
“Now enjoy this immortal tribute”
5 HN recommenders · 2012–2026
documentary#900GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary
Google TechTalks
“Recommend watching “Get lamp” documentary to fans of MUDs, text adventures”
5 HN recommenders · 2014–2026
documentary#915Doomed: The Embers of Amiga FPS
Ahoy
“go watch Stuart Brown (aka XboxAhoy)'s excellent documentary on FPS on the Amiga”
4 HN recommenders · 2015–2017
talk#961The Road to PS5
PlayStation
“IMO required viewing for any dev to form a more informed opinion on the SSD tech.”
6 HN recommenders · 2020–2023
documentary#972How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations | War Stories | Ars Technica
Ars Technica
“Essential viewing for anyone interested in game development history.”
5 HN recommenders · 2020–2026
interview#1037How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM | War Stories | Ars Technica
Ars Technica
“is actually more fascinating and entertaining in my opinion.”
4 HN recommenders · 2020–2024
talk#1047The Making of: ROM City Rampage (Retro City Rampage)
VblankEntertainment
“There's also a fascinating video of him getting the core of the game to run on NES spec constraints”
4 HN recommenders · 2014–2022
talk#1064Pitfall Classic Postmortem With David Crane Panel at GDC 2011 (Atari 2600)
GameSpot
“This is a great talk for those who love such things”
4 HN recommenders · 2013–2025
demo#1098[TAS] Pokémon Yellow - Arbitrary Code Execution
MrWint
“One of the crazier uses of ACE in Gameboy Pokemon games exploits”
4 HN recommenders · 2020–2025
demo#1131TiTAN - Overdrive 2 (RGB 50fps) - SEGA Mega Drive - Revision 2017 (1st Place)
Oerg866
“Overdrive 2 is my favorite example”
2 HN recommenders · 2017–2026
explainer#1160Atari's Quadrascan Explained
Retro Game Mechanics Explained
“There’s an excellent video by Retro Game Mechanics Explained on how they work”
3 HN recommenders · 2021–2026
documentary#1165The First Video Game
Ahoy
“Here's an hour-long, meticulously sourced, rather thoughtful video on the question”
4 HN recommenders · 2020–2026
documentary#1225RetroAhoy: The Secret of Monkey Island
Ahoy
“Do yourself a favor and watch this wonderful video essay historique on The Monkey Island series from Ahoy”
3 HN recommenders · 2020–2022
interview#1269How Gamers Killed Ultima Online's Virtual Ecology | War Stories | Ars Technica
Ars Technica
“Instead the players indiscriminately killed both the carnivores and the herbivores, because the players were human.”
3 HN recommenders · 2018–2026
commentary#1283Did Nintendo really forget to Optimize Super Mario 64 ? | MVG
Modern Vintage Gamer
“ModernVintageGamer did a video discussing the topic that's pretty well-researched”
3 HN recommenders · 2020–2022
documentary#1330[Epilepsy Warning] Choco Mountain: The History of Mario Kart 64's Most Infamous Track
Summoning Salt
“I didn't realize I cared about speed-running until I saw this YouTube video from Summoning Salt”
3 HN recommenders · 2018
documentary#1331Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Documentary
Valve
“the excellent YouTube documentary Valve released for Half-Life 2's 20th Anniversary”
3 HN recommenders · 2024–2025
other#1475Alpha Centauri Quotes: Intro and Tech's 0-24
uvwar
“I find them to be timeless, and quite heady when listened to in sequence.”
3 HN recommenders · 2016–2020
talk#1504QuakeCon 2011 - John Carmack Keynote
QuakeCon Official
“John Carmack is an absolutely brilliant speaker. Conversational, captivating and effortlessly natural.”
3 HN recommenders · 2011–2018
talk#1656Classic Game Postmortem: Fallout
GDC Festival of Gaming
“GDC post mortems are amazing, especially the ones on Diablo[0] and Fallout[1].”
3 HN recommenders · 2018–2025
explainer#1701what did you do
Noodle
“This is an excellent deep dive on the issues I spoke of”
3 HN recommenders · 2025–2026
documentary#1770Sega Saturn CD - Cracked after 20 years
debuglive
“Related and _very_ inspiring; how the Sega Saturn CD was cracked after 20 years.”
3 HN recommenders · 2016–2021
documentary#1776The Untold Story of Online Gaming on Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis | XBAND
Wrestling With Gaming
“Well worth watching.”
4 HN recommenders · 2019–2020
explainer#1803Fast Inverse Square Root — A Quake III Algorithm
Nemean
“This video is approachable and explains it pretty well”
3 HN recommenders · 2021–2022
demo#1893Super Mario World -- Credits Warp in 5:59.6 (First Time Ever on Console)
SethBling
“his brief videos give a really nice introduction to the topic that should be accessible to most people”
2 HN recommenders · 2015–2022
explainer#1898How We Solved the Worst Minigame in Zelda's History
Linkus7
“is a fun video about reverse-engineering Zelda to predict the randomness in a minigame”
3 HN recommenders · 2020–2024
talk#2015Classic Game Postmortem - Another World
GDC Festival of Gaming
“it's one of the better GDC talks”
4 HN recommenders · 2020–2023
talk#2047Diablo: Original Game Development
jon d
“GDC post mortems are amazing, especially the ones on Diablo[0] and Fallout[1].”
3 HN recommenders · 2021–2023
explainer#2101How "oldschool" graphics worked Part 1 - Commodore and Nintendo
The 8-Bit Guy
“The 8-Bit Guy has some great videos about how graphics worked on the older systems”
4 HN recommenders · 2015–2019
documentary#2148POLYBIUS - The Video Game That Doesn't Exist
Ahoy
“the best gaming-related video essay produced!”
2 HN recommenders · 2023–2026
documentary#2151The Story of Tetris
Gaming Historian
“excellent and fascinating documentary on the history of Tetris”
4 HN recommenders · 2022–2023
talk#2171Classic Game Postmortem: Alone in the Dark
GDC Festival of Gaming
“There is a very nice presentation [1] in which Raynal shows some of the old tools that were used to create Alone in the Dark.”
3 HN recommenders · 2019–2023
music#2217Transport Tycoon 2014 Soundtrack (remaster with real instrument from original creator)
Arif Nur Rahman
“The composer performed it with real instruments sometime in the past few years and it really brought on those nostalgic feelings”
3 HN recommenders · 2020–2025
Channels HN cites most for game history & retro gaming
Each channel page lists every video of theirs that HN recommends.
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