Retro Gaming on Jefklak's Codex

To celebrate the spookiest month of this year, it seemed like a good idea to take on the Prime Evils of Sanctuary.

Do you ever take the train eastbound?

As part of my ongoing quest to play a couple of Classicvania games that I somehow missed before the upcoming release of Belmont’s Curse, I find myself jumping 16-bit platforms and this time unexpectedly landing on the SEGA MegaDrive.

Three years after the original Japanese-only Castlevania: Rondo of Blood release on Hudson’s PC-Engine, Europe was finally blessed by the Konami lords with a cursed gift called Castlevania: Vampire’s Kiss.

The upcoming 2026 Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse game made me realise I have yet to explore many of the great and less great Classicvania games—the “subgenre” group of Castlevania games before Koji Igarashi pivoted to what could be called Igavania but Jeremy

When I learned that Powerhoof—you’ll undoubtedly know them from last year’s masterpiece The Drifter—was doing an early nineties-inspired classic fantasy adventure, I knew I had to play it.

When Thimbleweed Park was announced, it made no attempts to hide its intention to hitchhike on the nostalgic feelings adventure gamers have for a pixelated crosshair and the SCUMM verbs.

Dread Delusion is a difficult game to correctly describe.

It’s hard to believe that Sam has been Serious for twenty-five years now.

In another attempt to support small indie studios, I decided to check out The Aching, a Sierra On-Line style parser-based adventure with a distinct horror theme built by The Lobdegg.

How strange is a strange smelly mushroom that has a milky liquid drooping on it?

Tighten up that string and bust out the yoyo moves, the back of the case declares: It’s time to discover the secrets of the streets (and sewers) in your first-ever yoyovania!

It must have been the random ResetERA thread title “forbidden solitaire is out now!”

It’s time for more clever deducktions!

A whimsical trailer about a paper-thin raccoon—or wait, is that a bear?

This little puzzler game proves that Yoshi gobbles down more than red fruit and random enemies.

Ceci n’est pas un crocodile.

It doesn’t happen often that the same game is recommended to me by three different people.

If anything, Kirby spin-offs are delightfully weird.

A year after Kirby’s Pinball adventure, HAL moved on from pinball machines to… breakout?

The many Kirby spin-offs prove one thing: Kirby is not just a ball—it’s a mould that you can be knead and shaped into anything you want.

In case you haven’t noticed yet, this site is half a tribute to the quirky French puzzle adventure series called Gobli(i)(i)ns.

It finally happened.

Given my obsession with shotguns in shooters, I simply can’t pass up on a game called Shotgun King—even though it’s yet another roguelike that’s not my strong suit.

Michael’s thoughts on this remastered version made me realise I almost missed another classic nineties Apogee platform re-release.

Let me start with the bold claim that Rise Of The Triad (or just ROTT) is not a (retro) shooter: it is a puzzle game dressed as a shooter.

The year 1993 is quite a lucrative year for Apogee: besides big hitters such as Duke Nukem II, less popular platformers including Alien Carnage also make make an entry.

Wonder Boy is a weird series that never really gained enough traction here in the West.

What do you get when you mix Wolfenstein 3D with Heretic?

It’s your authentic Hoyle Card Games collection you know and love from the PC but for the Game Boy!

Yet another mediocre Nintendo DS card game, I hear you think!

After revisiting Clubhouse Games on the Nintendo DS to satisfy my craving for (mobile) (digital) classic trick taking games and digging deeper into the Nintendo DS’s huge library, I realized my mistake: I clearly undervalued Clubhouse Games—and perhaps ev…

As part of my digital trick taking craving, after being done with Sierra’s funky opponents in Hoyle Card Games, I suddenly remembered the possibility to play Hearts on the Nintendo DS thanks to 42 All-Time Classics (the name of my PAL copy) or Clubhouse G…

I’ve been craving some good old-fashioned card game action lately—the kind that is best enjoyed with four players around a table and a standard deck of 52 cards.

When I picked up the latest and still very recent Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown as a pleasant distraction for Wargroove’s longer and longer slogfests, I did not expect the game—in my head portrayed as yet another boring metroidvania clone—to be that big