FIGHT CLUB EPIPHANY

Retro-gaming is a passion of mine. I love to reminisce about old games, delve into their history and learn more about the game and the team behind it. With the Raspberry Pi we can experience retro-gaming from two different viewpoints.

We can use an emulation platform such as Lakka, reviewed on page 49, and play the games from the ‘golden years’ of gaming – this is subjective, but for me it was the SNES/MEGA Drive era – and experience the thrill of gaming with these classic machines. But with a Raspberry Pi we can also create our own ‘retro-style’ games using one of many coding tools.

If you’re new to coding then Scratch is the place to start and you can follow one of the many tutorials to create your own simple video game in a couple of hours. If you are a confident programmer then using Python and Pygame is the way to go; in fact Pygame Zero is part of the Mu editor (https://codewith. mu), which is a great way to start making games.

But if you are dedicated oldschool retro-gamer/coder, try PICO-8, which is a game/demo development framework which provides the tools needed to create 8-bit style games. These can be saved as ‘cartridges’ and shared online.

With the Raspberry Pi you can do anything; all you need is an idea and a little Google-fu to research and learn new skills to make your idea real.

Of course when you are done coding, you can settle down to a little game time, and try to beat your favourite game.