THE BEST Games

Rec Room Masters offers two great ways to build your own full-size arcade system. Their Xtension Gameplay cabinet kits let you BYO Raspberry Pi computer and flat screen TV, giving your system clean, professional looks and real 2-player arcade controls. Available in 24″ and 32″ display sizes.

There have been tons of covers of music from the various Super Mario games, but the members of the Super NES Band likes to play video game music using the actual tone generators classic consoles. Listen as they perform live medleys of tunes from Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario Land.

This unique battery pack lets you play retro style console games while your phone charges. It packs an 8000 mAh battery, a built-in gamepad, and a 2.8″ color screen. It comes loaded with over 400 games from the 8-bit era.

Look Mum No Computer loves to build music making equipment from retro technology. Here he shows off an awesome build – a synthesizer that uses the sound chips inside an old SEGA Genesis (aka Mega Drive) game console to crank out some wild electronic noise.

The Nintendo Switch has been wildly popular thanks to its great combination of games and portability. While the standard Joy-Cons are good, Shank Mods prefers his old GameCube controller for Super Smash Bros., so he went through the daunting task of splitting one in half and converting it to work with Switch.

If you’ve played God of War on the PS4, you’re probably familiar with Mimir, the disembodied head that helps guide Kratos and Atreus on their missions. Bar-El Studio created this animatronic replica of the egotistical character, complete with light-up mechanical eyes, and speech samples from the game.

Retro game system maker Hyperkin took what was once an April Fools Day gag and turned it into an actual product. This little cube can play classic Nintendo Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges on your television. It has HDMI (720p) and composite video outputs, and comes with an SNES-style controller.

Portal 2 is one of the most entertaining puzzle games of all time. While we can only hope that someday Valve will return to the franchise, gamer Doodle Chaos reminds us just how fun it was with this run through a custom edited level, perfectly timed to match the accompanying music. The bit with the personality cores is so great.

Game fanatic Bluedrake42 takes a look inside of the truly unique visuals of MrGumix’s work-in-progress game ASCIICKER, which features a 3D world made up entirely out of ASCII text characters. What it currently lacks in gameplay, it makes up for in creativity. You can play around with it in your web browser here.

Alienware turned up at CES 2020 with a prototype gaming system that’s basically a Nintendo Switch, but with all of the capability of a Windows 10 gaming PC. The portable device can run all of your favorite PC games on its 8″ screen, and has detachable controllers. There’s no word on specs or if it will go into production yet.

The 70s, 80s, and 90s gave us tons of classic arcade games, and along with them came lots of great pixel art. Typeface designer Toshi Omagari’s book catalogs some of the many cool pixelated fonts which were used for displaying scores on arcade machines. ReadOnlyMemory has a limited-edition hardcover version as well.

YouTuber Misozi-Salaryman put together this great compilation of his swordplay and other martial arts action, and worked with editor Vasco to embellish the clip with appropriate video game style visual effects. We like to think there was some guy off camera mashing buttons.

Take a trip to 1980s Hawkins, Indiana and battle the Demogorgon with Stern Pinball’s Stranger Things machines. You’ll want to opt for the pricey Premium or Limited Edition, which have a projection video screen and “telekinesis” magnetic ball lock. We’re kind of bummed they didn’t do a lower-level playfield for The Upside Down.

A charming and hard to describe new game from the creator of Katamari Damacy, Wattam is about as wacky and weird of a game as you can imagine. It’s filled with goofy anthropomorphized objects living together in a dreamlike world where these characters team up to complete puzzles. It’ll land on PC and PS4 any minute now.

Fans of classic video games will recognize this guy as Blinky, the pixelated red ghost from Pac-Man. Here, he’s serving a useful purpose by giving your headphones a place to rest when you’re not wearing them. Handmade from baltic birch, sanded smooth, and painted by artist BalticPrime. Also available as a scared blue ghost.

Microsoft’s next-gen console, the Xbox Series X is all about power and speed. With an AMD Zen 2 CPU and high-end GPU with ray-tracing, it’s designed to support 4K games at 60fps, and 8K is possible. An SSD means quick load times, and backwards compatibility will support games from Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Do you need a break from your regular music playlists? Then open up this video, hit play, and drop it into a background tab. Jorf assembled this epic 10-hour and 53-minute mix of 227 tracks programmed by various chiptune musicians and played with the classic 8-bit sounds of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Konami jumps on the retro console bandwagon with a miniature version of NEC’s classic TurboGrafx-16 (aka PC Engine). The 1987 console was definitely ahead of the pack with its arcade-quality graphics. Now it’s coming back, loaded up with 57 licensed games, from R-Type to Blazing Lazers to Bonk’s Revenge. Drops 3/19/20.

Now that you’ve built your mini video arcade, it’s time to upgrade your tiny Chuck E. Cheese’s with a couple of games that test your strength. Punch King asks you to flick its punching bag as hard as you can with your finger, while Hammer King is all about smashing its button with your fingertip. Each is sold separately.

Take a few minutes out of your day and tune into Rob Landes‘ mega-medley, in which the violinist compiles 100 great pieces of music that chronicle the history of video game soundtracks. See how many you remember. That Crash Bandicoot theme gets us every time.

This amazing short film took animator Gooseworx two years to create, and the payoff was worth it. Follow along with a video game character named Runmo on his journey to discover the meaning of life (or in his case, lives). It’s a weird, wild, and wonderfully inventive look at what it might be like to live in a platform game.

Anthony Falleroni’s animated short follows a video game character who struggles with the difficulty of completing of the very first level in his game. We love the pixel art style, chiptune soundtrack, and most of all, the storytelling. His making of video is well worth a watch too.

An incredible 1/6th scale figure of Half Life 2 protagonist Gordon Freeman, decked out in his iconic armor, with 25 points of articulation and details like removable eyeglasses, a crowbar, pump-action shotgun, a light-up gravity gun, and more. The Mondo exclusive version includes a Headcrab. Drops 11/22/19 at 12pm CT.

While it’s not the Half-Life 3 game we were hoping for, we’re still happy that Valve has revealed a new game in the classic franchise. Half-Life: Alyx is designed to be far more immersive than the prior games as it plays out entirely in virtual reality. Requires a SteamVR compatible headset, and drops March 2020.