How Nintendo nostalgia is driving a new wave of video game production in Pennsylvania.

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Forty years after the cinder block-sized Nintendo Entertainment System introduced America’s youth to virtual duck hunting and plumbing in the Mushroom Kingdom, there are still fans – and not just behind the controller.

Pennsylvania video game developers are producing new games and cartridges nearly three decades after the NES was officially discontinued. They’re also making games for other old consoles like the Sega Genesis. Why?

James Deighan of Pittsburgh’s Mega Cat Studios told PA Local: “A lot of us chose that era back then because it inspired us to get into the industry. So there’s a very strong nostalgia attached to it that kind of drives us.”

And that’s not all: Like vinyl, retro video games are cool again. In April, The Guardian reported that #retrogaming videos on TikTok had garnered over 6 billion views, YouTube uploads had increased 1,000-fold since 2007, and Spotify users were increasingly creating playlists of retro gaming music.

Esports talent agent Britt Rivera told The Guardian that in a world of unstoppable technological advances, old-school games are reliably stable and controlled.

Classic games are also very popular for more practical reasons.

Modern video games are often blockbusters with large audiences and far-reaching narratives, from the open world of FromSoftware’s challenging fantasy epic Elden Ring to the almost endless feeling of Bethesda’s space opera StarfieldDeighan argues that retro games like Mega Cat are “better to snack on” while still offering a satisfying challenge: “Players want something that challenges their Elden Rings, right? It’s not one or the other.”

Greg Caldwell of Retrotainment Games, a Pittsburgh-based developer working with Mega Cat, agreed, noting of the cartridges in particular: “There’s no loading times and there’s nothing to download, right? It’s very simple.” (If you’ve ever lost your Xbox cloud connection mid-game, this probably speaks to you.)

Of course, retro games still require careful programming and design.

“If you want to buy a cake for your wife’s birthday, you might just go to a nice bakery. You probably wouldn’t buy a chicken, hatch it, feed it, get eggs and grind flour,” Deighan said of the “artisanal process” of retro game development. “And that’s the same when you develop cartridge-based games. We buy the chickens. It’s significantly faster to develop new games using new platforms and new tools.”

Playing cartridge games can also be difficult without the right equipment, namely an older TV or a Smart TV adapter. Not to mention controllers.

The development from egg yolk to screen can take years, and the cartridges are only part of it.

Mega Cat and Retrotainment also develop their old-school games for modern consoles like Xbox and sometimes even smartphones, which requires additional development work. Cartridges, not surprisingly, remain a relatively small revenue driver and function more like collector’s items.

“I would say the way to describe it is that a high-performance cartridge has a chance of selling about 5,000 copies,” said Deighan. “The digital versions are infinitely scalable.”

The digital mandate has also found its place at Retrotainment, which Caldwell founded with Tim Hartman while running retro game stores in the Pittsburgh area. The two, who have been best friends since third grade, released their first “homebrew” NES game in 2015.

Caldwell remembers playing with the console back in its heyday and knows it had its limitations. “Tim and I grew up with it,” he says.

“We believe there’s a sweet spot in gaming where the graphics are just good enough to make things look the way they should, but the mind still has to fill in the gaps.”

But the cartridge community is niche, he admits. “That’s one of the reasons we went into digital and forced ourselves to move to the modern consoles, because we hit a limit. Next we’re trying to move to mobile to reach more people and tell them, ‘Hey, people still love those old consoles and we still make games.'”

The Video Game History Foundation, a nonprofit founded by video game historian and developer Frank Cifaldi, says that 87% of classic video games released before 2010 are no longer available in stores. A summary of the foundation’s findings reads: “Imagine if the only way to watch Titanic was to find a used VHS tape and maintain your own vintage equipment so that you can still watch it. … It sounds crazy, but that’s the reality we live in with video games, a $180 billion industry, while the games and their history are disappearing.”

How big is the video game industry in Pennsylvania?

The online tool gamedevmap counts 58 video game development companies in Pennsylvania, and not just in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Smaller companies are hidden in Bucks, Delaware, Erie, Luzerne, Lancaster counties and beyond.

By comparison, the industry’s leading state, California, has a total of 868 companies. (The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics does not collect data on the video game industry or its jobs, only on the broader categories of software developers and computer programmers.)

Pennsylvania wants more game development here. The state has awarded more than $6 million in video game production tax credits to 32 recipients since 2016, according to figures from the Department of Community and Economic Development. The tax credit has exhausted its $1 million budget allocation for five years in a row.

Jesse Schell of Schell Games, a Pittsburgh-based maker of virtual reality, augmented reality and educational games, said his company is one of those recipients. Schell explained that while Pennsylvania is currently just an outpost of the industry, it has the right conditions for growth: namely, a relatively low cost of living and a high number of colleges.

“Pittsburgh in particular was a great location because with the number of universities here and the focus on technology and the arts, there’s a lot of great talent in the city,” Schell noted. “So it was a very friendly place for game development.”

People will continue to spend their time and money on video games. Schell said the appeal is innate.

“Everyone wants to achieve goals, face challenges, test their skills and progress,” he added. “Games offer certain things that you can’t achieve any other way.”

Caldwell is convinced that retro games, with their two-dimensional levels and vintage aesthetic, will remain a part of the pastime even as technology makes quantum leaps.

“It’s been over a decade since retro gaming really came into fashion, and I have a feeling it’s here to stay.”

Retrotainment now employs several more people – including artists and programmers – and has a growing list of games, including Halloween and Garbage Pail Kids themed titles. Mega Cat has now released a new retro game, Five Nights at Freddy’s game in early August, which became a top seller on the global digital video game distribution platform Steam.

Needless to say, Deighan is quite happy with this and his work for a living.

“Somewhere, 10-year-old James wants to give 38-year-old James a high-five because he’s thinking, ‘Sure, dude, you did it!’ There’s some truth in that.”

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