The Retro Hour is your weekly dose of retro gaming and technology news, views and interviews from the UK.

Content:

We chat to BAFTA award winner Mark “TDK” Knight about his time at Mindscape, Bullfrog and Electronic Arts, and some old-skool demoscene chat. Mark Knight website: www.flitkillsmoths.co.uk/

Squashly Boop is a game by Jayenkai. Squash all the enemies, and hop for success, as you try not to die in this ultimate test. You can download the game for Windows, Linux, MacOS X and Nintendo 3DS!

cpasjuste updated his port of pFBA (portable Final Burn Alpha) for the Nintendo Switch. FB Alpha is an Arcade and Console emulator.

Changes:

* update to FBA 0.2.97.43
* update/fix save states and nvram support (you NEED to delete old folders : “config” and “saves” to prevent crashes)
* remove m68k cyclone asm core support
* switch: disable single joycon support for now
* fix console roms, no prefix needed anymore, roms need to be in their respective directories

Newo Asteroids by Owen is a game made in the style of classic Asteroids. In 2064 on a Wednesday, aliens disturb the asteroid belt sending asteroids hurdling towards the earth. It is your job to destroy every last asteroid in the solar system and bring peace to the galaxy.

Changes:

* Random colours by default
* Fixed leaderboard
* Added debug menu
* Down sampled all the sound effects
* graphics updates, bug fixes, stability

Thanks to Nintendomax for the news.

CHIP8-NX vis a port of SDL2 Chip8 Emulator by marice, to the Nintendo Switch. CHIP-NX is a CHIP8 interpreter.

Thanks to Nintendomax for the news.

Fireplace-NX is a lovely pixelated retro fireplace simulator ported to Nintendo Switch from Hans Wennborg‘s oldschool fire effect tutorial. This project should be helpful to anyone trying to learn SDL2 on Nintendo Switch using C++. Ported to Nintendo Switch by marice.

Thanks to Nintendomax for the news.

LaiNES is a cycle accurate NES emulator initially written by Andrea Orru and ported to Nintendo Switch by Kevoot. You can find a discussion at GBAtemp.

Thanks to Nintendomax for the news.

CannonBall-NX is an enhanced Out Run Engine. Although not an emulator it uses graphics and music via the Arcade ROM of Outrun Revision B. The commercial ROM is not included.

Thanks to Nintendomax for the news.

If you are eager to player good old NES / Famicom games on your homebrew enabled Nintendo Switch why not trying out NES ClasSwitch by waywardson07. The emulator is evolving slowly but surely, keep an eye out.

Thanks to Nintendomax for the news.

WiiMC-SS is a fork of WiiMC, a multi media player for the Nintendo Wii.

Release notes:

-Enabled ADX audio decoding

I mean this is a gaming console so why not support game music formats?
So far only ADX files from NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams seem to play incorrectly.

-GameCube controller support

Every button from the wiimote (Form Baton) is currently mapped.
Please note that there are still some things that require the pointer.

-The option to disable the H.264 deblock filter on a per video basis

To disable simply change the extension of your video to “.dash”.
Disabling this increases decoding speed a lot, but decreases visual quality, however depending on the video you can get away with it quite well. Keep in mind that the Netflix app for Wii does this for both main and baseline profiles.

-Added an option to enable the volume normalizer audio filter. (A restart is needed when changing from methods)
-Added an option to always zoom videos to 4:3 ratio. (H zoom should be ~133%, this setting only works if your Wii is set to 4:3 mode)
-Added an option to enable deflicker, 480i and 480p supported.
-Added an option to scale screen width to 720.
You will find these new options in the settings menu. For volnorm set it to “2” to enable volnorm method 2.

-Added Screen Burn-in Reduction support
To enable simply go to Settings->Global, it will dim the screen if the screen saver is active after 4 seconds.
This setting requires ahbprot disabled.

-Added an option to switch to 240p mode.
This setting can be found in the global section.

Thanks to Nintendomax for the news.