Hnefatafl by Sebastian Proost for Game Boy.
Viking chess for the Game Boy with three historical tafl variants in one ROM. The game is totally free, so there is no reason, to not check it out.
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Delete Me Hard (2026) by ilmenit is a 30-level, 8-bit arcade shooter for the NES and other classic systems.
Players must destroy a moving ‘DELETE_ME’ snake while managing arena upgrades. It’s entirely written in assembly code.
ReGravity Defied (2026) by RetroGaming UA.
An attempt to efficiently remake Gravity Defied, an old J2ME motorcycle trials game, for the Game Boy Advance (GBA).
Features according to its homepage:
- Original Physics:ย The bike dynamics use the same Verlet integration as the J2ME version, including all three engine leagues: 100cc, 175cc, and 220cc.
- Smooth Performance:ย The game runs a dedicated 60Hz physics simulation that stays consistent regardless of the frame rate, providing responsive and predictable handling.
- Career Progression:ย Start with the basics in the 100cc league and work your way up. Completing tracks unlocks new challenges and higher-powered engines.
- Persistent Saving:ย Your best times for every track and your current progress are saved to battery-backed SRAM. The game even remembers which track you were last looking at in each league.
- Control Options:ย You can toggle between using the D-pad for tilting or switching to the L and R shoulder buttons via the settings menu.
- Mod Support: The engine is compatible with original .mrg track files, meaning different versions like the “1000-track” packs can be built as standalone ROMs.
Princess Amelia (2026) for Commodore 64 โ a free platformer by BARKAMI. Can you guide the princess?
Guide Princess Amelia up 20 castle levels to gather the lettered bucklers that spell her name. You can choose whether to collect jewels along the way, but act quickly before her patience runs out.
Btw! BARKAMI’s game is without music for now, if you want to help him out, get in touch with him. This would really add up to the game.
Ouroboros for Commodore 64 asks you to bite your own tail. A fittingly circular puzzle challenge from Aardvark Soup.
This collection features 50 increasingly mind-bending puzzles, all completely unlocked from the start to allow skipping when stuck, alongside an unlimited undo function that encourages penalty-free experimentation. A new major mechanic is introduced every 10 levels and thoroughly explored from various angles, whilst a simple password system keeps track of completed stages.
ฤestmรญr Kociรกn shows us insights of the development of his game Stains of Decay.
Stains of Decay is a demanding, combat-centric Game Boy action-RPG where players navigate a ruinous wasteland, managing scarce resources and mastering intricate enemy attack patterns to survive perilous subterranean vaults.
Greetings everyone,
If things look a little sharper, load a bit faster, or just feel smoother around here, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. Iโve spent the past few days rolled up in digital sleeves, deep under the hood of the site, fixing bugs, cleaning up legacy database dust, and optimizing the backend. As you can see, we have also rolled out a brand-new layout and a fresh new logo to mark this new chapter! It feels great to have the engine purring properly again, and everything is now working flawlessly. Welcome back to a refreshed PDRoms!
With these changes, I want to address a quick note regarding our file archive. As many of you know, those legacy system directories havenโt been touched in quite a while. They are staying online strictly for historical reasons, ensuring decades of homebrew history remain preserved and accessible. Everything in there is fully operational, though I will be thinking about how exactly to proceed with that part of the project in the future.
While working on these updates, it got me thinking about how much the homebrew scene has evolved since this journey began back in 1998. We started out humble, hosted on GeoCities in the very early days, before moving on to be sub-hosted by EmuUnlim. Eventually, the project grew up, secured its own domain, and built the independent identity you know today. For over twenty-five years, PDRoms has served as a digital library and a regular newsfeed for the incredible creativity of the retro-dev community. From raw assembly code to polished ROM releases, this has been a space dedicated to the coders pushing old silicon to its limits and the gamers who love playing those creations. But as time moves on, the way we celebrate, play, and document these indie creations changes too.
That brings us to a relationship many of you have noticed, but that deserves a proper spotlight: the deep, familial connection between PDRoms and BrewOtaku.
Think of them as siblings born from the exact same passion for video game preservation and independent development. While PDRoms remains your reliable, daily digital archive for legal freeware and homebrew news, BrewOtaku takes that exact same spirit and morphs it into something tangible. It is a bimonthly, professionally styled gaming magazine designed to give these amazing modern games for classic hardware the high-quality, permanent print documentation they truly deserve.
Seeing a developer’s hard work immortalized on a physical page hits differently than a standard internet link. PDRoms and BrewOtaku are two sides of the very same coin โ one capturing the daily pulse of the scene online, and the other preserving it in editorial form.
With the site maintenance out of the way, the focus returns entirely to tracking down the best new releases, ports, and coding breakthroughs for your favorite classic systems. Thank you for sticking around, keeping the scene alive, and supporting both branches of this lifelong hobby project.
Panem et circenses.
-koj
BrewOtaku gameplay of the Game Boy game ‘Taxi Boy’ by PCNONOGames. Taxi Boy is a handheld demake of Crazy Taxi where players drive passengers to destinations within a time limit.
Purchase: https://pcnonogames.itch.io/taxi-boy-for-gameboy-by-pcnonogames
War for the Ring by Lawlord for ZX Spectrum.
A long-lost 1980s school project restored. Solid turn-based strategy set in Middle-Earth, complete with first-person battles. Oh yeah, baby!
Bike-Ride (2026) by 3li6 for Game Boy Color.
Pedal through a strange world where every turn feels slightly off.