13 great PC games with a retro feel

Like all great trends, retro-style PC games have circled back into popularity. They invoke a feeling of nostalgia for a gaming era long gone, but not forgotten.

Many of today's game developers grew up in the 8-bit era and are now using their talents to breathe new life into this classic style. They're introducing fun mechanics and innovative play styles that rival the graphically elite, big-budget games.

We kick off our homage to the pixelated past with one of the best, most violent games of the past year.

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Review: Amiga Forever makes retro gaming painless

Personal computers have been around long enough to become a part of our history and shared social consciousness. As time marches on and older hardware dies, emulation is often the only way to experience these orphaned systems again. Amiga has been mourned more than most. Emulators are tricky business, however. Mastering and maintaining them can sap enough enthusiasm that you're left wondering why you bothered. Cloanto carefully sized up this common problem when putting together its Amiga Forever package, and the results are impressive. We looked at the $30 Plus edition ($10 Value and $50 Premium editions also available).

Rather than reinvent the wheel, Cloanto (which also makes the C64 Forever Commodore 64 emulator) uses the excellent WinUAE as the technical engine behind its Amiga suite. The main bulk of the package is a sizable collection of legal ROM images, games, classic demoscene releases, interviews, and more. An attractively designed multi-tabbed window, which resembles a media library more than an emulation interface, presents the information. There's a ton of Amiga-related stuff at your fingertips from the moment you install. Ratings, screenshots, and descriptive texts appear for each of the dozens of entries, and full social media support means everyone on Twitter will know when you're eaten by the giant ants.

Cloanto sweats the details for your trip back to 1990.

Tinkering types and Amiga purists will be pleased to know that all the deeper settings are still available via the Tools menu (accessible during emulation using WinUAE's default F12 hotkey). That said, there's little to bother with here as Amiga Forever has most useful options preconfigured or easily selectable via icons placed around the emulation window itself. Full-screen controls, input devices, save states and more are all accessible here. Links to legal download repositories for many lost Amiga classics are built into the software, so when you tire of the included content, finding more isn't difficult. All standard Amiga formats are supported, so your own library of converted disks can be used as well. It's all designed to be as painless as possible, and it works.

The DVD edition has a number of interviews that are must-watch for Amiga aficionados. In addition to some early promotional materials, the famous "Deathbed Vigil" is included on the disc, in which Dave Haynie (the creator of the Amiga 3000) documents the fall of Commodore on video as it happens around him. This is riveting stuff for those wondering what was going on behind the scenes at the time. More material of this nature would be welcome, as this is the content that sets Cloanto's offering apart from other, more technically oriented packages. The gallery area in particular could use some back-issue libraries of Amiga-oriented publications such as .info magazine and similar materials.

Amiga Forever's quick access icons make screen changes and saves easy.

Cloanto has a winning formula here that focuses on the softer side of the emulation equation and presents a package so authentic to the original experience that even old 3.5" disk drive sounds are reproduced with sound effects. At $30, the Plus edition is reasonably priced for the software library and ROM images it provides. The $50 Premium edition, which is on DVD, is a bigger stretch, but well worth it for fans for the extra video content. Either way it’s a small price to pay for the emulator you don't need to make excuses for when you show the kids how things used to be.

Note: The "Try it for free" button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Add Retro Effects to Your Photos With CameraBag

Is it pure nostalgia, or does it say something about the digital camera when we go out of our way to make our digitized snaps look like they were made using a box Brownie, or Instamatic? CameraBag 2 ($29, 30-day free trial) is a fun way to inject a retro feel into your sterile digital snapshots.

The style effects in Camera Bag range from stylish borders to wacky colorization to vintage looks---all fully adjustable.CameraBag 2 uses a very elegant, artful interface to get you started. Simply upload your JPG, PNG, TIFF, or RAW images individually or in a batch; and click on one of more than twenty pre-loaded styles. CameraBag 2 includes everything from self-explanatory Monochrome to the more esoteric Poolside, Hipster, or Lolo. In case the preview thumbnail isn't enough, CameraBag 2 also displays descriptions of each style---for example, Skater is described as "skinned knees and noisy photos." But the captions are just a cute aside: Since the effect does not destroy your original image, try them all until you find what you like.

Unlike FotoSketcher (free) which is a similar program that focuses on turning your photographs into fine art, sketches, cartoons, and watercolors, CameraBag 2 delves into the lost art of film photography. CameraBag 2 even includes borders to make your image look like it's printed on torn paper, or is from a non-digitized era: 47mm, 35mm, Infititi 50, Insta, Vinyl, 75mm Strip, Slide, and Safety Film. For digital scrapbookers, it's the perfect pairing to a program like Serif's CraftArtist ($60), which will take those nostalgic images and allow you to arrange and embellish them.

CameraBag was originally developed as an iPhone app, but don't get confused with Instagram, a free app for mobile Apple (and Android to be released soon) devices that pays homage to the square formats of Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras: This new version of CameraBag works on your desktop or laptop PC and has been rebuilt from the ground up to be a pretty powerful image editor too. Use CameraBag 22 to crop, rotate, and adjust your image. Each change you make shows up as a tile on the panel at the bottom. If you change your mind you can always return to that particular effect and change or delete it. Effects can also be reordered to achieve a different look.

Once you have the basic style you envisioned, you can use CameraBag 2's easy sliders and curves to tweak your image. The simplicity of CameraBag 2's sliders remind me of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 ($90), as does the ease of adjusting brightness, color, contrast, crop, exposure, saturation, tint, and vignettes, to name a few areas. CameraBag 2's tools are all in one place and you can use them to control the way your image looks at a beginner's or advanced level. For example, the Contrast tool includes a Brightness Origin slider that changes the point at which you want to make the pixels lighter or darker. Another great feature is the Straighten tool: Use a slider in CameraBag 2 to rotate your image within a non-rotating frame. No more guessing at degrees of rotation, or cropping to square off the image after you've rotated it.

Unfortunately, in CameraBag 2 you cannot select parts of your image, change individual pixels, or print your images: For that level of detail you'll need something akin to Photoshop ($700). Try Serif PhotoPlus X5 ($90), Xara Photo & Graphic Designer, Paint.NET (free), or GIMP (free)

CameraBag 2 will also save combinations of styles and adjustments as Favorites, allowing you to achieve the same effect multiple times; and also includes a batch process to save you time. And CameraBag 2 really proves it's non-destructive---if you accidentally batch process an image you didn't want to change, or overwrite the original, simply switch the changes off.

CameraBag 2 is very easy to use--the 40-second tutorial is testament to how easy--and fun to create your own style. The image manipulation takes some practice to perfect, but the effects are worth it--especially if your images need perking up with a bit of wistful yearning for less digital times.

--Clare Brandt

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