What retro consoles still have the most active game development? The most games still being released physically? The best and most popular time-tested consoles?

I’m excited to start learning programming and had a thought to make a game (having an objective makes it easier to learn). I wrote up an entire plan already for the mechanics and it seems incredibly viable for a fun and full experience. I would like to have it playable on real hardware and am just trying to figure out which system to make it for.

  • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    So I did a quick search on MobyGames looking for new release since 2020, and:

    • Atari 2600: 10 new games
    • Atari ST: 7 new games
    • DOS: 33 new games
    • Commodore 64: 55 new games
    • NES: 72 new games
    • SNES: 12 new games
    • Gameboy: 42 new games
    • Gameboy Advanced: 9 new games
    • Master System: 6 new games
    • Genesis: 49 new games
    • Dreamcast: 23 new games

    I believe those are the most active

      • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        That’s awesome!
        MobyGames is a collective database active since 1999. Years ago I was looking for a “letterboxd for games” and others like backloggd and rawg were missing a lot of stuff and had poor info about releases and so (I never checked again, so they might be better now). At the time MobyGames seemed like the best one, there is a lot of very obscure releases there, but I don’t know if other databases are more complete.

    • Venator@lemmy.nzEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      I sorted your list by number of releases:

      • NES: 72 new games
      • Commodore 64: 55 new games
      • Genesis: 49 new games
      • Gameboy: 42 new games
      • DOS: 33 new games
      • Dreamcast: 23 new games
      • SNES: 12 new games
      • Atari 2600: 10 new games
      • Gameboy Advanced: 9 new games
      • Atari ST: 7 new games
      • Master System: 6 new games
    • Redkey@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      As someone who’s currently interested in Atari 2600 development, I can tell you that MobyGames is way off in their count, even if you limit the count to physically-released games. There were well more than 10 new physical releases in 2025 alone.

      It helps that developers do licensing deals with a few companies that produce physical cartridges with boxes and manuals on demand, but there are also still a surprising number of people making physical copies of games for sale in advance.