Remember those hand held games that we used to play like Donkey Kong and Turtle Bridge. You know the ones, they were the games that you could never find batteries for.

I used to play them a lot on camping trips with the family, so they bring back lots of memories. Unfortunately, these games are hard to find these days, and if you are successful finding them, you will need to pay top dollar.

I was very excited when I came across a site where quite a few of these games had been recreated for you to play on your PC. There are around 20 of these classics for you to enjoy.

Everything that the original game gave us is included in these packages. The sounds have been recorded and the graphics have all been scanned and touched up. The only main difference is that you control your character with your keyboard.

While most programs used to play old games are emulators, the programmer of these games was not able to get his hands on the required processor information that could have been used to make an emulator. I read on his site that each game has a unique processor. Instead of making an emulator, he recreated each game by hand. Each game is a separate entity. What this means is that the game may not run exactly the same as the original. Saying that, I couldn’t tell the difference in the games I tried out.

The site also contains a lot of interesting information about converting your hand held games to the PC format, if you would like to give the programming a go yourself. I might have a go at remaking Fire!

Get your favourite games from Madrigal Design.