Links
Retro websites worth knowing: databases, arcade, magazines, images and sprites, music, guides, history and preservation, news, podcasts, communities, homebrew, emulators and videos. Type a platform or keyword (e.g. amiga, c64, arcade, music) to filter. The data-use badge shows whether InsertCoin could import data from a site.
Data use:
119 links
Curated archive of Amiga pixel art from games and demos, organised by artist and game, with notes on the artists.
Scanned Amiga magazines (Amiga Power, CU Amiga, Amiga Format …) with an index of every review, searchable per game.
Database of Amiga music modules and their composers, with biographies, handles, groups and downloadable tracks.
Podcast about Atari 8-bit computers with hundreds of interviews with Atari employees and developers.
Steven Weyhrich's comprehensive history of the Apple II family: hardware, key software, people and companies.
Arcade/MAME database by motoschifo: per-romset details, flyers, cabinets and history. InsertCoin enriches arcade games from its scraper service (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).
Gaming database of over 600,000 coin-op, arcade, console and computer items and 21,000 companies. Its texts become MAME's history.dat.
Atari ST game database with credits, box scans, screenshots, reviews and developer interviews.
The main Atari ST/STE/Falcon community forum, including game preservation and development sections.
The central Atari console community: game database with rarity ratings, manual/box/cart scans, a homebrew store and very active forums (also covering ColecoVision, Intellivision and others).
Huge database for Atari systems (ST, 8-bit, 2600, 7800, Lynx, Jaguar) with scans, manuals and magazine reviews.
Large English/German wiki on the Commodore 64: game articles with ratings and credits, BASIC commands, hardware and people.
Solutions, maps and hints for thousands of text and graphic adventure games, especially 8-bit computer adventures.
Archive of every issue of Computer Gaming World (1981–2006), the leading American computer games magazine, as PDF scans.
Full-text archive of early personal computer magazines: Antic and STart (Atari) and Creative Computing.
Coin-op database with game pages browsable by year, name and system, plus a ROM identification tool, repair guides and restoration logs.
Amstrad CPC game database with box and cassette scans, screenshots and technical details per release.
The Amstrad CPC encyclopedia: games, software houses, people, hardware and magazines. The wiki and a new forum (forum.cpcwiki.eu) relaunched in Aug–Sep 2026.
Online edition of CRASH, the classic ZX Spectrum magazine (1984–1991), with page scans, reviews and indexes.
Online SID music player and browser built on HVSC and CGSC, with composer profiles, tags and ratings.
Open-source demoscene database covering productions, people, groups and parties, including scene handles linked to real game developers.
Actively developed, modernised fork of DOSBox for running DOS games, with improved audio/video and sensible defaults.
Fast, accurate PlayStation emulator with enhancements such as upscaling and PGXP.
The largest English-language Amiga forum, home of many preservation, WHDLoad and game-research projects.
Amiga-focused wiki and archive of game and demo music rips, with composer pages and game soundtrack listings.
The Free Unix Spectrum Emulator: accurate open-source emulation of the ZX Spectrum models and clones.
Wiki researching uncredited and outsourced developers of (mainly Japanese) games: who actually made what.
The classic user-written FAQ and walkthrough archive (since 1995) with cheats, release data per region and box scans for nearly every platform.
Archive of retro game manuals, box artwork, adverts, maps, music and gameplay videos across many systems, from the makers of GameEx.
Archive, running since 1999, of cancelled and unreleased games (strong on C64 and Amiga), with developer interviews and recovered material.
Preservation group publishing high-quality scans (magazines, guides, Japanese materials), translated interviews and research articles.
Norman Caruso's well-researched documentaries on game history, consoles and companies.
Dutch-run, English-language database of MSX software: every known title with publisher, release year, media type, covers and screenshots.
Video game site with a large user-edited wiki of games, franchises, characters and companies (currently being rebuilt after leaving Fandom), plus long-running podcasts.
The Amiga games database at abime.net: detailed release info, box and disk scans, credits and screenshots for nearly every Amiga title.
In-depth articles on the history of games and series, especially obscure, Japanese and cult titles, with regional differences and series overviews.
The definitive collection of Commodore 64 music (SID files) with over 50,000 tunes and composer data, updated regularly.
Community archive (by gbdev) of Game Boy and Game Boy Color homebrew games, playable in the browser and free to download.
Catalogue of interactive fiction and text adventures (Infocom, Level 9, Magnetic Scrolls and beyond) with authors, release dates, reviews and links. Run by the IFTF.
Twitch-owned, community-edited game database covering every era, with per-platform release dates, companies, genres, alternative titles and cover art.
Daily news about new homebrew games and demos for retro computers and consoles.
The Internet Archive's umbrella collection of digitised magazines, including thousands of computer and video game magazine issues from around the world.
The International Arcade Museum's database of coin-op machines: cabinets, flyers, manuals and production history.
Long-form documentaries on game series, publishers and developers, many on the British games industry.
Community database behind the LaunchBox frontend: per-platform game metadata, box fronts and backs, clear logos, screenshots and fan art.
Long-running Amiga game database with screenshots, credits, reviews and an active community.
Commodore 64 game database by the Lemon team: screenshots, credits, reviews and an active forum.
The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Its official -listxml game list is used by InsertCoin to match arcade games to romsets.
Highly accurate multi-system emulator (NES, SNES, Game Boy, PC Engine, SMS/GG) with strong debugging tools.
Walkthroughs, maps, item lists and manuals for classic NES, SNES and PC RPGs (Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Ultima…).
Large multi-platform game database with detailed credits, release dates per platform and cover art.
The main international MSX community, with news, forums, a wiki and downloads of legal homebrew.
Annual MSX game development competition (since 2003), with all entries and results.
Collection of adventure-game packaging with scans of boxes, manuals, feelies and ads (Infocom, Sierra, Level 9 and more).
Database of NES and Famicom cartridges: every catalogued release with PCB type, mapper, chips, label photos and region codes.
Technical reference and community for NES/Famicom development: hardware docs, mappers and homebrew projects.
Detailed level and overworld maps for NES, SNES and Game Boy games.
Reference site for the Nintendo 64: every game (including 64DD, iQue and unreleased titles) with regional releases, box scans, magazines and accessories.
No-Intro's database of verified cartridge and digital dumps with region, language, revision and serial info per release (no downloads).
Wiki documenting PC games, including DOS and early Windows titles: release info, developers, engines, compatibility fixes and settings.
Demoscene database and community: productions, groups, parties and comments for demos on all platforms.
Support-file project for MAME: snapshots, title screens, flyers, cabinets, marquees, control panels and category/series DATs, updated for each MAME release.
Database of PlayStation games by region (NTSC-U, PAL, NTSC-J) with serial numbers, cover scans, screenshots, descriptions and cheats.
Retro gaming blog known for genre guides, 'hidden gems' lists per platform and collecting advice.
Disc preservation project: a verified database of optical-disc games with serial numbers, regions, languages, edition details and checksums (no game downloads).
Retro game catalog that aggregates several community databases, with a public API. InsertCoin's main source for extra games, descriptions and (internal-only) artwork.
Media archive wiki from the Sega Retro team hosting high-quality scans of magazines, manuals, catalogues and other print material.
Online home of Retro Gamer, the UK print magazine (since 2004) known for 'The Making Of' features and developer interviews.
Community that adds achievements to classic games played in emulators, with per-game pages, achievement sets and leaderboards.
Community archive of vintage video game magazine scans (US, UK, Japanese and more), organised by title and issue.
Long-running classic gaming podcast with in-depth episodes on games, series and companies.
Sega Saturn-only database with every Japanese, US and PAL release, demos and console models, plus collection tracking.
French community media database used by emulation frontends (Recalbox, Batocera): box art, cartridge scans, logos, screenshots and short videos per game and region. The UI is multilingual, English included.
Huge wiki on everything Sega: every game with release dates per region, credits, box and magazine scans, prototypes, hardware and arcade boards.
Sega 16-bit-era resource with reviews, developer interviews, features and an active forum.
English translations of Japanese developer interviews from the 80s and 90s, covering arcade and console games of all genres.
Community site for Sega 8-bit systems (SG-1000, Master System, Game Gear) since 1997: per-game pages with credits, box/cart scans, development notes, homebrew and a forum.
The archive of Atari ST YM2149 music (SNDH format) from games and demos, with composer info.
Super Nintendo database with per-release info (regions, PCB, serials, box scans), prototype articles and SNES history.
Archive of Super Nintendo soundtracks in SPC format, tagged with composers and track names.
Modern ZX Spectrum archive built on ZXDB: games, magazine reviews, inlays and legal downloads.
The main leaderboard site for speedrunning, with categories, rules and verified runs per game, including thousands of retro titles.
Another sprite-rip archive; InsertCoin only links out to it (robots.txt disallows fetching the sheets).
The main community forum for Acorn computers (BBC Micro, Electron, Archimedes), with preservation and development discussions.
Collaborative, freely licensed wiki of strategy guides and walkthroughs for over 10,000 games.
Encyclopedia of arcade hardware: every arcade system board by manufacturer (Sega, Namco, Capcom, SNK, Taito…) with specs, photos and the list of games per board.
Community publishing tool-assisted speedruns (TAS) with movie files, encodes and technical write-ups about game mechanics and glitches.
Videos about vintage computers and their games: history, hardware explainers and restorations, strong on Commodore.
Blog playing and reviewing every computer RPG in chronological order since 2010, with detailed write-ups and a scoring system.
Wiki dedicated to unused and cut content in video games: debug menus, unused graphics, music and levels, regional differences and prototypes.
Fan archive of Zzap!64 magazine with reviews, scores and issue scans.
Jimmy Maher's long-running, thoroughly researched history of computer games and the computer industry from the 1970s to the late 1990s.
Long-running Dreamcast blog with news, retrospectives, homebrew and indie releases, and features.
Blog by Keith Smith with carefully sourced research into the history of 1970s–80s arcade games and the companies that made them.
Site that captures high-quality screenshots from real hardware and emulation, with commentary per game, strong on Saturn, PlayStation and Dreamcast.
Sister site of The Spriters Resource with ripped 3D models from games, organised per platform and game.
Long-running PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 database covering HuCard, CD-ROM² and SuperGrafx games with reviews, screenshots and scans.
Weekly podcast interviewing the people who made classic games and hardware, with news.
Community sprite rips per game and platform. InsertCoin stores a handful of hand-picked sheets per game (internal use, ripper + owner credited).
Huge collection of ZX Spectrum cheats, pokes, tips and maps, alphabetically per game.
Long-running screenshot archive with in-game screenshots and complete ending sequences for NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, arcade and more.
Community-contributed game database with a public data dump; fills empty fields and adds covers in InsertCoin (no licence stated, internal use only).
Daily retro gaming news site (from the Nintendo Life team) with news, making-of features, interviews and homebrew coverage.
'The Old School Emulation Center' catalogues software for home computers and consoles in DAT files with a standard naming convention (no downloads).
Independent database of over 100,000 games across consoles, home computers and arcade, strong on obscure and Japanese computer platforms.
Huge archive of user-made full maps of game levels and worlds, organised per platform.
Database of video game music releases: soundtrack albums, catalogue numbers, track lists, composers and performers, strong on Japanese releases.
Archive of video game music ripped as VGM sound-chip logs (arcade, Mega Drive, PC Engine, MSX, X68000 and more), with composer and chip info per pack.
The Versatile Commodore Emulator: open-source emulation of the C64, C128, VIC-20, PET and Plus/4.
Non-profit dedicated to preserving and teaching video game history, with a research library of magazines, development materials and articles.
Wiki documenting video game music: composers, soundtracks per game, sound drivers and hardware, with an emphasis on accurate credits.
The main forum for running DOS and early Windows games, retro PC hardware, sound cards and DOSBox.
Free structured knowledge base (CC0). InsertCoin's core game facts, plus MAME ROM names (P2451) for arcade matching.
Free-licensed media repository; the only images InsertCoin may show outside internal use (author and licence shown per file).
The reference Amiga emulator for Windows, with cycle-exact emulation of all Amiga models including CD32.
Huge archive of complete playthroughs (longplays) without commentary, for arcade, computers and consoles.
The classic ZX Spectrum archive and community forum, online since 1995.
Longplays recorded on real hardware, strong on 8- and 16-bit home computers (Amiga, C64, Spectrum, CPC, ST).
Open-source search frontend for ZXDB with detailed entries per Spectrum title (releases, authors, magazine references, screens) and a public JSON API.
data/links.json (hand-curated; external sites open in a new tab).