A tale of Ghosts’n Goblins’n Crocodiles

There is something noble about developing on a dead platform – it is so completely for the joy of the development, without any commercial motivation.

• John Carmack

When does a platform truly “dies”? A “dead language” is defined as “a language which is no longer in everyday spoken use”. By analogy, a dead platform would die not when it ceases to be profitable or when it is obsolete, but when people stop playing it and caring about it.

Now the question becomes “what draws people to retro-computing?”. Is it nostalgia, the diversity, the creativity, the simplicity, or is it inexplicably fun?

Come for the sentiment, stay for the backstory of an old computer you may have never even known existed.