A curated database of obscure retro games — every entry explained in 30 seconds.
What is this?
You find a retro cartridge at a flea market. A YouTube algorithm coughs up a 1983 ColecoVision title. A friend mentions a Famicom game you’ve never heard of. What do you actually do once you turn it on?
HowDoIPlayThis is a database of hundreds of obscure games from the Atari era through the early 3D years. Every entry follows the same three-tier structure:
- The Golden Rule — one sentence. The mechanic that unlocks the entire game.
- Level Objectives — what you’re actually doing, stage by stage.
- Pro Strategies — the deep tricks. Revealed only when you ask for them.
Entries marked with a small · are stubs that are queued for processing — the metadata is there, the deep curation is on the way.
Browse by console
Intellivision (123) · NES (1)