About

About HowDoIPlayThis

Retro game documentation is fragmented across forum threads, scanned manuals, fan wikis, and 90-minute YouTube essays. None of that helps when you just want to start playing.

This site exists for a narrow purpose: get you from “what is this?” to “I’m playing” in under a minute. Every entry is hand-curated, fact-checked against original manuals and primary sources, and structured so you can read as little or as much as you want.

The three-tier structure

  • Tier 1 — Golden Rule. The one sentence you wish someone had told you before the title screen faded. If you only read this, you can still play.
  • Tier 2 — Level Objectives. What you’re aiming for, stage by stage. Just the goals — no spoilers, no hand-holding.
  • Tier 3 — Pro Strategies. The deep stuff: speed tricks, scoring routes, hidden mechanics. Hidden by default so it never gets in your way.

Coverage

Hardware: Atari 2600 / 5200 / 7800, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Vectrex, NES, Sega Master System, Game Boy, Game Gear, SNES, Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, Neo Geo, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Nintendo 64. The cutoff is fuzzy — roughly anything before the 6th-generation console wars settled.

Have a game you’d like covered? Get in touch.