RetroHub

RetroHub switches back on an interactive-television terminal from the early 1990s. A mosaic of numbered tiles, a number to dial — and behind the Games tile, a whole games room drawn pixel by pixel.

The games

Onyx — a pinball table surveyed point by point from its original cabinet. A plunger, two flippers, five balls: bumpers kick, slingshots fire, and the top plate holds the ball for three seconds before launching it hard. Backgammon — the board, the twenty-four points, the bar and bearing off. The opponent doesn't play at random: it looks ahead before it answers. Yum — five dice, three rolls, and the real Yum sheet: "21 and under", "22 and over", and a bonus at seventy. Bizz-Billes — a wheel draws a colour, you remove a diamond, and everything resting on it falls. Up to six players, each with their own marble colour, over one, three or five rounds. Bowling — ten pins, ten frames and real scoring: a strike pays on the next two balls. Place the ball, pick the swing, then the spin. Tape-Brique — the paddle, the ball, a crumbling wall. Every level is a new drawing, and some of them watch you. Electix — start from the edge and cut: every closed loop becomes ground won, while a creature prowls whatever is left. Zipper — everything you draw can come undone. A fully bordered area is yours for good, while a critter unpicks your work. Chute — twelve pentominoes falling into a field wider than it is tall. Pyramid — the twenty-eight-card patience: remove the pairs that add up to thirteen. The Quizmaster — two players, a Greek temple and hundreds of questions. Sometimes a roulette wheel decides what a question is worth. Problèmes — a dice race under a bubble, in four colours. Land on an opponent's pawn and it goes home, and you need the exact count to get in. Tac-o-Tac — a grid of numbers: you move along the row, your opponent along the column. Taking the biggest number is often the worst move. Hangman — a word to guess letter by letter, and a clown hanging from his balloons: every mistake pops one. Croc-o-math — a sum with a gap, a butterfly, and a crocodile waiting below.

Solo, together, online

Several games are played by several people around the same screen, the way it was done then. Backgammon, Bizz-Billes, Problèmes, the Quizmaster and Tac-o-Tac also play online: share a code, or get matched with someone looking for the same game — whether they play on Steam, on a phone or on a TV. High scores are kept game by game, and the top of a table isn't number one: they are grand master.

The terminal

A 320-by-240 screen, sixteen shades, a hand-traced font, and rendering that imitates the cathode-ray tube: scan lines, rounded corners, pixels never smoothed. Around the games: news, weather, horoscope, sports and a video channel that plays on its own. No account required.