PC Play — Retro Gaming Reviews, Hardware Guides & Gaming News
PC gaming, guides, hardware picks & retro deep dives. No filler; just shoot ’em up & boot ’em up.
Best Buys & Gaming Hardware
Monitors, keyboards, mice, headsets, controllers and more — researched picks at every budget.
Resolution, refresh rate, panel type, response time — everything that actually matters, explained plainly.
Read the guide →
From budget picks to audiophile options — the headsets worth your money.
See our picks →
DualSense, Xbox, 8BitDo and more — the controllers worth buying for modern games.
See our picks →How-To & Setup Guides
Step-by-step guides for getting set up, sorted out, and making the most of your hardware.
Servers, voice channels, bots and the overlay — everything you need to get started.
Read the guide →
Calm, precise, controlled — blue’s the colour for a setup that means business without shouting about it.
Read the guide →
Raspberry Pi, RetroPie, controls and cabinet — the complete build guide.
Read the guide →Old Games, New Ways to Play
Home computers, classic consoles, the games that defined a generation — and where to find them in 2026.
C64, Spectrum, Amiga, Atari — originals and modern alternatives covered.
Read the guide →
NES to Dreamcast — every major console, original hardware and modern alternatives.
Read the guide →
Digital and physical — the games worth your time and where to find them.
See our picks →
From entry-level to tournament-ready — the best fight sticks available.
See our picks →
No lore, four colours, one perfect idea: the detachable Force pod. Still one of the smartest mechanics the shoot-’em-up genre ever produced.
Read the retrospective →
The PS1 cult classic nobody asked for and everybody remembers. No emulator required.
Read more →The Monthly Retrospective
One game a month. What made it work, what it got right, and why it still matters.
History & Culture
The bigger stories — where gaming came from, and what it’s been tangled up with along the way.
-
1989: The Year the Beat-‘Em-Up Grew Up
-
Nostalgia’s Proven ROI & The Indie Gaming Industry
-
Return of Retro (just like we said)
-
Designed to Be Looked At: What Female Game Characters Tell Us About Who They Were Made For
-
When Music Walked Into the Room: My Greatest Crossovers Between Gaming and Music
-
The Machines That Built Modern Gaming: A Guide to the Home Computer Era
-
Manchester: The City That Invented Modern Computing (And Some of the Best Games You Ever Played)
-
Is Your Old Game Collection Worth a Fortune?
What’s Going On
Takes on gaming news, industry trends, and the things worth paying attention to.
-
Star Fox Is Back — But Is a Lylat Wars Remake Really What We Wanted?
-
The Nintendo Switch 2 Is About to Get More Expensive — And the PS5 Already Has
-
The White ZX Spectrum Was a Legend. Now You Can Buy One.
-
Re:Wired — The Middlesbrough Museum Where You Can Actually Play the Games
-
Twitch Just Legitimised Mogging — And It’s Worth Understanding Why
-
A Fan Is Putting Punch-Out!!’s Lost Characters Into a Game Boy Color Remake — And It Looks the Part
-
Someone Spent Two Years Building a Game Boy Color You Can Wear on Your Wrist
-
Ecco the Dolphin Is Coming Back — And the Original Team Is Making It