Deadline for submissions is 23:59 UTC-4 (US Eastern Time) on 2 November 2018.

Show off your skills at resurrecting the gaming and computing platforms of the past. We have one of the largest collections of original working hardware, on which we will make our very best efforts to show your work!

Competition Rules

  1. A "retro" platform is, roughly speaking, anything not in current or recent production. As a rule of thumb, anything produced before the year 2000 falls into this category. Arguments for more recent platforms must be raised with the organizers in advance.
  2. Submissions should not require any input beyond an initial loading/configuration screen. At any time during the execution of the demo, pressing the Escape key (or equivalent control) must cause the program to terminate.
  3. Submissions may not access any networking interfaces or modify system files, or in any way interfere with the playback of future demos.
  4. No specific limit on size is enforced as long as your target platform can handle it.
  5. All submissions must be original work that has not been previously released. A special exception is made for the ANSI/ASCII graphics competition (see compo-specific rules).
  6. Remote entries (submitted by a group which has no respresentatives present at the event) are accepted and will be eligible for prizes. Prizes will be delivered by standard US or international mail if a valid mailing address has been provided.
  7. Any content contained in a submission that is not the original work of the submission author(s) must have prior approval by its copyright owner. Submission of work to this competition affirms that all such approvals have been obtained.
  8. All submissions will be made available for unlimited public distribution by the organizers. Submission to this competition constitutes an agreement to such distribution.
  9. All submissions must adhere to the format requirements of the submission system, including required fields and maximum total submission size. Authors are strongly encouraged to review the submission system in advance of the competition deadline.
  10. Organizers reserve the right to reject submissions which contain unusually profane, disturbing, or shocking content.
  11. Organizers reserve the right to cancel, combine or split any categories for any reason.
  12. Organizers reserve the right to modify these rules at any time prior to the submission deadline.
  13. Any concerns not addressed by these rules are subject to decision by the organizers. All such decisions are final.

Screening Guidelines

  1. Submissions may be of any length, however only up to the first five minutes of the demo will be screened during the event.
  2. The maximum supported display resolution is 1280x720 (in the unlikely event your retro device goes that high). Standard VESA video modes are strongly encouraged.
  3. Organizers will attempt, to the maximum extent practical, to screen all submissions on original hardware present in the on-site collection.
  4. Author(s), if present, may supply hardware on which to screen the submission. Almost all analog video standards as well as DVI/HDMI digital video are supported. Audio must be line-level analog mono or stereo.
  5. If playback on original hardware does not succeed, an attempt will be made using a default installation of the most common emulator for the submission platform. Authors are encouraged to provide known working emulator settings.
  6. Authors are strongly encouraged to provide a fallback video capture of the submission in the event that hardware and emulation playback are unsuccessful.
  7. Coordinate any special needs (additional libraries, special runtimes, etc.) with the organizers prior to the event.

Available Platforms

This is a list of the platforms that will likely be available for demo running. Please contact the organizers with any inquiries about platform availability and questions about bringing your own hardware.