I recently had to chat with Patrick, the founder of Afterplay, along with James, the platform's Head of Emulation, to talk about one of the more interesting projects I've spotted lately in in the retro gaming space specifically.
Afterplay's a browser-based retro gaming platform that lets you play classic games on desktop and mobile with cloud saves, cross-device syncing, and a focus on making retro gaming accessible.
More recently (and more interestingly to me), it expanded into a storefront where indie developers sell browser-playable games, which I think is an fascinating topic and angle for an article.
In the interview here we talk about how Afterplay began, the technical challenges of browser-based emulation, where the idea of becoming a "Steam for retro games" came from, the new storefront, the future of the platform, and plenty more.
I hope you enjoy the read, and as always I'd love to hear your thoughts here!
https://gardinerbryant.com/afterplay-and-the-push-toward-a-steam-for-retro-games/
I want to love Afterplay, but I get intermittent brief stutters on every game across multiple devices. It’s a great concept with great design, but the technical execution has been deeply problematic for me.
If you want to give it another go, stopping by the discord is the best place to get support. I’ve reported multiple bugs there and had them actually fixed.
The stutters can definitely be frustrating if they affect your device. Sometimes it can be caused by an update to the core and you can switch cores and see them go away. Other times I’ve had that happen on my device, turning down the autosave state frequency helps as well.
Thanks, I’ll poke at it.