Retro Computers, Games, Cats & Other Curiosities

Two cats resting on vintage computers: Peek on a Commodore 128D, Poke on an Amstrad CPC 6128 — Peek and Poke, the secret rulers of the Retro Lab. Peek is relaxing on an *Orion CCM-1280* of a *Commodore 128D*, while Poke is just casually sitting on top of a *CTM644* of an *Amstrad CPC 6128*.

What more could you need than retro computers and cats?

CRT & CATS is a small, ad-free corner of the internet for people who like old machines and the things that surround them: 8-bit and 16-bit computers like the C64, Atari ST, and Amiga; retro games that defined whole genres; fantasy consoles like PICO-8; and the occasional cat claiming ownership of a mechanical keyboard. Written by Thomas Burblies.

What you'll find here

Retro computers: 8-bit and 16-bit machines I still use, maintain, and occasionally repair - from the C64 to the Amiga A500.
Retro games: Deep dives into the games that shaped genres, with first-hand notes on tactics, ports, and why the Amiga version of Pirates! still wins.
Fantasy consoles: PICO-8 and other small machines - what they are, what I build on them, and why constraints make better games.
Programming notes: How this site is built: Node.js, a small build pipeline, and what AI assistance actually helps with.
Peek & Poke: The two cats who supervise the keyboard. No retro setup is complete without one.
Bicycles & recipes (coming soon): Steel-frame maintenance notes and zero-dependency cooking - because the broth really does take a weekend.

Latest

Legendary Retro Games: Masterpieces That Defined Genres

Three milestones on the C64, Atari ST, and Amiga - and why they still hold up on original hardware.

Work in progress - on purpose

This site is being built one finished page at a time. Rather than publishing ten half-finished pages at once, I finish a page and only then link it.
More retro games and home-computer deep dives are on the way.