At Gamescom 2025 everything old is new again, as a retro-revival wave crashes over video games

If your thumbs are itching for some brand new games to twiddle with, Gamescom 2025 is the shop window for the gaming industry — thousands of exhibitors take to a Cologne enormodome to show off all the new titles set to eat up your free time over the coming months.

Except, at Gamescom 2025, the ghost of gaming past loomed over proceedings.

We’re not just talking about sequels to storied series, like Resident Evil Requiem — the 9th entry in that most gruesome of survival horror franchises. We’re not talking simply about remakes, like the big-budget Metal Gear Solid 3 do-over. And we’re skipping over the return of long-dormant series like Onimusha, with Way of the Sword the first new entry in that demon-slaying samurai franchise since 2012 (and that was some browser-based rubbish, anyway).

Those are giant concerns of the big developers, and each in their own way looks to push the limits of current hardware, even if they may tip their hats to decades-old fandoms.

But elsewhere at the show was a pervasive nostalgia — a sense that the thrills of the past could, and should, stand shoulder to shoulder with the hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars epics of today.

If you’re a veteran retro gamer or an 80s/90s revivalist, the games industry looks set to have you comfortably catered for. Here’s 7 retro highlights from our time spent walking the halls of Gamescom 2025.

1. Lightgun gaming is back

I’ll always have a soft spot for Christmas 1995. It was the year the Lynch family got the PS1 — and better still, it got the ace Time Crisis arcade conversion with it too, along with the lightgun accessory. It brought the arcade to the living room and, though a pricey bit of kit, saved my dad a fortune in 20 pence coins.

Lightgun gaming fell out of favour in the flatscreen TV era — the tech that made them work didn’t play nicely without a CRT telly to point at. But the developers at Tassei Denki are offering a blissful blast from the past with their new G’AIM’E mini-console, which combines a flatscreen-friendly lightgun with four point-and-shoot greats — the aforementioned Time Crisis, Point Blank, and Steel Gunner 1 and 2. Each trigger pull during a Gamescom 2025 demo was like a shot of pure nostalgia. Building funds on Kickstarter now, it’s set to top our Christmas wishlist, 20 years after the original became an obsession.

He-Man & The Masters Of The Universe: Dragon Pearl Of Destruction - Reveal Trailer | gamescom 2025 - YouTube

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2. '80s cartoons x '80s games = WIN

Before TikTok, YouTube and AI psychosis, kids had the joy of Saturday morning cartoons. And, just in time for his silverscreen cinema revival, the king of 80s toyboxes, He-Man, is making his way to consoles. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Dragon Pearl of Destruction is a pixel-perfect nod to Prince Adam’s animated hey-dey. If the theming wasn’t enough of a nod to the 80s, the gameplay certainly will be — our hands-on revealed a side-scrolling beat-em up in the vein of arcade classic Golden Axe, which feels like a match made in heaven. This one’s not got a release date yet, but it’ll run on everything with a power button.

John Carpenter's Toxic Commando - Gameplay Trailer | Opening Night Live 2025 | PS5 Games - YouTube

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3. Past masters for tomorrow’s games

I’d wager that most of the kids playing Fortnite have never heard of John Carpenter, the horror maestro that made his name with classic horror flicks like Halloween and The Thing. Which makes the fact that developers Saber Interactive saw marketing potential in putting his name against their latest shooter, Toxic Commando, all the more indicative of the nostalgia-baiting older gamer the industry now courts.

Carpenter is a pretty serious gamer himself though, so his input is no mere cash-grab, and Toxic Commando is looking pretty darn good — a quick hands-on demo revealed it to be a surprisingly sharp-looking team-based shooter, with tight gunplay, some gruesome baddies and a banging synth heavy soundtrack that sounded like the best bits of Carpenter’s own self-penned movie scores. This one’s due in early 2026 on PC, Xbox Series consoles and PlayStation 5.

4. Yesterday’s controllers, reimagined for today

8BitDo is perhaps the best third-party controller manufacturer on the market — and it sets itself apart with a style laser-focussed on attracting vintage gamers. Not only do its keyboards, mice and gamepads ape the look of the controllers of yesteryear, regularly riffing on Nintendo classics, but it’s now catering directly to those that want to play older titles with comfort. Among its latest wares are a gamepad that looks to bring an ergonomic layout to Nintendo’s bizarre N64 ‘trident’ pad, and a customisable purple pad with swappable buttons and stick tops that is a dead ringer for the Gamecube pad.

R Type Delta: HD Boosted - Announcement Trailer | PS5 & PS4 Games - YouTube

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5. Even minor hits can get a HD makeover

Even at the height of its powers, the R-Type shoot-em-up series was something of a cult pursuit. Its biomechanical baddies and drone-paired player ship made for wonderfully twitchy arcade action, but it’s never been a mega-hit series. And so the HD remaster of R-Type Delta (“HD Boosted”) shows that even relatively small titles can get a re-appraisal with the retro revival. R-Type Delta, originally a PS1 title, is worthy of another look, with its anime-styled shooter polygons scaling well to modern resolutions, and its gunplay as tight as ever. It’s coming to all major platforms on November 20th.

Mars Attracts - Official Trailer | Secret Sauce Showcase 2025 - YouTube

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6. Drawing inspiration from the swinging '60s

This one’s particularly fascinating — Mars Attacks started off as a bubblegum trading card series in the 1960s, with artwork so iconic that it inspired a Tim Burton movie of the same name in 1996. But it lives on today only as a cult-and-collector property.

So we were surprised to find Mars Attracts on the show floor — taking the misanthropic big brained aliens and making them the custodians of a theme park designed to attract human victims to their doom. The fact that top-down park builders and god games enjoyed their heyday primarily in the 90s only fuels the retro-inspired trend-watching we’re seeing at the moment — if it’s old, it’s gold, as the presence of the Mars Attacks branding here proves. This one’s coming soon to early access on PC, and a demo can be downloaded on Steam now.

7. The gaming PC of yesteryear, resurrected

Before GPUs grew to the size of cars — and had price tags to match — the Amiga was the king of the home computer, and was a powerful gaming machine in its own right even as the console giants started to dominate. The Amiga 1200 version of the machine is set to get a full-sized comeback, with The A1200 NG on show behind closed doors at Gamecom 2025. A full remake of the classic system, it’ll play all its old titles and software, but will be updated with modern conveniences like HDMI-out and wireless networking. You can pre-order its board now for £205, with the complete keyboard kit coming soon too.

What’s fuelling the retro revival?

Gamers have always been fond of the old rose-tinted glasses? We’re suckers for a remake and a remaster — anything that can rekindle or recapture those earliest, innocent gaming delights.

But that nostalgia has kicked up a gear in recent years and over recent console generations. There’s definitely a fatigue kicking in — and against — the idea of the ‘forever’ games, live service titans that demand your constant attention. And gaming generally feels like more of black hole for your wallet than ever before, whether that’s the now de rigueur subscription demands of platform holders, or the rising cost of games and hardware. Buying a PS5 today is literally more costly than it was when it first launched.

Retro games hark back to a simpler time, one where system requirements weren’t quite so demanding, when turning on a console didn’t immediately greet you with a lengthy wait for a system update, when games were launched in an immaculate state rather than patched into good health long after you’ve paid for them.

Trading on our fondest memories isn’t a new tactic in the battle to separate you from your hard-earned wages, but as the once-youthful games industry grows older along with its players, expect to see video gaming history increasingly mined and repackaged.

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