Anthony Wallace
My name is Anthony Wallace, also known on the internet as Nara Makes Games, and I am Retro Dodo’s Lead News Producer.
I was born in the United States in 1982, which put me at the perfect age to enjoy some of the best retro video games at the time of their release. I was given a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas at the age of 4 and became an avid Nintendo fan from then on.
My gaming continued through most of my teens, had a short lapse during my twenties, and some off and on enjoyment during my early thirties.
My main passion in life, up until the 2020 pandemic, was art photography. So most of my time was spent balancing my professional work as a web and graphic artist and my own art.
Because I worked from home, I began living as a fulltime digital nomad in 2018 throughout most of Asia. In January of 2020 I was living in China as a resident artist at the Dali Art Factory. And, as I am sure you could guess, the pandemic arrived and put an end to all plans that I had in China. So I booked a flight to Japan and then all of the lockdowns started.
I spent all of 2020 living in Japan, most of that time in Nara and Osaka. Nara is a town known for a large population of wild deer that occupy the city, literally walking the streets and living in the parks. As a massive lover of all animals (I also describe myself as an “Animal Tourist”), this was the perfect place for me to lay low during the pandemic.
It was also there where I started to shift my passion from photography to retro video games. I threw myself into all things video games, mostly focusing on the Nintendo Switch and retro video game emulation. I was a regular reader of Retro Dodo at that time, which makes my position here that much more extraordinary. I also started to develop my own video game for the Game Boy Color, and I have spent the past three years on that project “The Mayor of Sanctuary”.
I returned to my home base in Chiang Mai, Thailand at the end of 2020 and continued to evolve my knowledge and experience in retro video games and emulation handhelds. I also continued work on my own game, which eventually got picked up by the publisher Incube8 Games.
I started working with Retro Dodo in 2022 as a part time writer. And my enthusiasm for emulation handheld consoles and my involvement in the retro gaming community led to me taking a larger role within Retro Dodo as the full time news producer and handheld reviewer.
Today, I spend my time between learning the Thai language, going on walks to meet as many dogs and cats as possible, playing retro video games, keeping up with video game news, and the early development of my second video game project. My goal is to continue to be involved in the emulation handheld scene, possibly develop my own handheld one day, keep working on my video game projects, and hopefully have a “career” in video games for as long as possible.
Posts by Anthony Wallace
