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Remember the days of your childhood when you would sit with a group of your mates around the TV playing games via a console?

Most likely your childhood was in the 1980s and 90s, when technology had not advanced to the online gaming that is the norm today, albeit still via a console. Now, you can still play greames with other people, but they are most likely people you have never met and often on the other wide of the world.

However, human beings are still deep down social animals who like getting together in the same space as a group and a combination of this plus nostalgia could be what has fuelled a massive revival in what is now called “retro gaming”.

Many people have retained a fondness for characters like Sonic, Zelda, or Super Mario. These people are now adults and possibly parents, and the desire not only to do something with the children may be another influence on the revival.

Perhaps this year’s launch of the new Nintendo Switch, with its updated Zelda and, soon, Mario games has also contributed.

While many people may have bought the new consoles each time they were launched, it seems they never actually got rid of their earlier ones.

Now, they are being rescued from the attic to entertain a whole new generation and perhaps also resurrect the idea of spending “family time” together.

Not only that, but there are now thriving businesses developing from the resurgence.  There is a large and lucrative market for games cartridges and consoles on places like eBay – to prove that hanging onto “stuff” for once can earn money, even if it’s the long-suffering parents who have had to store it all. Some enterprising small business people have even opened physical shops in their neighbourhoods and there are also specialist arcades and gaming cafés.

There is also an opportunity for anyone with some technical/handyman skills.  These consoles are old and no longer manufactured. The older a piece of equipment is the more likely it is that something will break, wear out or go wrong so repairers are likely to find themselves much in demand.

So, the next time your mum asks when you’re going to get rid of the clutter you’ve left behind at home when you moved out you have the perfect answer!

The GTX 1080 Ti the newest and most powerful gaming graphics card ever?

It was only released last Friday but already demand has outstripped supply for the new The GeForce® GTX 1080 Ti, NVIDIA’s new flagship gaming GPU.

Its GPU frequency has been boosted by 50 MHz and has a redesigned cooling set-up which has doubled the airflow compared to the Titan X Pascal.

In design terms it looks and feels identical to the GTX 1080 Founders Edition.  It has a die-cast aluminium body and 7-phase dualFET power supply. It is cooled by a radial fan with an advanced vapor chamber designed to for consistent performance in even the most thermally challenging environments.

Reviewers are already raving about its “extreme gaming horsepower” and ability to deal with thermally challenging environments.

Richard Leadbetter, of eurogamer.net put the new GPU through its paces setting it the challenge of whether its performance at ultra HD matches up to the 1080p prowess of GTX 970 at the same settings.

His findings were that while it wasn’t a complete match it was “astonishingly close” and occasionally, given its 4x increase in pixel count, it was even faster.

His conclusion? “The only real difference between GTX 1080 Ti and Titan X Pascal is 1GB of VRAM: memory that will likely remain completely untouched for a long, long time” and he described its performance as “sensational”.

The new GPU was also reviewed by pcgamer.com. Their reviewer pushed the power up to its maximum 120%, set the fan speed at 80% and while running it with a heavy workload for “hours” he captured an image that “completed with no crashes, despite the healthy overclock”.