I have reviewed some strange games over the years, but nothing quite prepared me for the moment I realised I was about to date a games console. Not play a game involving a console. Not revisit an old favourite from my childhood. Actually date one. Turn Retro Consoles into your Boyfriend is the sort of wonderfully bonkers idea that makes you stop, read the title again, and then wonder who came up with it and, more importantly, whether they had been waiting years for the opportunity.
Published by Red Fables, this wonderfully eccentric visual novel and dating simulator takes familiar retro gaming hardware and turns it into a collection of anime bachelors, each with the personality of the machine they once represented. Old consoles have somehow come alive. They are apparently not particularly happy about it, and your job is to battle them, capture them, and eventually discover the handsome anime man hiding inside the circuitry.
Yes, really. The brilliant thing is that Turn Retro Consoles into your Boyfriend does not pretend the concept is sensible. It embraces the absurdity completely and builds its entire personality around it. The result is a funny, affectionate and surprisingly charming little romance adventure that knows its audience is likely to have strong memories of cartridges, boot screens, stubborn hardware and the occasional ritual of blowing into something that absolutely should not have required blowing into.
First You Fight, Then You Flirt
The journey begins with combat, which feels like a perfectly reasonable way to start any relationship involving a games console. The machines are not simply waiting around to ask you out for coffee. They need to be battled and worn down before you can capture them, giving the game a turn-based combat system that provides a little strategic structure before the romance begins.
It is not going to compete with the deepest RPG combat systems around, but that is not really the point. The battles exist primarily to support the game’s larger joke and give you something to do before you reach the dating sections. There is something inherently amusing about trying to defeat a piece of gaming hardware so you can subsequently take its human incarnation on a date.
The strategy is straightforward enough to follow, allowing the game to move quickly between encounters and story scenes. You are not here to spend twenty minutes analysing damage percentages. You are here because somewhere underneath that stubborn old machine is apparently an anime boyfriend waiting to happen. And honestly, that is a sentence I never expected to write in a review.
From Hardware To Heartthrob
The real hook comes when you capture one of the consoles and watch it transform. Each machine becomes an anime guy whose personality reflects its hardware characteristics, quirks and place in gaming history. It is a wonderfully silly concept, but there is considerably more thought behind the characters than the title might initially suggest.
The stubborn grey box that takes forever to boot becomes the sort of guy who takes an equally long time to warm up to you. The tiny handheld is quick, playful and keeps you on your toes, while the chunky machine with the notorious flashing red light turns out to be rather more passionate than you might expect.
These characters work because the jokes are not random. Their personalities are tied to the machines that inspired them, giving retro gaming fans plenty of little details to recognise. If you have spent years dealing with cartridges, cables, power switches and hardware that occasionally needed a little encouragement to behave, you will find plenty of moments that make you smile.
Dating By Dialogue
Once the fighting is over, the visual novel side of the experience takes centre stage. Conversations are full of choices, and what you say can influence your relationship with each character. Say the right thing and affection grows. Say the wrong thing and you may discover that even an anthropomorphised games console has standards.
The dialogue is where much of the game’s personality lives. There are gaming references, hardware jokes, nostalgic observations, and plenty of tongue-in-cheek humour aimed squarely at people who remember the early generations of home gaming. It does not take itself seriously, and that is exactly why the whole thing works.
There is also something rather charming about watching these ridiculous characters gradually become more than just punchlines. Beneath the jokes, the dating routes give them individual personalities and little stories to discover. The more time you spend with them, the easier it becomes to appreciate the strange amount of affection that has clearly gone into turning pieces of old hardware into characters you actually want to spend time with.
Blow Into The Cartridge
One of the game’s most entertaining ideas is its collection of hardware-maintenance mini-games. If you have ever owned retro gaming hardware, you will know exactly where this is going. Apparently, maintaining your romantic relationship now involves cleaning cartridge slots, blowing out dust, and generally performing the sort of questionable hardware maintenance that generations of gamers once treated as completely normal.
There is something beautifully ridiculous about this. Imagine telling someone that your relationship needs work and then explaining that the solution is to clean the laser lens. Yet within the wonderfully bizarre logic of Turn Retro Consoles into your Boyfriend, it makes perfect sense.
These mini-games also reinforce the central joke that the characters are not simply generic anime boys in console-themed outfits. Their personalities, dialogue and interactions are all tied back to their hardware origins. That gives the whole thing a surprisingly coherent identity.
Nostalgia Is The Real Love Interest
For all the jokes about dating consoles, nostalgia is arguably the real star of the show. Turn Retro Consoles into your Boyfriend clearly understands that retro gaming is about more than old technology. It is about memories of sitting in front of a television, swapping cartridges, waiting for something to load, and discovering games before the internet could tell you exactly what to expect.
The game’s pixel art portraits capture that spirit well. Character designs incorporate elements such as power switches, controller ports, colours, and other recognisable hardware details into their clothing and appearance. You can often look at a character and immediately think about the machine that inspired them.
The interface continues the theme with CRT-inspired visuals and menus that feel like they have wandered straight out of another era. It is colourful and deliberately nostalgic without simply becoming a museum piece. Everything is designed to remind you that this is a love letter to an older generation of gaming.
Chiptunes And Boot Screens
The audio follows the same philosophy. Chiptune melodies, upbeat 16-bit-inspired music, and familiar-sounding boot-screen effects create a soundtrack that feels right at home with the visual presentation. It does not attempt to deliver a huge cinematic score, because that would almost defeat the point.
Instead, the music keeps things cheerful and playful. There is a certain charm in hearing a nostalgic little electronic tune while your latest console boyfriend explains why he has commitment issues. It is the kind of tonal clash that should not work, yet somehow fits perfectly.
The sound effects also help sell the joke. Familiar hardware-inspired noises become part of the game’s comedic language, reinforcing the idea that these characters really are walking, talking pieces of gaming history.
More Than One Route To Romance
The multiple endings give the game welcome replay value. Your dialogue choices matter, affection levels can shift the course of a relationship, and different routes offer distinct outcomes. That encourages you to revisit characters and see what happens when you make different decisions.
For a game built around such a simple concept, this is important. Without multiple routes, the novelty of dating consoles could wear thin quickly. Instead, the game gives you reasons to experiment with your choices and explore the cast.
There are also secret memories, bonus scenes and additional suitors to discover, giving completionists something extra to chase. It is not an enormous visual novel with hundreds of hours of content, but there is enough here to make the first playthrough feel like the beginning rather than the entire experience.
Arcade Dates And Digital Romance
Taking your console boyfriends on dates to virtual arcade locations is another wonderfully appropriate touch. After all, if you are going to romance a games console, where else would you take it? A fancy restaurant would simply feel wrong.
These arcade encounters add another layer to the relationship system and offer opportunities to increase affection through retro-themed challenges. Again, the mechanics themselves are relatively light, but they fit the overall tone perfectly.
There is a lovely consistency to the game’s world. Everything comes back to gaming, from the characters and dialogue to the dates and mini-games. It never loses sight of its central joke, yet it never feels as though the developers are simply repeating the same gag over and over.
A Game That Knows Exactly What It Is
The biggest limitation of Turn Retro Consoles into your Boyfriend is also fairly obvious. It is a light visual novel and dating simulator, and its mechanics are deliberately simple. If you are looking for deep turn-based combat, an enormously complicated relationship system or a sprawling RPG adventure, you are very much in the wrong shop.
But that criticism feels slightly unfair, because the game is not pretending to be any of those things. It is a comedic romance experience built around one gloriously ridiculous idea, and it understands that its greatest strength is its personality.
The writing, character designs and nostalgic references are what keep it entertaining. The combat and mini-games provide structure, but the characters are the reason you keep playing. You want to see what the next console looks like as an anime guy, what personality the developers have given it, and what ridiculous hardware reference is going to appear next.
Love In The Time Of Retro Gaming
There is a genuine warmth beneath all the silliness. Turn Retro Consoles into your Boyfriend could easily have been a cynical joke that runs out of steam after the first few chapters, but instead it feels like something made by people who genuinely love the history of gaming.
That affection makes a difference. The humour pokes fun at retro hardware, but it does not feel cruel. It celebrates the strange rituals and frustrations that made old consoles memorable, from temperamental cartridges to hardware maintenance and the endless process of trying to make something work when it absolutely refused to cooperate.
It is nostalgic without becoming overly sentimental, silly without being completely disposable, and strange enough to stand out in a sea of dating simulators. There are plenty of games where you can date people. There are considerably fewer where you can date a console that has unresolved feelings about its boot sequence.
Final Verdict
Turn Retro Consoles into your Boyfriend is ridiculous, charming and considerably more entertaining than a game with that title has any right to be. Its combination of turn-based battles, visual-novel choices, romance routes, hardware-maintenance mini-games and retro arcade encounters creates a surprisingly cohesive package around one gloriously strange idea.
The combat and relationship mechanics are fairly light, and anyone looking for a deeply involved dating simulator may find the experience a little too simple. However, the creative character designs, sharp humour and genuine affection for gaming history carry the experience beautifully. The multiple endings and character routes also provide enough incentive to return and see what happens when you make different choices.
Most importantly, the game has soul. It could have treated its concept as nothing more than a novelty, but instead it turns familiar hardware quirks into personalities and uses nostalgia as the foundation for something genuinely funny and occasionally rather sweet. There is an undeniable charm in seeing old gaming memories transformed into characters you can actually get to know.
So, is it weird dating a games console? Absolutely. Is it one of the strangest dating-simulator concepts I have encountered? Without question. But once you accept that your next romantic partner may have a cartridge slot, a temperamental power button and several decades of gaming history behind him, Turn Retro Consoles into your Boyfriend becomes an oddly delightful little trip down memory lane. Just remember to treat your boyfriend gently. And perhaps give him a clean before the next date.
