I grew up blowing into cartridges and button-mashing my way through childhood. So I figured… why not turn that nostalgia into something people can actually play with?

The idea: build a clean, responsive web app for playing classic emulator games, think Game Boy, SEGA, SNES - with all the charm and none of the emulator setup headaches.

Enter: Bolt.new.

I gave Bolt a super detailed spec covering everything from fonts (hello Press Start 2P), to the color palette (electric blue meets warm gold), to pixel-glow hover states and CRT-style animations.

Bolt’s like your smart-but-literal intern — the more precise you are, the better it performs.

Hero with nostalgic punch

Filterable game library

Game detail pages with “Play Now” vibes

A retro FAQ page styled like a blinking terminal

Footer links styled like console buttons (Start/Select, naturally)

Fonts: Chunky display fonts + smooth Inter for legibility

Colors: Primary = Aqua Cyan (#6CE2FF), Secondary = Gold (#F7C948), Dark Mode = Always

Microinteractions: Game cards glow on hover, page loads animate like game screens booting up

Layout: Fully responsive — 4-column on desktop, 2 on tablet, 1 on mobile

Bolt.new is powerful, but it thrives on clarity. The more visual and behavioral context I gave, the more Bolt nailed it.

Pixel-perfect design is possible with AI - if you treat it like your design sidekick, not a genie.

This was a playground project, but honestly, I’d love to build it out with real emulator support and let people save their progress in the cloud. (Nintendo lawyers, please look away.)

Built a retro gaming website that looks like 1995 and runs like 2025. All with Bolt.new, one big design brain, and a lot of Super Mario music in the background.