Why Do You Love Retro Gaming?
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@oldskool I grew up in the seventies, so today's retro games were part of my childhood and youth. I didn't own any of the popular consoles, though, only the Arcadia 2001 in its German incarnation "Tele-Fever". However, I played every arcade game that I could get access to as a minor, mostly in restaurants, department stores, and takeaways that didn't take the German Youth Protection Acts too seriously.
Being in my forties today, I never lost my fascination with those games and I relish the possibilities modern emulation offers me in this regard.
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@clyde said in Why Do You Love Retro Gaming?:
However, I played every arcade game that I could get access to as a minor, mostly in restaurants, department stores, and takeaways that didn't take the German Youth Protection Acts too seriously.
Me too. I had the luck of some arcade halls of pubs, with huge selection of games. They just let me in. I could play Bobble Bubble (most awesome arcade game that time), Shinobi, Arkanoid, Samurai Shodown 2, King of Fighters series, Outrun... and a lot more. Hey man, for a Germany guy, I had really luck in that point. :-)
And now, I can play these games too. Otherwise, it would be impossible (the Arcade original games, not converted ones).
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I love retro gaming for a number of reasons, one of which is because of nostalgia, but there are certain other merits too.
For one, retro gaming reminds me of a time when the lack of connectivity allowed games to have a certain mystique to them. In the arcades, there was a lot of hearsay about a green ninja spouting cryptic messages in Mortal Kombat, and perfectionists trying to find Sheng Long in Super Street Fighter II. In Pokemon trading circles, there were whispers of Pikablu and Missingno, and rumors of Mew hiding behind a truck. Grieving Final Fantasy VII players were all trading secrets on the grapevine on how to revive Aeris. Nowadays, a quick Google search can confirm or debunk all of these claims, but back then, the buzz that these rumors generated made these games a lot more interesting, and were great topics of discussion.
I also think that the limitations of retro games lent itself to more creative game design. Today, most games have lengthy tutorial stages that explicitly tell players how to play, or stories that are told through lengthy reading materials. Many older games allow the player to learn from the level designs themselves, and gave players a chance to figure things out for themselves. And as for storytelling, RPG's had their fair share of lengthy dialogues and cutscenes, but these often pushed the story forward and encouraged interaction with NPC's to uncover vital secrets, whereas stopping to read a random diary found in a drawer requires you to kill the momentum to absorb more story.
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local multiplayer!
To elaborate...
Having the ability to download complete save files for multiplayer games so you don't have to unlock all the characters/levels/etc is awesome! Drink a few beers with some friends and play some good ol' couch multiplayer for a good time. I was able to play 6 man Bomberman, it was awesome and nothing you can recreate while playing online :) -
@bobharris said in Why Do You Love Retro Gaming?:
True! I only had a Playstation 1 and always used to only read about games for N64. Some games I really liked on the ps1 also had exclusive counterparts on the N64 (like Wipeout 64 and Doom 64). Now 20 years on I'm finally playing them. :-)
Yes, I also love PS1 games and of course like other members I love retro gaming, because all these games are the important part of my childhood and they invokes feelings of nostalgia. My favorite games of PS1 are Twisted Metal III and 4, Harry Potter, Silent Hill 1 (my first horror game), Crash Bandicoot and Heart of Darkness. This one was very difficult and cruel. When I was finishing the level it was the reason for my personal pride. I think retro games was more difficult than modern games. And it's cool.
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I love retro gaming because it was what I grew up on.
Aladdin's Castle on the weekends.
Watching Force Five and Star Blazers then playing Atari 2600 and Intellivision after school. The NES was mind blowing. Arcade quality graphics in my house! Oh yeah.
It reminds me of times that were less stressful in my life. No bills to pay, no job to go to... school, girls and fun times. There's also something to be said for some quality games from any era. My favorites include Pressure Cooker(Atari 2600), AD&D Treasure of Tarmin(Intellivision), Street Fighter II (Super Nintendo), Destruction Derby 2(Playstation) and Twisted Metal Black(Playstation 2) to name a few.
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I recently enjoyed a conversation with a friend of mine about this. We both agreed that there is something to be said about the hardware constraints back in the day that may have helped produce better games. Although they may not look as fancy as games today, designs had to be tight because of limited resources. Of course, limitations are relative to the era, but back then, the scale was so much smaller, a simple decision by today's standards could affect the whole outcome. You could not afford to be lazy with design or programming. You could not rely on huge performance headroom. Every pixel of every frame mattered.
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It was also a time you gave a bit of honor to every cartridge. I bought two consoles in my lifetime a GameBoy and a XBOX360
For the XBOX360 I bought two BRAND NEW Games: Syndicate (a third person shooter) and L.A. Noire. I finished both games in two weekends.... LAMEWARE!
Then later the XCOM series was released but it was the same "spinoff" as done with Syndicate - no interest, thank you! That was the point I took my XBOX360 in the rack - I think less than 100 hours playtime on this.
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@caver01 said in Why Do You Love Retro Gaming?:
We both agreed that there is something to be said about the hardware constraints back in the day that may have helped produce better games.
I totally agree. I'd go so far as to add that it's the reason some home conversions were superior to their arcade counter-parts even in their day. 'Contra', 'Rygar', 'Bionic Commando' and even 'Punch Out!!' were all vastly improved with a little creative thinking to make up for the lack of visuals.
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Nostalgia.
I LOVE the fact that when I boot up Galaga it goes through the arcade initialization and ram/rom check sequence before going into the game. Knowing that I am playing the original game code and not a remake is what I love about all this.
Even if the emulation and controls may not be 100% the same, the fact that its the original code is awesome. (without having to have a warehouse full of original arcade units or an entertainment center in my living room with dozens of consoles)
RP 4.7.1 • Pi4 4Gig • CanaKit Aluminum • 64GB microSD • 1920x1080 BarTop [2 Sanwa sticks]
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@alturis Yeah and its freaking cool that you must actually use (virtual) coins to get continue.
Besides all those nostalgia and personal feelings about emulation, I am still so amazed about the technical background that it let the pc hardware "thinks" it would be a different hardware. And this is done by reverse engineering. Everytime I play a game, it blows up my mind, more or less. I also saw in YouTube people can play Shenmue on Raspberry Pi, with some problems, but this is really impressive for this little device.
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@thelostsoul Oh yeah, and it also blows my mind that hundreds and hundreds of games are just sitting on a little memory chip the size of a dime.
And the tiny sizeof the Pi itself is just amazing as well. -
@thelostsoul I also like the little detail of virtual coins and that you can check how many you already "spent" for a game, e.g. for a complete playthrough.
And I'm also blown away by the engineering of both the originals as well as their reverse engineered emulation. My admiration for the people behind all this knows no bounds.
@Alturis The funny thing with today's storage mediums is that I dreamt of having my complete music collection in my pocket back in the days when it became forseeable. But now that I could do that, I don't. :) As the only variant of it, I have an waterproof in-ear mp3 player I listen to scientific podcasts and discussions with while exercising.
That said, the sci-fi nature of today's technology comes to my mind sometimes, and I'm bragging about the Pi's small size every time I tell "normal" people about this hobby of mine.
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@bobharris said in Why Do You Love Retro Gaming?:
@oldskool There are several reasons for me
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Pixel art: I prefer the 2D art over the hyper realistic games of today. Seeing the smooth animations of Street fighter III gets me more excited than any 3D Street fighter
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Childhood: Many games I play today are from my childhood..so part of the appeal is nostalgia.
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Challenge: Like you said, games used to be harder so there was a feeling of accomplishment when beating that boss or that level. (I am a big fan of From softwares Souls games for this reason.)
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Simplicity: Most games I can pick up and play and don't take 100+ hours to finish. I don't have that much time anymore.
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Pure fun: Retro games for me are exciting to play at every moment in the game. Modern games often have a lot of boring elements. There are always the exceptions like Hotline miami for example, but that's a modern oldschool game. :)
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Originality: A lot of games that are being developed today are based on the same principles as games of the 80s and 90s, but therefore lack the originality that the games did have back then.
What he said... My mates rave about the n64 version of mario kart being the best and for me, that incarnation of 3d didn't excite me. I just saw them as coloured blobs and don't even get me started on the cardboard boxes that used to walk around in goldeneye. After I had a PS1 for a while, I went and invested some money in pc gaming. At that time you could pick up a pretty decent rig for around 300 quid, as all you needed was a 30 quid 3d card, not a 1000 quid one. personally I thought 2d graphics looked better. I look at star fox on the snes now and it hurts my eyes, and I even remember thinking that at the time. I also have fond memories of going to the arcades and playing all the latest games and also the classics, but not just arcades everywhere you went would have an arcade machine somewhere. I remember playing phoenix at my local cafe.
I guess nowadays you can't just have a game that only has 1 screen, such as pacman. It's no longer enough to get a high score on a game, you have to play the whole game and all the DLC, and then fanny about collecting all the pointless stuff. The games take that long to complete, and I can appreciate all the level of detail that goes into them. Assassins creed and fallout/elder scrolls blow my mind in terms of how much detail is in them, but the amount of leg work you have to put in (i'm a father of 2 now, I can't justify losing 6 months of my life on fallout new vegas?!)
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@ballboff said in Why Do You Love Retro Gaming?:
I guess nowadays you can't just have a game that only has 1 screen, such as pacman. It's no longer enough to get a high score on a game
Actually, there's a pretty big resurgence of interest in this type of game play going on at the moment. It's just not happening on dedicated hardware, or personal computers. However, many of the current phone/tablet games parallel the arcade single screen, point-driven paradigm and have proven to be extremely popular with the modern masses, especially the younger crowd. Some are even cross-pollinating older genres in ways that were never thought of back in the day. Still, they'll never possess the group social component that made going to a local arcade so much fun. I don't care what anyone says, a group of people sitting on a couch playing with their phones isn't a great social experience. I mean, you can't even bowl or roller skate.
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@ballboff That's the thing with 3D graphics; they look gorgeous for their time, but they generally age poorly when compared to their 2D predecessors. I remember when Final Fantasy VII blew me away, but today it looks awful compared to Final Fantasy VI. But on the other hand, the art style used in Wind Waker on the GC allowed its graphics to age gracefully.
And gaming has evolved in a way that I don't particularly like. Back in the day, arcades were important because consoles were generally inferior to anything that the arcades had to offer, and it was the best way to build a solid community. High scores and competitions became personal, and friendships and rivalries were formed. Strategies, cheat codes, and rumors were shared over pop and pizza.
Today, any arcade game can have a perfect port on a console, and anything on a console can offer so much more content than its arcade counterpart, but it comes with a lot of trade-offs. Online multiplayer doesn't feel as personal, you can Google strategies instead of discussing them with your fellow players. Achievements don't feel nearly as significant as having your initials on the scoreboards, and waiting for someone to overthrow you. We can do so much more now, but it broke the very thing that made the arcades so special: that sense of community.
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Graphics not make the game. Older games need skill not brute force and LARGE wallets.
Also being original in design is so much harder today, without someone pointing out a retro game similar :) -
German article: https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/retro-gaming-fast-die-haelfte-aller-europaeischen-spieler-zockt-gerne-aeltere-titel,3324297.html
This is a German study from this year. It says half (41%) of all European Gamer are playing older games. Thy asked through online formulars, phone and directly in four countries. Main reason are nostalgy and curiosity. Only 22% are thinking the old games are better. 38% are thinking that the games aren't good as they was back in those days.
They also asked specially thos who buy retro games. From these, 66% are playing games from their youth. 67% are playing games which they missed. 49% are playing for nostalgy.
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I enjoy older games because they're much better compared to modern games. I recently bought a couple PS4 games and I really didn't play them that much. I spend more time enjoying older games, the only good thing about the PS4 is that I can use it's controller on the Pi.
An another thing I like a lot is finding great retro games. For an example I have a couple romsets and often I just load up a random game, you'll be surprised how many good games there actually are.
For some reason retro games really grab my attention when playing them, I have ADHD and usually I have a short attention span so I get bored easily. But with retro games I can play the same game for many hours without getting distracted (or make some lame excuse to do something else lol).
I'm a SNES fan and I think anyone would agree with me if I said that the Donkey Kong Country series have aged pretty well. The games still look great and the music is timeless. IMHO one of the BEST games on the SNES. I noticed that older games have a lot of replay value, nowadays with games its meeeeh. It's just graphics, DLC and multiplayer.
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@petrorie said in Why Do You Love Retro Gaming?:
often I just load up a random game, you'll be surprised how many good games there actually are.
Yeah, I often do that, too. :)
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