How many "retro-gamers" are here?

[LilithSlave]

I noticed one thing from what little time I've been here. There are a lot of people who are, well, to say the least, quite skeptical of retro gaming. And maybe at worst even "anti-retro-gaming".

This is an interesting thing, and while I try not to be obnoxiously elitist about it. Try. I do think I am a bit of a retro-gamer so to speak. I'm a huge Nintendo kid. And while I like games plenty other than Nintendo and am not a true Nintendo fanboy and addict(though sometimes I feel like I'd like to become one, some of those Mario addicts out there seem super fun. I've drooled over some people's collections and nerdy lifestyles. Really. I know it may sound strange. But it seems like some people get a simple happiness out of following Super Mario religiously. It's kind of like Star Wars, you're either really into it or you're not. And being thoroughly into it is how you get the most enjoyment, I believe).

And I just realized, without even realizing it really. That I might be quite the retro-gamer myself. I mean, the Super Nintendo was a huge part of my life. My first system was the Atari 2600. And the Nintendo was no small event for my childhood, either. And I keep looking back to those days, as the rock and the foundation for me as my fandom of gaming. They were my first systems, they made me a video game fan, they take of the lion's share of hobbies as a child. And there's no way to undo that impact. I like what I like. And what I like looks a lot like Nintendo.

As a child, I said I'd never be held down by nostalgia and old ways. But it looks like this is what's happened to me with video games. Even subconsciously. That's just where all my memories lie and there's no undoing that.

But a lot of people here are like "woah, you're... quite the Nintendo fan". And when I think like that, I'm usually looking at someone with a room full of collectible Mario merchandise and go "wow, why did I ever get out of Mario to the point I did? That looks like one awesome collection!".

I was only a huge Mario nut in one point of my childhood. I don't think I come even close to a true Nintendo fanboy. But the early Nintendo systems do feel like my roots. And they are the games I do continually come back to play the most.

But anyway, I wonder how many people are like me and have any possible bias in preference for retro gaming. Either older games, or new games styled in "old school" ways? Am I pretty alone here, or are there many others at this site?

 

[Theo Samaritan]

There is at least me, if that counts. I grew up in a modern age of gaming - first console was the Playstation - due to the low income of my parents. But now I have my own income I find myself going backwards. I don't own a current generation console, but my c64 gets hours and hours of love every week. I'm in love with chiptune, the art work. Basically I love how much they achieved with the little power they had.

Games that hark back to it in any way make me smile with glee. Hell, the Bit.Trip games managed to merge slight retro styling with Rhythm games and I practically died from awesome.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

I'm a massive retro gamer. Ok, I don't keep a ZX Spectrum linked up at home to play my childhood favourites, but certainly as far as PC gaming goes I spend more time playing Doom, Syndicate and Master of Orion than I do newer titles. Early 90's games kick ass, although I suspect mostly because I had yet to become a bitter, jaded bastard back then.

 

[Comic Sans]

I keep both my old Genesis and NES in my closet and an Intellivision I saved from my grandmother's in the garage. Yeah, I like retro games.

 

[Rawne1980]

I should be a retro gamer.

I started gaming in the early 80's on that fantastic machine the Atari 2600.

I should look back at them and try and keep hold of that bit of my youth. The problem is I have 'magpie' syndrome, I see the new games coming out and the sparkly graphics and think "oooh shiny" and have to have (magpie syndrome isn't a real illness for people that attempt to google it. Magpies are attracted to shiny things so I used them).

I look back at the clunky, blocky and sometimes downright bizarre gameplay of the old games I used to love and I just can't bring myself to play them.

I do still look back at them with a fond memory so I have no hatred at all for people that still enjoy them, they were a big part of all our childhoods after all (apart from those that came about in the Playstation era .... curse you for your youth I want to be young again).

 

[uzo]

I'm retro .. although I do still definitely play latest releases as well, of course!

I bought Planescape and Neverwinter Nights on GOG today. - although a sizable portion of the Escapist community wouldn't really consider them retro. Myself included.

My fondest retro memory however was finding a C64 game .. I can't actually remember its name unfortunately. It was a vertical scroller a la 1942. But it was on cassette, and if you played it in a regular cassette tape you'd get, of course, that data screech from the speakers ....

... however ! The last 4 minutes of side B was a BONUS TRACK! An ooooold 80s track, full of synth drums and yamahas! It was by a band called "Hex" or "Hexen" or something, and the track was something about 'I'm walking away from you, not an easy thing to do...'. Damn man, you could smell the hairspray, and feel the acid-washed denim jackets!!

Unfortunately, I've never located the song on the vast glory of the Internet. If any one knows ... YOU MUST TELL ME!

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

I should be a retro gamer.

I started gaming in the early 80's on that fantastic machine the Atari 2600.

I should look back at them and try and keep hold of that bit of my youth. The problem is I have 'magpie' syndrome, I see the new games coming out and the sparkly graphics and think "oooh shiny" and have to have (magpie syndrome isn't a real illness for people that attempt to google it. Magpies are attracted to shiny things so I used them).

I look back at the clunky, blocky and sometimes downright bizarre gameplay of the old games I used to love and I just can't bring myself to play them.

I do still look back at them with a fond memory so I have no hatred at all for people that still enjoy them, they were a big part of all our childhoods after all (apart from those that came about in the Playstation era .... curse you for your youth I want to be young again).

haha how come I somehow took that as a newcastle reference? xD

anyway I have the AZ syndrome , can't ever hold on to the valuable shit

 

[Googenstien]

I just prefer good games... whether its Pong or Deus Ex:HR if the game is fun and done well I like it... granted I have played alot of games on different systems in my 38 years so its not hard for me to look back at an old sprite game or Zork-esque text adventure and appreciate the game.

One thing that hasn't strayed for me is which type of game I prefer and I love RPGs and Sport games of all types!

 

[zehydra]

I consider myself a retro gamer, mainly because I grew up playing NES and gameboy games. I still play them.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I just prefer good games... whether its Pong or Deus Ex:HR if the game is fun and done well I like it

Same here. It doesn't matter to me if a game is brand new or thirty years old as long as I have fun playing it. I tend to hold onto my old games, and I still play them on a regular basis along with my most recent purchases. I'm not sure if that makes me a "retro gamer" or not, but I certainly have an appreciation for the medium's past.

 

[LilithSlave]

I started gaming in the early 80's on that fantastic machine the Atari 2600.

Ah, you too, eh?

Gosh, were those some simplistic graphics. They couldn't even handle making a proper Pac Man game. I kept thinking when I was little, "why doesn't this look like Pac Man?". I was dying to play the arcade version more often back then but few places in town had the Pac Man arcade, we rarely went there, and usually I couldn't afford it when I did. It was fun when I could, though.

Interestingly, it was a time back then I actually hugely looked forward to advances in graphics. But eh, I'm really picky on aesthetics, so while graphics still impress me, it's declined. And I stopped caring much about graphical advancement by around the PlayStation 2.

I was dying for some better graphics around the Atari 2600. With the NES it was a stage up and it was definitely cool, but the graphics still felt around the old arcade level, but at home. When the SNES came around, it pretty much fulfilled most of my desires as a child for graphics. And still had continuously great games and that system pretty much kept me happy for several, several years. I'm still feeling the impact of the SNES, the part of me that was so excited to get that system as a Christmas present never died. It was the first system to ever actually satisfy me in every way. And we took a few stumbles out of that generation as well, and I didn't get a PlayStation until about a year after the Nintendo 64 was released.

And I was impressed by 3D as well. I just couldn't wait for the sky to be the limit. But then the industry changed. And the further up we got, by the time the PlayStation 3 was released. I was pretty much used up on my ability to care about graphics and power. I had hit the ceiling of caring and fell back on retro-gaming and the aesthetics and gameplay I cared about. Anymore, I just can't be impressed much by graphics alone. And I've found a pocket of gaming that's pretty niche and maybe kinda "old school", like scrolling shooters. For instance, I don't care about graphics at all. I just want one more good scrolling shooter. To me, Cho Ren Sha looks incredibly awesome, and excites me to play more than most games today. And most of the games I like today are from some old school company in an old school fashion, or are indie games like Eversion or Cave Story or Spelunky. I have a state of the art computer, and usually some of the highest end things I use it for are Gamecube and PlayStation 2 emulution. The computer games I usually use it to play are again, those low end PC games, like Spelunky.

 

[Breywood]

I play Diablo 2 roughly 20 hours a week. I'm also working on ripping old music for DOS and Commodore 64 titles to feature on YouTube. So I guess that counts me as a retro gamer as well.

Dammit, where are those pirates! I want to get to Ambrosia sometime before the decade is over!

 

[mitchell271]

Hail! Every christmas, my brother and I get out the retro consoles and play some old games (Blaster Master, Sonic 2, MK2, SSF2, etc.). God, I love christmas

 

[rayen020]

eh... i dunno if i count as a retro-gamer although i certainly don't have anything against older games, but i don't really prefer them or their style over current models. I want video games to the best that they can be in general, be they 2D, 3D, sidescrolling, sandbox, action driven, storydriven, linear, freeroaming, hack-n-slash, FPS, TPS, TBS, RTS, or minecraft. It doesn't have to be retro to be good but i will say games from our past are alot more diverse and original than the stream of FPS halo/gears of war/call of duty clones. i keep moving foward but always with respect to the past.

 

[Michael Hirst]

I enjoy new titles just like any gamer but I still revisit old classics and even old consoles from time to time.

I'm not the nostalgia glasses wearing moron who says we haven't had any good games in over 10 years and things were fine in 2D without any need for advancement. BUT I do say that the 2D Sonic games on the Genesis/Mega Drive were bloody brilliant and still get played through every so often.

I also like to try classic games that everyone talked about but I never had the chance to play as a kid, last year I played through Castlevania for the very first time and it was a really fun game, I can understand why some people don't want to play these games but I do believe they're missing out.

I'm also an advocate of retro games having a higher difficulty than most modern games. Contra, Ghosts N Goblins, even old Zelda's and Mario's all had a very high dififculty which made the games a real challenge to complete as opposed to todays market which is terrified that people might not see the games ending and holds their hand to see it. In a funny way I think the difficulty of retro games teaches an ethic to a child playing them that you have to keep trying hard to make things happen, while modern games give more the impression of don't worry if you're doing it wrong, here we'll help you out or in the extreme case of Mario "You don't have to do that part at all just skip it and everything will be fine"

I also think that the Mega Drive/SNES generation made some of the best games a child could ever play to be introduced to gaming and definitely far superior titles to the Nintendo Wii, which is the only TRUE child friendly console on the market with the other consoles being majoratively for Teenage or "mature" gamers.

 

[Robert Ewing]

I don't mind retro games, I think a few are awesome, while a few are shit. No different to modern games.

The things I do hate are retro gamers themselves. Not all of them of course, the ones that claim that they know EVERYTHING about the past, present and future of gaming because they were there when it all began. I hate it, they are so proud of playing those 8 bit shit-balls, that for the most part, are only popular because of the cool geek culture they've created.

For example, if Zelda or Mario hadn't of existed, and was released today in all modern graphics glory, nobody would give a shit. It would be a terrible idea. Be honest, it would. They are only popular because they were released at the right time, and spawned a massive, MASSIVE geek culture lineage.

 

[A Random Reader]

Gimme a moment to list all the oldish games that I have, and still play on a regular basis:
[spoiler:Biggish list]
Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Freespace & FreeSpace 2
Dungeon Keeper 2
Earth 2160
Total Annihilation & Kingdoms
BloodRayne
Arcanum Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Neverwinter Nights Diamond
Sacred Gold
Diablo 2
Sangband
Painkiller
UnrealTournament GOTY edition
Duke Nukem MP
Sonic Battle
Boktai 2 - Solar Boy Django
Little fighter 2
Tyrian 2000
...
[/spoiler]
Conclusion: If it's fun, I play it!
Oh, and I must be a retro-gamer. Huh.

 

[Da_Vane]

Guilty as charged! Some of the retro games are true classics, some are just trials of endurance that make you earn your bragging rights, and some are just big piles of steaming turd.

I don't mind retro games, I think a few are awesome, while a few are shit. No different to modern games.

The things I do hate are retro gamers themselves. Not all of them of course, the ones that claim that they know EVERYTHING about the past, present and future of gaming because they were there when it all began. I hate it, they are so proud of playing those 8 bit shit-balls, that for the most part, are only popular because of the cool geek culture they've created.

For example, if Zelda or Mario hadn't of existed, and was released today in all modern graphics glory, nobody would give a shit. It would be a terrible idea. Be honest, it would. They are only popular because they were released at the right time, and spawned a massive, MASSIVE geek culture lineage.

This is a massive misconception. While many fans of these franchises do buy them because of their cult following, there are many that do buy them and play them because of their gameplay, and continue to do so, with each iteration gaining new generations of fans.

There's no point in claiming an argument of "be honest" - you are basing your argument on the perception of one: yourself. Whereas the cult status and following of the games, and their true merit as being worth of discourse and whether they were a good idea or not is down to the opinions of many.

Both Mario and Zelda are not just culture icons, but have gone on to define and redefine their respective genres many times during their long histories. They are benchmark games franchises, and people refer to them with regards to what should be in a classic game of their type. They are considered the foundation from which all others games work from - and you can see this methodology in the casual and browser games industry, as well as the neo-retro market.

If they were released now, another game would have the position that Mario and Zelda have in their genres, but these games continue to push boundaries and evolve in terms of gameplay, because this is something that Nintendo is noted for. So even if they weren't benchmark games, they would still likely have merit for pushing boundaries and trying new things.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

I'm a massive retro gamer. Ok, I don't keep a ZX Spectrum linked up at home to play my childhood favourites, but certainly as far as PC gaming goes I spend more time playing Doom, Syndicate and Master of Orion than I do newer titles. Early 90's games kick ass, although I suspect mostly because I had yet to become a bitter, jaded bastard back then.

thats what http://www.worldofspectrum.org/ is for

yeah im a retro gamer and i live thanks to good old games, i just completed wing commander 3 again and its aged beautifully.. not to mention crusader no remorse is just as good

Why thank you!

Allow me to return the favour with free DOS-y goodness...

[link]http://www.dosgames.com/[/link]

 

[Zeriah]

I got my SNES when I was four years old and got my Nintendo 64 when I was about 8-9. To this day (I'm 21) I still have the two systems hooked up to my tv and will play them for about an hour or so a week. I grew up on these systems and no matter how old, stale or outdated they get they still give me such great warm and fuzzy feelings. I'd say I'm more into nostalgia than a "retro gamer" as I don't have much interest in old games that I did not play as a child, though I believe the two go hand in hand.

I still play the shit out of current gen games though, there's no contest on what I spend more time on - the new stuff.