Poll: Let's talk about "retro gaming"

[remnant_phoenix]

I've realized that I spend a lot more of my overall gaming time focused on older games.

The PS4/XBONE have very little that is interesting to me, certainly not enough to justify buying one yet. Nintendo has some interesting things on the horizon, and I'd love to play some Mario Kart and Smash, but, again, not enough for me to justify buying a WiiU. I don't have the money to straight-up buy a decent gaming PC that won't need upgrading for a while, and I don't have the time/energy to build/maintain a budget gaming PC myself.

I have a PS3, a PS2, a Gamecube, a Super Nintendo, and my work laptop, which is fairly new but can't handle most AAA new releases.

So...

I've found myself a lot more content to track down old, cheap games for what I have, and replay classics that I already own, rather than try to keep up with what's new.

Heck, I bought Metal Gear Solid 2 for $3! Metal Gear Solid 3 for $6! And up until recently, I'd never played a Metal Gear game. Whenever I get bothered about the state of modern Final Fantasy, I just pop in FFIX. Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is FREEWARE now. The old Thief games, which I never played, are dirt-cheap on Steam. I replayed Zelda: Wind Waker (original Gamecube version) this year and it remains a crown jewel of the series.

There are SO many games from years back, why should I race to keep up? The thought of tracking down old, obscure games that were created by favorite designers excites me more than playing the newest thing.

Anyway, how much time out of your gaming like do you spend with retro games? For the purpose of this thread/poll, we'll call anything from 2005 (PS2/Xbox/NGC) and older "retro".

For comment fodder, you can share your own experiences with older games that you've had recently. Better yet, make some recommendations for older games that are still worth playing, especially if they weren't super popular.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I have a similar console set up: a PS3, a PS2, a PS1, a Super Nintendo and a work laptop ("which is fairly new but can't handle most AAA new releases"). Don't own any current gen consoles, and have yet to play something that was released after 2012, with the exception of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and a little Firefall. I also own BioShock Infinite, Dragon's Crown and Ni no Kuni (all 2013 games), and have access to GTA V, but haven't played any those games just yet.

I guess that makes me 100% retro on a technicism. Honestly I don't feel very retro. I associate the word with sprites and pixels, or something that's at least as old as a PS1 or PS2. It also seems like the kind of thing you would do deliberately, like it's an acquired taste or you just fancy yourself an archaelogist of forgotten games. I just play what I can. There's like a 2 year delay in my country before launch games stop being impossibly expensive and price goes down at least 60%, maybe more if you're lucky with a holiday sale. That also means I'm always late to the current generation. I only got my PS3 in 2013.

On the upside, I'm always on time for GOTY editions and collections and all that jazz, and the selection process is careful and honed enough that I have yet to buy a game that doesn't deliver exactly what I'm looking for.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

All my old consoles crapped out years ago, or my older brothers took them off to college with them. So I just play emulators. Too bad almost all the N64 emulators were C&D by Nintendo a few months back. Shame too. Really wanted to play Pokemon Snap again.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

I've got a computer that can handle most newer games, but my principles stand in the way.
I will never, ever, buy a game with Online Activation (or worse) which means that the rise of steam meant a rise of Retro gaming for me.
It did at first anyway, but I've begun finding more and more interesting indie titles worth keeping an eye on.

 

[Recusant]

2005? Yeesh, if that's your cutoff, then most of it. The past ten years have added lots of shiny new graphical improvements, but not a whole lot more; I play games for the gameplay. I hear people singing the praises of the Oculus Rift and its ilk, boasting "virtual reality is here!", then I plug in my Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 and wonder why people get so enthusiastic over a glorified Viewmaster when we had a system that gave you actual reactive physical feedback (thus making it a helluva lot more immersive) twenty years ago.

It's a different story when improved technology leads to improved gameplay, mind: you couldn't do Dwarf Fortress or Crusader Kings 2 twenty years ago. And there are newer games that I have played, and still play, and love. But on the whole, I find very little of recent fare particularly satisfying (little of older stuff did either, but there's a lot more of it). Your Skyrims and your Bulletstorms are fun while they last, but once they're done, they're done- I'm done with them, anyway. When you finally manage to make a better 4X game than Master of Orion 2, give me a call.

 

[Random Fella]

It's hard to say, I love going back to old games such as the original fable.
To put a % on it is tough, because older games don't seem to be as much as a timesink as newer multiplayer and mmo games can be.
But if I were to say it by what % of my games that I play regularly are retro, about 40% would be more accurate I think.

 

[Dajmin]

It depends what you class as "retro", really. I can't keep my old machines due to space limitations, so I only have a PS4 now. But I play a lot of games on PC that are a few years old. Does that count?

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Nearly all of my PC gaming is early to mid 90's stuff from my childhood. I think the latest PC game I have is Sins of a Solar Empire, and that's seven years old now. My console games aren't much better, with Halo: Reach and Fallout: New Vegas (both 2010) still being my most played titles on my 360.

All in all I would say that >90% of my PC gaming is from games roughly twenty years old, and >80% of my console gaming is from games at least five years old.