Nostalgic about being nostalgic?

[atarilovesyou]

I just realized that in addition to your regular nostalgia that fuels your retrogaming, I thought...how weird is it that it's been twenty years since I first realized I was getting retro nostaglic! Back in 93, I sold a SNES system (with the Super Contra game) to a guy in order to get a huge box full of old Atari systems and games. That story is floating around here somewhere, so I don't want to get back into it, but part of me wonders: perhaps it's not really nostalgia at all! If it were, then why was I so into old gaming, even then? The only difference is that back then I was still interested in modern consoles and gaming of the time: mostly SNES and some 386 PC gaming. I loved getting my hands on all that old Atari stuff! I guess that even the second time around (although I was a Coleco kid, not Atari) still didn't sink in as I stupidly lent the whole thing out and never got it back...only to lead to my latest collection. But no doubt, had I waited a few years I would hung on to it (we all say that, don't we?).

 

There were times that I wasn't as into the systems of the early 80s, but only because I really did (and still do) love the NES. But I didn't get all NES collection-crazy until much later, after I tracked down a nice Atari collection again. The latest addition was a complete Colecovision set which gets the least use but is always cool to look at.

 

Did I have a point?...lol, it's another couple years before I have my 10th anniversary on AtariAge, but I consider that huge box of Atari stuff in 93 the beginning of my retro collecting. And that was 20 years ago!...and does it ever feel like just yesterday. In twenty years from now, I hope my stuff is still working!

 

At what point did you realize that you were bit by the retrogaming bug, that first collection (or beginnings of one) that eventualy brought you here? There may be other forums out there for old school games but I've never bothered with them, really, much beyond lurking. If there was, I'm sure I'd be interested but I'm perfectly happy at AA. So thanks, Albert! I hope this site never fades away!

[fiddlepaddle]

I bought a new Colecovision as soon as it came out, and a Vectrex as soon as it was available. Soon after, I bought a used Atari VCS and several games because they were really cheap. At that time, I considered Atari games to be too primitive, but I still took them when I found them. Most of those, I didn't even really try to play much for several years. So I think it's not nostalgia, but rather more about exploration and curiosity. Looking back at all the thousands of games I've played, there are still several 2600 games in my list of most favorite.

[+Gemintronic]

I'm not sure about being nostalgic for nostalgia sake. I find nowadays I'm chasing down shizz I pined for in Sears catalogs and never got because we were dirt poor. It's all new to me, baby! Got my first Astrocade a couple of weeks ago

[atarilovesyou]

In a way, it's like I'm now being nostalgic for the time period in which I first started being nostalgic, lol!...which started in a way in 93, when I got my first Atari haul...and trust me, nobody wanted this stuff where I lived, the guy thought I was crazy. Little did he know that I got that SNES for a song because a buddy of mine knew the owner of a video game rental store, so I got all of that Atari stuff for about $100 (and a few free rentals). I think he was asking $300, but he was willing to trade.

 

I'm sure in about 2 years I'll get nostalgic for 2005, back when my second retro rennaisance began!

[Algus]

I'd say I actively got into retro gaming around 2006 or so when I first bought a Sega Genesis. I'd never sold any of my old games or systems but I never really bothered collecting anything until that point. It was just all buying new games when they came out and playing my old stuff when I was bored. I don't know if I ever get nostalgic about that moment but I have had these weird moments, lately with N64 and probably soon with PS2 era where I'm playing this stuff that I remember buying new and I get kind of nostalgic about that era.

 

Like on some level it is still hard for me to recognize the N64 as being "old" since it was such a step up at the time. Especially since I live in the same place as I did when it was new and still go to all the same stores. Like, I haven't been in the Toys R' Us up the street in a few years, but they still have their giant N64 wall and aisle of Majesco release Game Gear stuff, right? ...RIGHT?!

 

One thing I do miss though is having the free time to take a console and a box full of games to a friend's house and just pour over them. It's like great I have a better job now so I can finally afford to seriously collect all this stuff but it seems like I never have the free time to do anything with it anymore. It seems like its only evey couple of months that I'm actually able to get together with my friends and usually we do big group things that don't involve video games. I'm definitely nostalgic for those days back in college when we could play retro games every afternoon.

[Seob]

I've always been into games. Played my dads pong when i was jong. Switched to newer stuff, got a lot of old stuff because people knew i was into computers. But i started active collecting when i found a intellivision in a thriftshop back in 2001 i guess.

Didn't know what is was other then a gamesconsole. Back in the day i only saw the 2600 and videopac.

That sparked my interst in collecting retro stuff.

[+GoldenWheels]

I find nowadays I'm chasing down shizz I pined for in Sears catalogs and never got because we were dirt poor. It's all new to me, baby! Got my first Astrocade a couple of weeks ago

 

I am kind of the same way.....my game library is far better now than it was "at the time" because we couldn't afford 60$ for all these games, getting a new game was a big deal for me. Now when they are (for the most part) much cheaper, I am finally getting all the games I didn't get then because I had to agonizingly choose one of them for a report card reward/birthday/xmas or whatever.

 

Oh and what a tough report card reward/birthday/xmas it was when you picked a stinker. That was my game for the next two months at least.

[cimerians]

Mid 90's is when I got the retro bug, it's when I first got on the internet and discovered a few emulators. COLEM, CCS64 and the first few releases of MAME by Nicola. I then started getting all my old 80's systems out and bought some that we couldnt afford back when I was a kid through ebay (when ebay was cool). I was able to get cheap replacements and consoles back then. Glad I did since these days everything is so much more.

 

Up until 1995 or so....I hadn't played an Atari 2600 for 7 or 8 years maybe since 85'. so there was almost a 10 year gap. Commodore\computers and the NES\Genesis really took away my attention and then I got a PC around 1992 or 93'.

 

It seemed for at least a decade nobody gave a crap but then again how would anyone know? There was no internet and all you had were a few magazines that almost never covered the old stuff.

[jhd]

I had a 2600 in 1981-1983, but I sold it to buy a Coco. In about 1989, I discovered rec.games.video.classic on Usenet. I discovered that there were many, many more games than I was previously aware of.

 

In about the Spring of 1990, I went to a local rummage sale and bougth a 2600 and a handful of games for about $20. I spent the next two or three years hitting every garage sale and church fund raiser in my neighbourhood. I bought numerous boxes of games and conoles, and I sold-off or traded the duplicates. I also bought/traded a handful of games online. I was fortunate that some local retailers still have a handful of new games left in stock. I discovered Atari Age in 2001.

 

My collecting has diminished to the occaisonal lucky find at a thrift shop (a rate of about 0.5 games per year), but I still have my collection -- albeit now in storage. I have moved on (I'm currently playing/collecting for the PS 2), but I have no plans on parting with my 2600 collection.

 

Edited to fix typos.

Edited July 1, 2013 by jhd

[PsychedelicShaman]

[Schizophretard]

I realized I was bit by the retro gaming bug when it was considered modern gaming. When I was a kid I would constantly sell my collections at our local flea market to buy a different collection of games. It was like my Game Stop. The bug never went away. Whenever a new console came out I didn't stop liking the past ones. I just couldn't keep everything to enjoy everything. When I became an adult with a job I didn't have to get rid of anything any more to get more. That's the only reason my collection started to get huge after childhood. If my parents were filthy rich and I was spoiled rotten(I was but they weren't) then I would still have everything from my childhood.

 

I guess I'm nostalgic about finding games in the wild. Now that I have the money, I wish it was just as easy finding the games in the wild. If it was like it was back then and I had no collection then I could go to that flea market and have most of the collection I have now in one day. That would be so awesome.

 

I guess through the years the bug has been biting harder because I don't like the ways games are evolving. It seems to be mostly first person shooters and interactive movies. It feels like what it probably felt like to people that didn't like Pong when everything was Pong consoles. I rather have the Pong consoles. What is going on is that I'm getting bit less by the modern bug as time goes by. I used to get excited about the next console but not much any more. My PS3 is the least played console I have ever owned and most of its play has been using it for backwards compatibility with the Playstation. The rest of its use has been movies. I'm starting to get excited again because of Android consoles like the OUYA though. Even though they are new, something about them feels old school. I haven't owned an Android device or smart phone but everything I have seen gives me the impression that their limitations prevent too much interactive movie first person shooter style games and more genres I consider retro. I also hate touch screens so Android consoles are perfect for me. I probably won't be getting into the big three much but Android consoles are getting me excited again.

[Mirage]

Sometimes I'm a bit nostalgic about when I first discovered emulation for the first time. Probably around '94-'95 or so, and I found an early 2600 emulator. I was blown away, I don't think I had ever considered that anything like that could be possible. Simulation, sure, but actual emulation? Holy cow! Then I'm nostalgic for around the same time period when I could walk into any thrift store and find piles of C64s, Ataris, and even better things, for a few bucks each. Maybe that's not nostalgia exactly, but more just jealousy that I rarely see anything good in thrifts anymore.

[MH_Warrior]

In my case, my retro gaming addiction is partially to relive the experience I had as a kid, but more than that it's because it's easier for me to get into a simpler type of game. Also, from a cost-effective standpoint, it makes a lot more sense for me to go to the flea market with $10-15 and come away with a handful of 2600 commons than shell out $60 on the latest Xbox 360 game. Plus, like theloon, my family was poor. I didn't have very much in the way of games until adulthood, so I'm also catching up on missed opportunities.

[genesisguy]

I had a NES in the late 80s early 90s, then a Genesis in 1992. I got a PS1 in 1997 but rarely played anything but sports titles on it. I graduated high school in 2000 and didn't "game" until late 2007 when I got back into gaming. Why am I telling you this? Well in 2007 I found Contra, Darkwing Duck, Ducktales, and Skate or Die II in my old NES collection. These were games that were not original to my collection. All I remember is picking them up at Funcoland when they were probably about 99 cents to $2.50. I remember buying them and thinking I had to because they were so cheap and they were games I always wanted as a kid. Odd thing is I can't remember if I was in jr. high or high school when I did this or for what reason I was even in Funcoland.

 

I didn't do this with any other console. But that had to be my first touch of nostalgia. Or maybe not nostalgia but just me wanting games I thought were good.

[atarilovesyou]

Good stories...but have any of you been around long enough to feel nostalgic about the first time you felt nostalgic for retrogaming?...that just happened probably in the last few years, thinking about my 93 haul which got me re-started with classic gaming. As I now have pretty much all the things I'd like in my collection, I doubt I'll get nostalgic about 'this' time, ten years from now!...and so on...and so on...and so on...

[Schizophretard]

Good stories...but have any of you been around long enough to feel nostalgic about the first time you felt nostalgic for retrogaming?...that just happened probably in the last few years, thinking about my 93 haul which got me re-started with classic gaming. As I now have pretty much all the things I'd like in my collection, I doubt I'll get nostalgic about 'this' time, ten years from now!...and so on...and so on...and so on...

 

I kind of feel nostalgic about learning about the things I didn't know before I got the internet. I was a late comer to the internet. I didn't have a computer until this century. During the 90s when the internet was getting big I didn't see what all the fuss was about. Now I have access to all kinds of information and places to find the games I'm looking for. So, I kind of miss that feeling of things being new to me. For an example, I never heard of the Vectrex before the internet. It was exciting discovering it for the first time.

[ledzep]

Part of it is nostalgia. I, also, collect various things because back when I was a kid we couldn't afford all that I'd want. I've tracked down most of the LEGO sets I liked but could never buy (especially European sets that weren't ever available here to begin with), I plan on tracking down the old Tyco slot car set we got one Christmas, I'm about halfway finished with the Hot Wheels orange track elements (curves, bridges, etc.) that I always wished I'd been able to get but never owned (my best friend had some of them). Not enough time and money back then. And I will get the many Atari 2600 games I'm missing along with the few Vectrex and Atari 5200 games I'm missing (mostly homebrews so that's technically not nostalgia)

 

Part of it, though, is simply a love for the styling. I'm not a big fan of the woodgrain on the Atari 2600 (though I really like the shape) but I love the design of the Atari 800 computer and the peripherals. I also love the cabinet designs of most of my favorite arcade games. Check out this book about old computers -

 

http://www.amazon.co...rds=core memory

 

the design approach to them gets me and I say this having never seen any of those before so it's not nostalgia for them, it's nostalgia for that kind of design, at least for me. Same goes for mid-'60s/early '70s muscle cars and also mid-century/contemporary architecture (Koenig, Neutra, Eichler), there's just something "right" about those buildings even though I never lived in one, only saw them around as a kid. That design speaks to me. This is why I much prefer old video games that are boxed - I want the cover art and the special fonts and all the rest that the packaging offers even though you can't play the packaging.

 

It does take me back to my childhood, all of it. I miss that time a lot. But I also prefer old 8-bit games to the current choices. I want a fun game, not a photoreal rendered sim. My mind can fill in the blanks just fine. I know Space Duel and Xevious and Tempest aren't realistic and I don't care, that's not the point.

[fiddlepaddle]

...I plan on tracking down the old Tyco slot car set we got one Christmas...

 

FYI, I've got a huge amount of old Tyco slot car tracks and accessories I don't need. Been planning to take it somewhere, but haven't figured out where yet. PM if interested.

[atarilovesyou]

Tyco is a tricky one...we got back into it (as much as fully grown man can with HO scale cars, lol) about ten years back and we'd buy stuff for it each year...we have a pretty good sized collection, but I find that the fun factor just ain't there like it once was. You need to step up to the larger scales to satisfy any 'skill' requirements...HO stuff (like Lifelike) have cars with magnets so strong that you can pin the throttle and just watch the car go round n round...fun for kids, but not for us anymore, lol!...there, I guess nostalgia does have a shelf life. In order for me to have fun with it again, I'd need to somehow get each car lane it's own source of power (so that the other car going off the track doesn't cause an increase in speed [series vs parallel], a lap counter that actually works [preferably a laser timer!] and cars that don't have huge magnets. But if I'm gonna go through all that trouble, better to just get into larger scale sets...which we won't do most likely due to the amount we've already invested in HO.

 

OH...and the track upkeep to ensure you have good electrical conntections...which usually requires nails and plywood...which ain't gonna happen often. Ah, Tyco.

[fiddlepaddle]

Tyco is a tricky one...I find that the fun factor just ain't there like it once was.

 

You can take the magnets out of the lifelike cars, although they then go too fast too easily. Also, many hobby shops sell Autoworld cars, which are remakes of the old Aurora and AFX designs, which take more skill (than Lifelikes) and are quite fun (they have less sticky magnets, which can also be taken out).

 

In addition, with a large assortment of track types like loops, bank curves, single-lane tracks, and especially curves of multiple sizes (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 inch radius), you can make a layout that is challenging even with a really sticky car. Yes, many pieces of track are hard to find and some are not made anymore, but they exist. You can also buy (or make) adapters between different brands.

 

By the way, Lifelike track is not very good...you lose power before the layout gets very big, and AFX/Autoworld has many more track types than Tyco/Mattel. All that said, I DO get bored with it after a few weeks and put my slot cars away for several months...but ALWAYS bring them back out again. There's just something about physically racing slot cars that I don't get from video games.

[atarilovesyou]

Could the power issues with Lifelike be resolved by upgrading to a more Gucci power suppy, something with individual voltage control for each lane?

[fiddlepaddle]

Could the power issues with Lifelike be resolved by upgrading to a more Gucci power suppy, something with individual voltage control for each lane?

 

Easiest way to solve this problem is to just get two power packs and two terminal tracks and use the left controller on one terminal track and the right controller on the other terminal track. Of course, you can upgrade to better power packs, but you may then need to upgrade to better controllers as well. I just use stock since I got a zillion of them and they're good enough as long as both lanes use the same type.EDIT: Oh wait, maybe you meant power too high... for that you can use adjustable voltage power pack (like HO train power). Still best to use separate power for each lane (using separate terminal tracks for each controller).

Edited July 17, 2013 by fiddlepaddle