What made you 'go retro'?

[juansolo]

I’m curious how the retro bug caught other people. It was a proper epiphany for me. It all started with the XBone and the PS4. They came along and just left me utterly cold. I’d already long sold my 360 and just got to the stage where I thought, you know, I’m done with the PS3 too, so sold that. I had no games to play.

As I’ve had consoles since I was a kid (a pong clone started it all, followed by the ubiquitous 2600), I thought I’d dig the two out of the loft that I’d never sold. That was the Dreamcast and the Gamecube. I wired them up to my panel and decided to play a couple of games that I’d bought in the past and had never got around to playing. That started with Grandia II and I followed it up with Skies of Arcadia.

I played the shit out of those, completing both. When my bro visited, we shoved Mario Kart Double Dash in for some couch co-op, something you rarely see these days as it's all online. It was then it just clicked that these games were just timeless. I wondered what else from my gaming past would be like this so bought a SNES, the first console I really regretted selling, and so on it went. I eventually even re-bought a 360 and PS3 (even a PS4) because I felt at this point I’d been way too harsh on them and some of their earlier games stood replaying.

Anyhow it’s all got a little out of control, this week alone I got an ST and have just pulled the trigger on a C64. To the point that I had a bit of buyers remorse on the latter and am feeling like I should probably throttle back a little. We’ll see how I feel when it lands. I still want a proper Amiga at some point, that’s where I’ll stop though. Well, after getting a 2600 of course….

[fiddlepaddle]

I was just groovin' on my favorite games like always, and suddenly realized I was retro.

[+LS650]

I started playing these games when they were new, and just never stopped.

[CatPix]

Same as above.

Except that msot of those games were used, but not retro, just "previous gen". But I was in a small town with no video game store up until 2000 so I remember trading NES games at school up to 1996.

Basically I recall almsot everyone at school was a generation late in videogaming, more or less. First talks about the Playstation and game trades started to happen around 1998.

 

So because it was cheap I kept buying NEs and SNES games, until I started to see online that more peopel liked them and also to see ratseller pilfering the old games to resell them.

[Gorfy]

I never got into modern gaming. I played pinball and Atari as a kid in the late '70's and early '80's, and then pretty much dropped out of gaming until I was in my early '40's and I hooked up my original light sixer 2600 for the first time in ages. Then I discovered AtariAge, the existence of homebrews, and the High Score Clubs. I've been hooked ever since.

[keepdreamin]

the passage of time?

[StopDrop&Retro]

I played classic games when they were new but only got back into 'retro' about 10 years ago when Korean and Chinese handheld emulation consoles first arrived. As a kid I always dreamed of hypothetically owning a Gameboy sized handheld that could hold every Gameboy game ever made and play movies. My wish came true with those emulation handhelds and shortly after I caught the collecting bug and started going after original hardware and games.

[jaybird3rd]

I started playing these games when they were new, and just never stopped.

Same with me. I've had most of the "classics" in my collection—the Atari 2600, Atari 800, TI 99/4A, etc.—since they were still current systems. I acquired the NES and other newer systems later, of course, but I always used them concurrently with the older systems. After the Dreamcast, the new generations of game systems never appealed to me, either because I wasn't interested in the games or didn't want to deal with the headaches of modern gaming. Eventually, I just decided to delve deeper into the systems that I've had all along, and there are more than enough games there to keep me entertained for the rest of my life.

[juansolo]

the passage of time?

 

 

Best answer ever

[BassGuitari]

For me it started when I was a little kid during the height of the Bit Wars. I think I basically just wanted to see what else was out there besides Sega and Nintendo, and at the time that meant going backwards. I'd played games on the neighbor's Apple IIc and my parents briefly had an old Commodore 64 (that I accidentally killed) and I played plenty of classics at the bowling alley (I was in a youth league for a few years), so "old" or "retro" didn't really register in my mind. They were just something different. And I just stuck with them, I guess.

[keepdreamin]

 

 

Best answer ever

 

Was a pretty simple question

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

I'm not sure exactly how the retro thing started but I think it had to do with my mom giving away my ColecoVision by accident when I was a little kid. I ended up getting another one on ebay in the late 90's and have been at it ever since. I was hanging around the Digital Press forums back then and started getting into other consoles. Intellivision came along after my friend gave me his uncle's Inty console. Atari, etc. Despite those systems and already owning the Sega Genesis, I still enjoyed playing NES the most, it's one thing I always kept from childhood. The other major event that got me started in game collecting is when I bought my buddies collections back in 2000 or so.. A huge lot of NES, SNES and Virtual Boy games (CIB, loose, Manuals, etc) systems and accessories. I think I paid $100 for everything, including an extra $5 for a labeless Atari 2600 cart that turned out to be Coke Wins/Pepsi Invaders of all things! I promptly traded it to a member here for CV games but I kinda still wish I had it sometimes.. but oh well, easy come, easy go as they say. Always been hip to retro gaming before it became a thing and I definitely don't know anyone else around my neck of the woods that's as into it as I am, as long as I have been.

[Flojomojo]

For me, it's not so much "going retro" as not stopping playing old games I always liked. It's no more of a "choice" than continuing to like the food your mom cooked for you as a kid.

 

Today's "AAA" is tomorrow's retro.

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

I agree, it's really all about the games, all in all. I still enjoy playing some of the same games that I played as a kid and actually enjoy old school 8 and 16 bit games/consoles more than new consoles.

Edited January 22, 2017 by SiLic0ne t0aD85

[almightytodd]

For me it's all about using emulation for time-travel and to experience technology that was not accessible to me when it was new. Even if your family was well-off enough during the early 1980s to own a home computer during the 8-bit era; you had to choose ONE system and stay devoted to it. But now I can open an Atari 800 in one window, and enter the moves to have it play chess against a TI99/4A in another window on the same PC. I can write a small BASIC program on a PET and then port it to a Timex/Sinclair. I can have "Pac Man Night", where I play rounds of Pac Man games across several different platforms, one-after-the-other. The 70s were my teenage years, so I witnessed the transition of computers changing from million-dollar machines in corporate offices to affordable home appliances and now multi-function devices that can be carried in your pocket.

 

If you've ever seen Disney's motion picture, "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" from 1969, it opens with a scene where the President of Medford College is explaining to the Dean that a "...computer is a luxury this college just cannot afford". Less than 10 years later, there were TRS-80 computers in Radio Shack stores across America selling for less than 800 bucks.

[0078265317]

childhood

[spacecadet]

I guess I'm kind of an oddball here in that I started out with the Intellivision (really the 2600, but I never actually owned one), but as new systems came out, I generally ditched the old ones as obsolete. I didn't just keep playing the same games forever; I always wanted something new. It was actually hard for me to play older games once new games came out with better graphics and more complex gameplay. I don't even know what happened to any of my original consoles from the Intellivision up through the NES.

 

But I've talked about selling my Sega Genesis here before; that was my epiphany. That was the first time I thought "holy crap, I have just made a huge mistake." And immediately I started thinking about all the other games I used to play, as well as all the ones I never got to play or own originally. Around that same time, one of my friends actually had an Atari 2600 in her house, and I went over and played it for the first time in about 20 years. I thought "this is so cool!" The 2600 - actually a Sears heavy sixer - was then the first "retro" console I ever bought, even though I played plenty of 2600 games when they were new. I just didn't own a system until 1998.

 

And then I went on a real major collector kick for a while. At that time I don't think many people were actually collecting systems or games yet; it was new that you could easily find stuff on the internet and not that many people had discovered it yet. (This was obvious by the prices - my boxed heavy sixer cost me $13 on Ebay.) So I had an idea that I wanted to create kind of a museum somehow.

 

I've since sold off a bunch of that stuff but I regret that now too, with YouTube now making me feel like I could have actually done something with it. So I've started buying again. I'm trying to restrain myself at least a little bit, because storage was the issue before and it will be again if I'm not careful.

[Reaperman]

Like many here, I started with back-in-the-day experiences. This forum skews a bit older than most gaming forums.

(kids get off my lawn)

 

However, the direction of modern gaming, specifically the disposability of modern games and hardware, has shifted my attention more retro than it has historically been. When I kick on an Atari, it's as good as, or better than, it was back when it was new. Modern games and hardware will not similarly be able to provide the same experience in just a decade's time.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Reaperman

[PhoenixMoonPatrol]

Just found myself playing more Sega Saturn and Mame than current gen consoles.

Not happy with the focus with online play and building single player as an afterthought way of thinking that goes on now.

I wish these consoles had no online, no nextflix, no patches and dlc.

 

Retro is so much more of the way things use to be with video gaming. Easy to deal with and Fun!

[keepdreamin]

 

I wish these consoles had no online, no nextflix, no patches and dlc.

 

You prefer game breaking bugs in $60 products stay unfixed? Uhh, why? I like "retro" games as much as the next person, but this jaded outlook on modern gaming is really pathetic. There's plenty of great games being released with single player campaigns.

[Omega-TI]

For me it's the middle age nostalgia of replaying the early classic games of my youth. Of course the old hardware is a major draw for me as well.

 

As I get older, I realize I don't like the modern ultra realistic video games that seem to require a three inch manual to learn how to play or having to master 10,000 key press combinations. Who has the time? The classic games were quick and easy to play.

[PhoenixMoonPatrol]

Pointing out critical flaws with todays gaming is jaded? Seriously maybe its the other way around and youre the one who needs to stop and THINK before calling someone pathetic, man. I've seen lots of modern gamers who don't even involve themselves in retro gaming complain about the state of modern gaming today. Youre coming off a wee bit defensive. And to address your point..sure its nice to have games patched and working properly. But to see countless patches that break things that were already working pretty well isn't what I call a good patch. Look at the Witcher 3 on consoles. They've had to patch it so many times that it often took away from an area of the game that was working great before,but then went wasn't working so great after that patch. Sure its working good now, but how many patches were issues before things finally settled down. Thats the stuff I'm speaking about here. Not pathetic, just calling a spade a spade and this happens far too often today.

 

 

 

You prefer game breaking bugs in $60 products stay unfixed? Uhh, why? I like "retro" games as much as the next person, but this jaded outlook on modern gaming is really pathetic. There's plenty of great games being released with single player campaigns.

[spacecadet]

Maybe it would help if we didn't call each other's opinions on the way we entertain ourselves "pathetic".

[CatPix]

There are both pros and cons in online stuff.

We laso have ton consider that games development today take more than yesterday's game development.

Many 8 bits games and 16 bits game (mostly on 16 bits computers ) were the work of one to 6 people at best.

 

Silent Hill 2 had a team of 50 people working on it for 2 years.

 

GTA V took 5 years to develop with a team of about 1000 people.

 

Without online patching, games wouldn't get as detailled and massive as they can be since they would be riddled with unfixable bugs. So they would need to use more time on debugging and testing, which would mean less content added to the game or more expensive game, but the second rarely happens.

 

Also, PC gaming is back and strong, and with PC, online patching make sense. So the console market have to follow and do online content as well.

Nintendo lacking online connection was a thing heavily pointed to them, for the gamecube and for the meager support on the Wii as well.

 

Now I agree that many functions like watching TV or media players seems msotly useless to me but heh.

[MrMaddog]

About 20 years ago, "modern" gaming consisted of 32-bit systems like the Playstation with it's 3D graphics but the launch titles being less than fun. So I got into collecting and playing Atari 2600 games because despite the stick figure graphics they were just plain fun to play and enjoyable.

 

Ironically I ended up getting a PSX for the classic arcade collections (and FF7) and now the Playstation is considered to be retro.