Any other millennials/gen Z who like the Atari 2600?

[Corporal Cromwell]

Hello AtariAge.

 

I wanted to ask this question because I'm an 18 year old college student who loves the original Atari. Hell, I even love playing arcade ports on my 2600. It seems there's a stereotype within the retrogaming community that the Atari's only good for nostalgia and nothing else. I personally disagree. 

Though, I did get into Atari (and early 80s arcade games at large) when I was 6 years old, when I found sites like this and others which really made me appreciate the simplicity but good fun provided by this era of gaming.

Anyone else?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Welcome to AtariAge! I am happy to hear that young people like my favorite console too. The more, the better!

[Zap1982]

I turn 40 this year and apparently that makes me a millenial as I was born after '81 ? it's always puzzled me that one as 90's born kids seem pretty different to us lot, like they are a generation behind LOL, they don't remember VHS or pre internet days for example!

 

Anyway, I think anyone that is interested in gaming can like the 2600. I was a Sega kid and only actually got into the 2600 about five years ago - now I have tons of 2600 stuff! 

 

I think theres a lot of stereotyping about interests in general. Like your age should only be playing the very latest games or anyone who has a Switch only plays Mario. Its all pretty daft.. it's like music, you can have a favorite era / eras without having to have lived through them.

[Zap1982]

I turn 40 this year and apparently that makes me a millenial as I was born after '81 ? it's always puzzled me that one as 90's born kids seem pretty different to us lot, like they are a generation behind LOL, they don't remember VHS or pre internet days for example!

 

Anyway, I think anyone that is interested in gaming can like the 2600. I was a Sega kid and only actually got into the 2600 about five years ago - now I have tons of 2600 stuff! 

 

I think theres a lot of stereotyping about interests in general. Like your age should only be playing the very latest games or anyone who has a Switch only plays Mario. Its all pretty daft.. it's like music, you can have a favorite era / eras without having to have lived through them.

[zzip]

22 hours ago, Zap1982 said:

I turn 40 this year and apparently that makes me a millenial as I was born after '81 ? it's always puzzled me that one as 90's born kids seem pretty different to us lot, like they are a generation behind LOL, they don't remember VHS or pre internet days for example!

It is hard to determine exactly when many generations begin and end.   Some are easy, like the Baby Boomers were were born after the soldiers returning from WW2 all started to have kids at once,  and those kids grew up never having to experience the Great Depression or WW2 so that affected their outlook on life and made them distinctly different from their parents.

 

But others after that are fuzzy-  different sources will give different dates for start/end dates,  and they get revised as things get cleared.

 

What they say is what defines Gen X is that we were cynical "latch-key" kids where both of our parents tended to work, and tended to have a "hands-off" parenting style, so we'd come home to an empty house after school (once we were old enough anyway).   While at some point in the 80s milk cartons started showing missing children, the yellow "Baby On Board" signs started popping up on cars and a much greater focus was placed on child safety.  And parents started overscheduling their kids activity rather than leave them alone to do their own thing, so the Millenial kids had a much different upbringing.    So that I understand is the difference,  but I don't think all that change happened in a single year and was probably gradual shift.

 

I think the cutoff date is probably later than 1981,  but I get the impression that demographers picked a date around 1980 just so that they could use the year 2000 as a clean cut-off date for the next generation.   But that's totally arbitrary.   

[zzip]

23 hours ago, Zap1982 said:

it's like music, you can have a favorite era / eras without having to have lived through them.

That seems to be the attitude of younger people today.   Perhaps because modern pop music is so shallow, and spotify makes it easy to build a playlist across eras.

 

When we GenX were kids, if it wasn't on MTV then we didn't want to know about it!

 

I would think younger people might have a hard time with early game consoles because the sound and graphics were so crude, and gameplay was minimal.   I know "8-bit style" games for modern systems have been popular for sometime, which shows that the younger generation isn't that hung-up on high-res, detailed graphics.   However most of those 8-bit style games are still more advanced than a real 8-bit system could handle.   But it's nice to hear some people are interested. 

[Mockduck]

The general games press tends to say Atari is too old to be relevant to today's kids, but if anything Atari gaming is a bit like mobile gaming with old graphics, so I never bought it. Sure, not that many kids, but in the same way I watched old movies as a kid why wouldn't the younger generations check out games history, right?

[Leatherrebel5150]

23 hours ago, Zap1982 said:

I turn 40 this year and apparently that makes me a millenial as I was born after '81 ? it's always puzzled me that one as 90's born kids seem pretty different to us lot, like they are a generation behind LOL, they don't remember VHS or pre internet days for example!

 

Anyway, I think anyone that is interested in gaming can like the 2600. I was a Sega kid and only actually got into the 2600 about five years ago - now I have tons of 2600 stuff! 

 

I think theres a lot of stereotyping about interests in general. Like your age should only be playing the very latest games or anyone who has a Switch only plays Mario. Its all pretty daft.. it's like music, you can have a favorite era / eras without having to have lived through them.

Woah, easy there lol. I was born in 91’ and have very clear memories and experiences with pre-internet and VHS etc. We didn’t even have a useable internet in my house until 2003+ and even then rarely used it for anything until high school. VHS didn’t disappear over night, was still using those to around the same time period. 

[BIGHMW]

Yeah but Gen Z'ers are definitely brought upo different, they think everything is available on their phone, and if it isn't then they think it dows not exist. They also don't know how to operate a VCR, they don't know how to play Atari, or even know what a CD (or DVD) is, and this hurts us as we as older (Gen X'er speaking) folks have a lot of catching up to do, but as a musician/performer/presenter I feel deeply disturbed by this generation's depraved indifference to older technology like VCR's, Atari/Coleco/Intellivision, and the like, don't get me wrong, I dig all of the new tech and everything like that, but yes IT IS refreshing that there are SOME Gen Z'ers and Millennials like the OP who really appreciate what WE grew up doing/watching/playing BITD, some dig classic TV, how do you think we have all of those retro channels like Me TV, Antenna TV and the likes, others like the OP, like classic gaming consoles and/or retro-gaming, even I, at one time, grew up listening to AM Top 40 back in the 70's and even auditioned for a spot on the local station here in Port Townsend, KPTZ 91.9, but they turned me down, despite my throwback style, in which BIGHMW LIVE! was patterned after, playing "the hits from the 60s, 70s, & 80s...and then some!" as I called it, check out my audition video for yourself, maybe 102.7 KIIS-FM down in L.A. could take to my show idea after seeing this.

 

 

[atariUCLA24]

Yup I am 25, been collecting 2600 since I was in middle school...

[ubersaurus]

I hit 39 in a couple weeks and have been collecting Atari games since I was old enough to get an allowance. Needless to say the system made an impression!

[bugcatcher88]

I've been into Atari since I was 17. I'm 33 now. I own all the consoles and a few Atari computers. I can't get enough of this stuff.

[pacman000]

On 5/31/2022 at 10:40 AM, Leatherrebel5150 said:

Woah, easy there lol. I was born in 91’ and have very clear memories and experiences with pre-internet and VHS etc. We didn’t even have a useable internet in my house until 2003+ and even then rarely used it for anything until high school. VHS didn’t disappear over night, was still using those to around the same time period. 
 

 

Yeah, VHS remained relevant till ~2006, maybe later. And the Internet didn’t start catching on in my area till ‘98 or ‘99. My family didn’t get it till 2008.

 

I’m 32, & I like Atari. Been collecting 2600 carts since I was 6, 7, or 8. The system was my dad’s, & it holds a special place in my heart. The games are simple, but fun.

 

Then again, I like older things, like records & film cameras & encyclopedia sets. Perhaps it’s just taste?

[Zap1982]

On 5/31/2022 at 4:40 PM, Leatherrebel5150 said:

Woah, easy there lol. I was born in 91’ and have very clear memories and experiences with pre-internet and VHS etc. We didn’t even have a useable internet in my house until 2003+ and even then rarely used it for anything until high school. VHS didn’t disappear over night, was still using those to around the same time period. 

Haha.. there will certainly be a demographic difference, my sibling eas born in 94 and she will remember the VHS vaguley since we still used it but I kid you not back in around 2016 I took a 5.25 floppy disc and a audio cassette into work because some 25yr old guy worked with had never seen or heard of them until I mentioned them and wanted me to bring them in so he could see them "for real" - the look on his face, like he was marveling at them like they were some ancient artifact! ??

 

The convo came about as I was saying pre-modern tech I used to record the Sunday night charts on casette so I had something to listen to on the way home from work!

 

25yr old: "what's walkman?"

[zzip]

VHS is one of those technologies I honestly don't miss.  It was a means to an end since we had no other way to record or playback video.   But it was clunky,  the automatic eject that many VCRs had was likely to eventually get a tape trapped in it.   The videotapes were huge.   Programming them was annoying, especially the earlier ones that didn't have a menu-driven interface.   And the quality of your recorded material was low-  extra noise, picture was often jumpy on playback

[Alena]

I fuckin am part of the exclusive PlusCart(+) club and I'm only 18!

[Mockduck]

Seems like "we" (society) has sort of thought of everything after the year 2000 as digital, but we were using analogue well into the 2000's. I have old band videos from 2008 on VHS-C, it was "digital recording" tape, but still tape.

[Zap1982]

2 hours ago, Mockduck said:

Seems like "we" (society) has sort of thought of everything after the year 2000 as digital, but we were using analogue well into the 2000's. I have old band videos from 2008 on VHS-C, it was "digital recording" tape, but still tape.

Reminds me of the casing on both my Megadrive and also my VHS player:

 

"High Definition Graphics - Stereo Sound"

 

Hmmm..

 

 

[suspicious_milk]

Comparing an Atari 2600 to a PS5 is like comparing Chess to Football.

 

Sure, they are both "video games", but are really so different the experience comparison is nonsensical.

 

When "the internet" (and marketing types) stop pushing classic video games with nostalgia, and sell them on their own merits (of which there are many), we can see a new market grow and thrive... Instead of just hanging on.  This is starting to happen a little bit (indie games, casual, Evercade).

 

With many games, "new" is seen as a must.  Especially video games.  While in others, "new" is dead out of the gate. Take Tabletop RPGs.  They crank out a new version of D&D every fews years and have failed to make it any better in any significant way (but it's NEW!!!).  Then you have it's earliest competition, Tunnels & Trolls, barely changed since 1975 (compared to D&D) but exponentially less popular.   Now try making a new "version" of football (hi, XFL fans!) and see how that goes.  Why don't you submit some new Chess rules?  The only thing that's for sure across all game genre's is their ain't no rules and people are strange.

 

 

[polyex]

On 5/30/2022 at 8:56 AM, Zap1982 said:

I turn 40 this year and apparently that makes me a millenial as I was born after '81 ? it's always puzzled me that one as 90's born kids seem pretty different to us lot, like they are a generation behind LOL, they don't remember VHS or pre internet days for example!

 

Anyway, I think anyone that is interested in gaming can like the 2600. I was a Sega kid and only actually got into the 2600 about five years ago - now I have tons of 2600 stuff! 

 

I think theres a lot of stereotyping about interests in general. Like your age should only be playing the very latest games or anyone who has a Switch only plays Mario. Its all pretty daft.. it's like music, you can have a favorite era / eras without having to have lived through them.

I have noticed a distinct difference in what people find entertaining who were of the Sega/Nintendo 90's vs the late 70's early 80's Atari/Intellivision etc. players. Later players seemed to be influenced more by the violence in Japanese fighting games not to mention the weird pedophile imagery of Japanese Anime, where older games and players seemed to me to have more variety in the titles and a more "American" influence in the culture. There is of course, crossover in all players.

[Jaden (JRH)]

I first got into 2600 games when I was about 7 years old or so, playing them through the Atari Anthology compilation for PS2. I had already known about and played some of the classic arcade games thanks to compilations like Namco Museum and Midway Arcade Treasures. However, when I saw how the 2600's graphics looked primitive even compared to those, it confused me a bit. But eventually, I got into the 2600 library and appreciated it for what it was. I think a lot of kids and teenagers would actually love 2600 games if they gave them a chance. They make great introductory games for little kids, and they're really not all that different from a lot of popular mobile games now. They're made with the same idea in mind, which is that they're simple to get into but difficult to master. I'm gonna turn 19 next month, and I still love playing my 7800. I even recently ordered a new joystick for it to help support independent creators making the old Atari consoles better than they already were. So, I think the fanbase for Atari consoles definitely has a lot more younger fans than people might expect.

[Rhomaios]

On 6/2/2022 at 9:41 AM, zzip said:

VHS is one of those technologies I honestly don't miss.  It was a means to an end since we had no other way to record or playback video.   But it was clunky,  the automatic eject that many VCRs had was likely to eventually get a tape trapped in it.   The videotapes were huge.   Programming them was annoying, especially the earlier ones that didn't have a menu-driven interface.   And the quality of your recorded material was low-  extra noise, picture was often jumpy on playback

I agree with this, and I always puzzle at the hipsters who like to collect VHS. When treated right, DVDs are better in every way. It's not even like vinyl, since you don't have to rewind a record or deal with weird tracking issues. Vinyl's only issue is the occasional bad needle. But the large sleeves also added something over CDs - big art. There is no equivalent with the VHS.

 

I do wish something better would come along that solves the degradation problem (that isn't streaming), but I suppose using anything physical is bound to perish at some point.

[john_q_atari]

1 hour ago, Rhomaios said:

I agree with this, and I always puzzle at the hipsters who like to collect VHS. When treated right, DVDs are better in every way. It's not even like vinyl, since you don't have to rewind a record or deal with weird tracking issues. Vinyl's only issue is the occasional bad needle. But the large sleeves also added something over CDs - big art. There is no equivalent with the VHS.

It's called laserdisc. Never caught on in the states. Was popular for awhile in Japan. But been out of production going on about 2 decades now.

[Zap1982]

Hey lets spin this on its head.. so, if we have teens and young adults into the 2600 then do we have anyone in their 80's and beyond who are into all the latest gaming like VR etc? I can't think of anyone I know personally but I would be curious if say someones nan is a keen gamer on MMO's etc..

[Rhomaios]

8 hours ago, john_q_atari said:

It's called laserdisc. Never caught on in the states. Was popular for awhile in Japan. But been out of production going on about 2 decades now.

You misunderstood what I was saying. I can see the argument that Laserdisc is the video equivalent to vinyl, yes, but not that VHS is instead.