Why are you a retro gamer?

Video Games
21

This is more me. I got burned out on a lot of AAA games. I often will impulse buy some AAA game because Wario64 posts some crazy deal. 2 hours in to Assassin’s creed origins i am like yeah, I don’t have the time or desire to play this shit. Oh its asking me for money again… great.

That said, someone gave me Skyrim (Switch) for Christmas and I can’t put it down.

I had a period of my life where i stopped gaming as much. I got into surfing and training for it and between work and travel i didn’t play a whole lot during that era. I just didn’t have enough time & money to do both. After college I got more into gaming than I ever had before but I was playing the wrong games (World of Warcraft). I think that I lost all my social groupings after college and WoW kind of filled the void of going out to the bar with my friends and hanging out. It’s by far my low point and the point where i started getting rid of things I thought had no value to me like my dreamcast, gamecube, xbox and n64. Boy, was I wrong.

If I had one life mulligan I think I would have never played a MMO. I think almost all aspects of my life would have been better for it.

I think someone mentioned in this thread that it was hard to know what was good if it wasn’t heavily marketed by the companies or someone at EGM wasn’t championing it. I think I would have loved to own the dreamcast in its prime. You can’t really blame me, I wasn’t a sega kid. I also wish that I looked out for more than just Squaresoft RPGs in the PS1 era. I missed a ton of good PS1 games because I was so blinded by games that weren’t 50 hours long.

I would rebuy many of my favorite retro games on modern platforms if they came with modern conveniences like save states. I have no idea why Sony doesn’t have a good PS1 emulator going. No one is remastering those games. I think in the era of the remaster we are getting blocked by certain actors.

22

You’re such an interesting case. I’ve always loved the games and systems I grew up with and just never segregated Retro from modern games in my habits. All of them are just games to me.

And I can appreciate cool games no matter the resolution or frame rate (generally). I suppose the lack of graphical discrimination in my game selection is what makes me “Retro” along with my preference for original hardware.

23

I got back into retro gaming around the time the Wii came out. I didn’t have a lot of money to throw around because my focus was on my house and my 2 kids. It was cheaper for me to pickup a pile of retro games really cheap than to buy a new $60 game.

24

I’m a lifelong gamer. I usually spend about 75% of my time playing modern games and about 25% playing retro games. I’ve always been a dual threat gamer and have gamed all my life on both consoles and computers. I’m a big fan of Atari, Sega and Microsoft. My favorite era of gaming was probably the Saturn, Dreamcast, PC and OG Xbox days.

25

Owning Dreamcast on day one and being 100% in on it from start to finish was one of my favorite eras of videogaming. There was so much awesome there and they just kept it coming right to the end. Capcom went nuts on there, too! It was such a fun time. I feel kinda sorry for people who missed it or didn’t understand it and slagged it off.

26

I’m happy to live a generation behind on new consoles now. I got a Wii U and 3DS very late, and never got a PS4Bone. That way I get a cheaper, smaller less power hungry, less noisy console revision and cheap-as-chips games as the gen ends. My PS3 backlog alone (of games I got for $5 each) is huge.

Switch is the exception as it was the first actual appealing console in a decade for me.

So I guess that means I’m only retro, except for Switch?

27

A friend of mine once asked me one of those questions you ask because you have an answer already worked up for it. “What is the best money you have ever spent in your life?” His pre arranged answer was what he had spent on a personal trainer) I didn’t think of anything at the time because I was too busy making the phantom wank gesture, but later on when I thought about it I decided overwhelmingly that the best money I have ever spent was on my MMO addiction. Like you my life would probably be better for never having gotten into them but they are also the most fun I have had in my life and over long periods of time. If anything I wish I never quit a few of them. :c

28

Oh, it wasn’t a good time. Hurt my most important relationship and caused me to gain wait. Despite being a gamer my whole life my stint with Wow was the only time it affected my health.

29

I’ve never played an MMO in my life. I don’t think I ever could or will either. They appealed to me as a teenager but I never was willing to pay the monthly fee back then. And now I’m too old to care for such a huge investment of time. It’s just one if this things that passed me by.

So I’ve literally never even tried one.

30

I didn’t have time for it. I just stayed up till 2am almost every night to play. $15 a month was cheap for a game budget since I wasn’t buying much else. I did it from 2004-2009. It was basically my wow generation. It took about 2 years to fully recover from what was an addiction in my brain. I couldn’t play other games without being bored. I wish I just played normal games during this period because I felt like I missed a lot from the end of the ps2 generation and the early Xbox 360 gen.

I would take a month or two off here and there and play whatever big game that was out but it was just biding time for the next wow expansion.

31

More retro now than ever, finally the price of new games has got too much, when you see the “total” price it just becomes daft, talking £100 now pretty much for a current gen game, wonder if we are on the way to another crash… I used to buy 1 or 2 games a month, not purchased a fully price game now since last year…

Got a load on my list, but waiting for game of the year and then sale…

32

Another vote for retro+modern. Almost voted for the microtransaction option because I don’t have any interest in most things coming from EA/Ubisoft due to those. Not to say I shun modern gaming. Over the past couple years I’ve played and loved The Witcher 3, Overwatch, BOTW, RE7, Doom, and Wolfenstein 2, Mario Odyssey, and I’ll probably play NieR: Automata soon if that counts.

That said, I am probably 80% retro/indie overall. I mostly play PS1, Genesis, and SNES these days. I only have a couple hours each evening to myself so I value pick-up-and-play games, not to mention the nostalgia. There are so many masterful games out there for these systems and more that it almost feels like a cop-out to me when I play new games.

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33

I was always a retro gamer tho not by choice! Got NES after the 16-bit consoles and had only it until well into the PS1/N64 era. I went back to retro with emulation on my first PC in 2000. Never really got into PS3/360, nor PS4/XB1. I have PC to fill that need. Interest in console gaming hit an all time low after getting busy with life and experiecing some disappointment with Wii, Wii U and 3DS.

I always felt something was missing in gaming as an adult. Kept hearing about those Sony PVMs and thinking about it on and off. Finally decided to get one and a few cherished retro systems from my past. It was great, everything I wanted and then more! From there I got more hardware that caught my interest. Some were reacquired favorites, but other systems were first time purchases. Much of it is entirely brand new to me so it’s not like I’m “stuck replaying old games.” I still very much like some of the new stuff out there, especially now with the Switch and my upgraded PC for AAA/modern gaming fix.

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34

I’ve always been interested in retro gaming, mainly through emulation. I still had a couple consoles from when I originally bought them. Master System, Xbox (non working), and GameCube. I’ve been playing video games in many different forms since probably 1984 or so.

As to why, it’s more a matter of circumstance than anything.

A few friends were getting rid of some stuff, and I jumped on the opportunity for some free loot. Here’s a modded Wii w/ external HDD package I got for free:

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Not too long after that I got a GBA-001, a modded OG Xbox, another Wii, a Game Gear, and another GameCube. All free from friends… It helps to have gamer friends that aren’t into collecting! This basically lit a fire under my ass and I formally decided to start buying stuff for a nice little retro collection.

I made the mistake of going out and getting the biggest most awesome CRT I could find, which resulted in a 34" Widescreen HD Toshiba. I was gutted when I tried to play something with the light phaser on the SMS, and set out to find out why. After some research, I decided to get rid of the Toshiba and picked up a 27" Trinitron.

From there I started visiting retro gaming stores and scouring kijiji daily. Within a few months I bought an SNES, NES, PS2, N64, DSLite, Genesis, GBA-101 (broken, for the screen), and a bunch of misc games here and there.

And here I am… 3 months into collecting formally, and I’ve got a great little setup in the basement, and I couldn’t be happier with my new hobby!

35

This is pretty much the same for me. Most of my consoles and games aren’t retro; they’re just my old stuff haha. I’m also too nostalgic for some games. I played a lot of sports games back in the day so I find myself relaxing playing Tecmo Super Bowl or 16 bit NBA Live or NHL games.

I play mostly retro due to time constraints. It’s much more enjoyable to sit down and game for 30 minutes than update firmware or download updates. PS3 (OG BC 60GB) is my “newest” console. I enjoy newer games as well but haven’t had much time to sink into them. I bought a Wii last summer and have barely even had time to play a couple games on it. So, I have plenty in the “retro” category to play before running out. If I do there will be newly determined retro games to play haha.

36

I play anything that takes my fancy. The consoles are just a conduit to the gameplay.

The way I look at it is: why only play new games when there’s the whole back catalogue of video game history to pick from? And you have collective wisdom of what is good and bad and time has proven the verdict.

There have been more games made than I’ll ever be able to play and the thrill to me is discovering a new favourite that I had no idea about despite it having been available for 30 years.

Why would you stop listening to, say, The Beatles or Beethoven just because they’re not new?

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37

One thing that grinds my gears about modern games is that we’re still dealing with long loading times in arcade games like Street Fighter V, etc. I know there are so many assets that need loading and all that, but I truly miss the days of instant cartridge response every time I sit down with a modern game that has those sorts of slowdowns before getting to more retro-styled play.

Definitely a reason to sit down with something older on a cartridge-based system.

38

Depends on what system and how retro. I feel retro gaming prices have gotten extremely expensive.

I did a search for “Sega Saturn” on eBay. The first five results:

Panzer Dragoon: $64 (BIN)
Panzer Dragoon Saga: $305 (still 9 days left for bidding)
Dragon Force: $125 (still 7 hours left)
Saturn System: $128
Shinning Force 3: $200 (BIN)

39

I play games no matter what gen it is, retro or modern, I’ll play it! I can never be a full on retro gamer, just like I can’t be a full on modern gamer due to always wanting to play games from the past, present and future. Both retro and modern gaming are pricey for different reasons though.

40

A thing I really enjoy with non-modern games is the paratext that comes with that is often essential to the comprehension of the game itself. It can be a manual describing undiscoverable gameplay, a printed map, a novel in the world of the game elaborating on the lore, etc. Nowadays, physical items are only present in limited editions, and are restricted to being useless trinkets that have no meaning to the game itself. A pretty figure, a bunch of stickers, a soundtrack CD… Collector items that bear no meaning to the game experience.