Topic: Question for the 25+ crowd on here

As an only child growing up playing games has almost always been solo for me, so it still doesn't bother me now. I think Mario 3D world is great alone, I do have a friend that's come over and we've put a good 6 hours or more into it and it's fun. I don't find myself going "oh I wish I had a friend here to play with" that often. I am a bit bothered by Nintendo not having more online multiplayer though, but that's a whole other story.

I'm 28. I do wish I could go back and play the multiplayer games I use to play with my friends, I'll say that. Playing SSB64, Bomberman 64, Perfect Dark, Battle Tanks, those were really good times. Other than that, when I would go to a friends house a lot of the time we'd just play a 1-player game and take turns watching or whatever. Especially with RPG's. Good times had, regardless.

@Ryno

You sound just like me, my friend I got a PS4 (only system i own besides my wii u and 3ds) to be able to participate in some online games, so I cant wait til a lot of those come out.

I'm 12 and why don't you play Call of Duty on PS360 like a real boy?

My multiplayer with friends peaked around the N64 era ( Goldeneye, Mario Kart and WCW/WWF games), with sporadic bursts of sports games once in a while since then.

Sometimes I play now with my girlfriend, but usually that only lasts an hour tops. Nothing like back in the day when me and some buddies would play for several hours over a weekend.

@Spuratis

Yes, I'm also referring to the single player experiences. Actually, mostly them.

Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy 2, 3 & 7, Chrono Trigger, Yoshi's Island, Breath of Fire-

These are all single player games that I used to play with a friend, passing the controller back and forth, figuring things out together, having one friend taking the game home & then calling you to tel you they"ve finally passed that part and rushing over to play forward because of the "no advancing in the story unless we're both there" rule.

Ahh, i miss those days. They were just as fun as the Mario Karts and Goldeneye 007's in my book.

@FutureAlphaMale

Wow, totally forgot about the wrestling games. I's be scared to look at a tally of the total amount of time my best friend and I spent playing World Tour, Revenge, and whatever the wwf game back then was (Raw, I think?)

Wrestlemania 2000 and No Mercy!

Man, we were obsessed with wrestling at that time, and those games were unbelievably fun. We would go to a buddies house on a Friday night, order pizza and four of us would play those games for 5-6hrs straight, easy! I still remember getting Revenge, then letting my friend borrow it Sunday with a promise to return it to me Monday at school. The guy stayed home 'sick' for a week and woudn't pick up the phone when I called!! We still laugh about it today and its been 15 years.

@LetsGoRetro You know, I do kind of miss that. It was nice putting our heads together to figure stuff out. The internet kind of ruins that though.. I refuse to look anything up though anymore unless I'm stuck to a point of rage. Then it turns out to be something extremely obvious that makes me feel downright stupid. It's usually because I'm tired, lol.

Ahh.. well. My good friends still play video games, one basically plays all the same stuff I do and got a Wii U recently.. the other is pretty much a Halo/CoD player and shrugs everything else off, yet always wants me to come over and play those games. I like FPS.. but those are so shallow it gets old quick. My friend who likes Nintendo works 11 hours a day 6 days a week so he never has free time. Yay for being an adult.

Man, you just described my childhood! well, moreso the younger to mid teenage years. We LIVED for wrestling in those days, not just games but the programming, as well.

Are wrestling games still as fun as they were back then? When I lived in California from 2009-2012, my roommates used to do a pizza and beer Game Night on Fridays or Saturdays, but they were more PC gamers, playing things like Warcraft and League of Legends.

I never got into those, but I'd love to do that with either some wwe games, some mario kart, or heck even a fps like halo or an RPG or action/adventure where a group all works together.

I'm getting away from the question, though. Are wrestling games still of the same quality? What are the good ones nowadays, as well as the ones to stay away from? Have UFC games taken over the wrestling games?

Totally agree about the internet. I have a rule where I have to be stuck for atleast a couple days before I'd look. I recall 3 or 4 times in Link's Awakening, my buddy and I were stuck so bad that we went off and did other sidequest-type stuff for a good week or two! Games were tricky back then. When you were stuck, you were STUCK. And when you finally figured it out, the sense of accomplishment was amazing.

Even if you don't look, it's still not quite the same when you know you can whip out your smartphone and find the answer in 5 seconds flat! I have some great memories of my buddy and i both huddled around that tiny little Gameboy screen for hours, totally tuned in. In fact, it was the only Gameboy game I ever played, and the only portable until the 3ds came out!

28 here and it's never been quite the same since the N64 games. My friends and I put thousands of hours into Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, every THQ WCW and WWF, Mario Kart, and many others. That's the last Nintendo system the three of us all owned. I've been the only one to keep buying Nintendo (and all other systems). I can't blame them, Nintendo doesn't make it easy to just go out and confidently buy the system knowing you'll have game after game to play together, if you want a little more than their brand characters.

It's also not the same not being in the same room with my friends every time we do game. When we are, it is a load of fun still, but we all have busy and different lives, girlfriends, new committments, future committments, adult worries. It can never be the same again and that's fine...but it is still fun to be nostalgic.

I can't help but keep buying Nintendo. I love all sorts of games and games like Gears of War, Resident Evil, and God of War are some of my favorites, though not their latest iterations haha...but Nintendo just has that extra quality that makes me remember that I like it when games are pure fun and not just cutscene, gameplay for 30 seconds, cutscene that litters the landscape lately.

I do wish my friends could join me in the Nintendo excitement, but hey, if my gf and I have a kid, I'd love to share the fun of Nintendo with him/her.

Video games have predominantly always been a solo experience for me, so it hasn't affected me that much.

As for my two best friends that I had from when I was younger, one always seemed to be a console generation behind, meaning we never really played games together at all, and the other was more of an Xbox kid, so are tastes didn't match up often.

As for my older brother, he kind of "grew out" of games, when I was really getting into them, and now doesn't play anything other than his James Cameron's Avatar game (and that is more to do with his obsession with the film than anything else).

@jlaw1719

Wow. Sounds like you just read a page out of the book of my life, lol.

Where's everyone from, if you don't mind sharing?

I'm realizing how lucky I was as a kid. I grew up in a neighborhood littered with kids my age. I had 3 best friends who were with me constantly, as well as probably 10 other good friends who came and went periodically.

Seems like lots of you guys didn't have that and kind of grew up gaming solo. i recommend finding some people who share the interest and setting up some gaming sessions.

While I'd only recommend a "Get together and figure out an RPG" type thing for people who are really good friends, anyone can get together and have a few drinks while playing some Mario Kart or Smash.

My partner has a couple of boys and I gave my copy of Atari Greatest Hits volume 1 to her when I sold my DSi LL - her youngest (aged 9), loved those old 2600 games! Nice to know that simple entertainments can stand the test of time, even in the face of Mario and Need for Speed!

@Spuratis: agreed, I've had that experience often enough that I don't give up quite as easily as I used to. Glad I have the option to check a walkthrough rather than abandoning the game, though!

I used to play solo on my Atari 800 and Atari 2600; I never had a games console other than the Atari until the Sony Playstation, so playing on NES, SNES and Sega Genesis was at friends houses and we'd rent multiplayer games and it was fun. I'm not painfully nostalgic about it because that escape just isn't the centre of my world any more. I still play games on my Wii U, my Japanese Wii and my iPad and sometimes that time is playing with my daughter or my partner and her kids, but I don't pine for it and I wouldn't choose it over time with my family.

Being in love and having kids shifts your priorities a bit, but I don't think you have to "grow up" and there are other people out there who like to have fun and keep their own inner child going, so I wouldn't get all mopey and feel like gaming is something you necessarily have to grow out of or give up. You just need the right people in your life to help keep it enjoyable.

@LetsGoRetro I'm in the same boat as well. Been a Nintendo handheld gamer since GB when I was quite young. And I never miss a Mario or Zelda for consoles. When I was young my friends then had N64s and mario kart became one of my favorites because of that. They also played Zelda OOT and MM. But these days my enduring appreciation for Nintendo's content isnt shared by anyone else I know now. If anyone plays anything its casually on xbox but even then it's all very un-engaging and no one expresses any delight or joy lol.

One day maybe I will happen upon humans in real life like the ones here at NL and just "geek out" for once with another person like it was those N64 days.

I would be lying to you if I told you that getting older hasn't changed things. I'm 30 and like many people of my age I have wonderful memories of playing with my mates or with my brother (who is slightly younger than me). Now it's really different. Most of my older mates have abandoned videogames for some reason or another. Even my brother, once a Crazy Taxi addict, now only plays that mobile phone game that looks like Columns.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to find people to play local multiplayer - I often involve my co-workers and we usually have fun, but I can tell you their attitude is rather different than mine. To them it's "Alright, tonight we're doing something different, we're playing a videogame...".
It's very hard to have them sit in front of a videogame for more than one hour, nevermind if it's a videogame they have to learn from the start (I know I'm not going to play Bingo Battle).
Luckly Nintendo is giving me a great help by releasing games such as NintendoLand or Game & Wario, where it doesn't take hours to learn the basics of a game but it could be easily enjoyed right from the start. When I was younger, me and my mates could grasp the basics of a game (no matter how complex it was) in half a hour and play it for a whole night at a very high level. Adults tend not to do that. I see they get frustrated easily if they have to start over or to learn something. Apparently, "wasting time" becomes a great issue when you're older.

I think adults can still have a blast playing games together, as long as they find other people who are willing to put the same effort into gaming. I would have liked Nintendo to make regional groups in Miiverse so people from the same area could interact and maybe become gaming friends in real life - but with all the safety issues that might arise, I don't think it's a good idea after all.

I'm 34 and I find playing alone doesn't affect Platformers, RPGs, Puzzlers, or Sandbox games, but it definitely takes the shine off of Racers, Beat-em Ups, Sports and Party games. I'm an Uncle so most of my Smash Bros/Mario Kart 2 player experiences come from playing an 8 year old. I find playing 2player games like Lego or Infinity does my eyes in with the cameras spinning two different ways. My only other game playing friend is a PC/PS3 gamer and I don't think he gets the whole Mario/Link thing.

Saying that, I didn't play that many multiplayer games as a kid because I was a generally dislikeable bighead.

@LetsGoRetro
So many hours of my childhood sunk into Wrestlemania 2000. My friends and I were also WWF (well I guess it's WWE now) junkies. LOL so many bruises and injuries from actual wrestling. Sadly I grew out of WWE and realized how bad the acting is and how melodramatic the show can be.

32 year old here. I was just having this conversation with one of my coworkers yesterday. I find it hard to play games by myself. When I was growing up almost every game that I beat was with a friend. I remember spending the night at a friends house and neither of us had beaten The Legend of Zelda, even though we were both very familiar with the game. The two of us spent two nights absolutely wrecking that game and getting to all of the secrets. There are so many games like that for me. I think there is something about being able to hand the controller off to someone else when things get rough. Being able to take a step back and watch another person, and then a light goes on and you know what to do. I recently picked up the Windwaker Wii U bundle. I had never played The Windwaker before. I love this game, but I really wish I had a friend to play it with. When I finally figure out how to progress, or just do something cool, there is only me there to be excited about it. My wife doesn't like video games, and my son is too young to play games or look at screens. All of my friends live in other states, and the ones I have made where I live now like to play FPS games or DOTA games.

There are games that I find I am able to completely enjoy alone. The Wonderful 101 is a great example. Most RPG's are fine to play alone. Maybe it's all in my head, but I just don't get the full experience with Mario, Metroid, or Zelda games anymore. I really like Super Mario 3D world, but I want to play it with somebody. I like that there are games that use online multiplayer, but I would like to see something in a game like Windwaker where you can play with a friend online. Using the gamepad to see each other, and then being able to switch off who is controlling Link. Someday maybe. I love Nintendo, and I can't wait to enjoy their games with my children.