Topic: Why Do YOU Play Retro Games?

Ohhh, good point. Everyone knows Sonic. Master Chief though, I wasn't even sure who he was until this year. XD

i didn't know who he was until late last year. but now i know, he's basically a male version of samus. minus the emotions.

Aside from the obvious nostalgia element, I love playing retro games for the simple, classic gameplay and non-gimmicky, classic controls.

I like them partly because many of them take me back to a time when Sega was still really kicking ass.

But I mostly play them becaue there fun and practical for the most part. I just don't have the time and energy to keep up with all this new crap that's coming out.

Kweh kweh~

For me I think it's the experience the games offered back then, so many games felt fresh, full of new ideas that we've never seen before in a game. The snes is my number one console and I still remember the feeling I had when i first played Mario world, super castlevania etc. I was blown away with the sound and graphics. I just don't seem to get that wow factor nowadays. Don't get me wrong, some of the games today are amazing, but I just don't get that same feeling as when I was younger. Maybe it is just an age thing. Then again, maybe I'm only playing retro stuff because I'm trying to relive old memories!!

There was less room for fluff. As an example, think of a game like Zelda 2: Adventures of Link. The entire story must progress and each NPC can only ever say about 40 characters worth of dialog. It was just the structure of the programming, and they couldn't deviate from that formula if they needed to. So they worked around it. I have always felt that limitations inspire creativity. I love how simplistic and to-the-point the stories were, much like the core gameplay mechanics. (In my opinion, this is why the Bit.trip series works so well: I don't care WHY I'm jumping/dodging/shooting, I just need to be entertained by the communication between my thumbs and my brain.) There was only so much RAM and cartridge capacity available, so each character, theme song, special move, line of dialog, and enemy was fine-tunned and intimatly crafted.
Additionally, these games were being lovingly created by small game studios of 6-12 people, instead of being churned out by huge corporations. Nintendo and Sega listened to their hearts. Microsoft and Sony listen to their share holders.

As romantic as that all sounds, I must admit I'm lying to myself.
My heart says, "because the games were just BETTER."
But my brain says, "nostalgia."

Because I'm old.

Hah.

Because I have played them for hours and hours. Oh, and there aren't such stupid rules or weird controls.

Going back to the beginning of the game just because you died so many times is a pretty stupid ruke if you ask me. And I don't know what you mean about weird controls. We had just as many back then as we have now with weird control schemes.

1. Jukebox
2. Actions
3. Story

"Because of my undying relationship with these games - these memories - these hours - these frustrations and celebrations" is probably the closest answer I can give.

And it definitely has got something to do with the 'spirit' of these days. You may simply call it nostalgia, but there's much more to it.

I play retro games on the VC because I haven't played them before, and they say they are the best games ever made which is true. If I had time, I would download games that I already played on Steam or something, or free, but I hardly do that for lack of time.

I liked them once upon a time and I like them today. Enough said.

another reason i liked retro games was before it was there were lots of great games coming out for the nintendo and sega consoles, as well as in the arcades. there was less shovelware around too.

i think gaming back then was much cooler but also there were more video game character icons like mario, sonic, pacman to name around. when gaming became more mainstream and more accepted by the masses by the mid 00s, it lost some of the goodness and appeal that makes it unique.

i'm a nintendo fan, but my favourite eras of theirs was the N.E.S, gameboy and SNES, as well as sega's megadrive/genesis. gaming today is not the same- not to say i wholly dislike this generations gaming habits a lot, but i do wonder sometimes what if SEGA and SNK were still around today as hardware companies, alongside sony, microsoft, nintendo.

i love the wii, but do you really think games like just dance and wii fit would ever exist in the 80s for eg? most would say they won't.

@misswliu81

I agree completely. I dunno, games nowadays can be great and even fantastic, but they don't possess that something which make them mind-blowing anymore (except for very, very few games, like Donkey Kong Country Returns perhaps). What people call nowadays 'hardcore gaming' was reserved for a few people, not the hundreds of thousands or even millions. In fact, the term 'hardcore gamer' did not even exist back then; you were a gamer or not. And we were not complaining about that incredibly difficult game which had 'only' six stages. No, we loved that game because of the challenge, the gameplay, the music, the COLORED manual, the boxart, etc ; the heart and soul that was poured into it's creation by people you never heard of. Almost my entire Super Nintendo collection back then consisted of games which were not marketed over here (The Netherlands), and were mostly titles that were bought on complete 'hunch'. Most of 'em turned out to be absolutely fantastic. Games like Alien 3, Skyblazer, Illusion Of Time, Secret Of Mana, Hagane, Super Turrican, Super SWIV, The Adventures Of Batman & Robin, Parodius, The Lawnmower Man, Plok, Out To Lunch and even expensive imports like Chrono Trigger. Yes, some of them are now widely known, thanks to the internet and subsequent re-releases, but back then it was a completely different story.

Hundreds of side-scrolling shoot 'm ups were released in those days, and yet, most of them were great enough to be called classic. To this day, I cannot seem to figure out why that is. Yes, games -could- be popular (such as Super Mario Bros. 3), but they were nowhere as mainstream as they are today. Nowadays you 'just buy that new hyped-up game', as if there isn't anything special and obscure about them anymore. Sony's PlayStation really turned the tide regards the 'acceptability and accessibility' of videogames due to their aggressive marketing. From a financial and even 'social' standpoint a great thing, but I guess not from a creative one. What I thoroughly dislike nowadays is the almost 'celebrity' status of developers, as if it's all about image and status instead of 'anonymous' creativity.

Some say that limitation is the mother of true creativity. There's something very true to that statement, both from a technical and community point of view.

i totally agree about sony- i think when a company renowned for TVs, music players and other electronic goods- entered the field, as well as microsoft, the whole video game landscape changed. and for them, say their consoles don't sell well, their money can always come from other sources. i.e. P.Cs, laptops, TVs, cell phones to name. nintendo doesn't have that, which is why it is important for their consoles and games to sell extremely well. i'd rather have SNK and SEGA rather than sony and microsoft.

the whole celebrity-like acceptance of video games these days can have its benefits; however for many developers they seem to sacrifice quality in gameplay for quantity in terms of high sales. having grown up with the N.E.S and super nintendo to name, it is rather disappointing to see.

Yeah. Although I like the first and second PlayStation very much, I cannot deny that the SEGA vs Nintendo days were much, MUCH better. Nowadays there isn't even a full-blown, yet healthy rivalry. All the current consoles get the same franchises and exactly the same games, there's almost nothing exclusive anymore, except for Nintendo perhaps.

yes, and it seems that many games today are more like feature length movies -what with the CGI technology, high-definition graphics, cutscenes. and plus it is dominated mostly by first-person shooters.

Uhuh, you're right. I'm also extremely tired of these excessive violent games which flood the market for almost a decade now (and no, I'm not talking about Mortal Kombat). Here's a quote from 2002 by former Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi, which backs up what you were saying :

"Every game developer is shooting for nothing but realism and flashiness, so we’re seeing an overflow of games that look exactly the same. What does realism and flashiness have to do with fun?"

The man didn't play videogames himself, he knew what people wanted, and that makes you an excellent businessman in my opinion. And even though he made some 'wrong' decisions in the past, I must say that I really miss this man, mainly because of his pride and guts. To me he was Nintendo.