Your Appeal To All Things Retro?

Spacedeck

Spacedeck

Spacedeck

Soldato
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West Yorkshire, England
I recently watched a YT video on this subject and it got me thinking, why do I play retro games over more modern games for most of my general gaming?

I thought about my habits when it comes to gaming. Usually, I will start a game and there is a good chance I will not finish it.

I either lose interest after a day or so, or I put it down with the intentions to carry on later, but that never seems to come around or because of the break, I feel disconnected from the story. Games now just take too much effort and time to get in to. Graphically, they look great, but they take too much time to get going, or there is just an overwhelming amount of content. I rarely play multiplayer games these days and if you have a long enough break from a game, you might be tempted to restart to remember the story. Sometimes games can feel like a chore to finish. I am not the fastest at completing games, so it could take me 4-7 days to play through a story, and in doing this I feel like it is taking a lot of effort to finish.

So why do I play retro? Well, it is the simplicity, the fact I can stick a game on for short bursts and play for 10 minutes, not caring about hitting that next checkpoint. Not having a game that is going to make me need to remember the whole story before I play again. Of course, there is still some games like this with games like Final Fantasy, although I tend to play NES, SNES and Mega Drive the most. Many retro games have a leader board, so you can challenge yourself to be better next time. While they can be difficult, most will not take hours upon hours or even days to complete. Not to mention the vast number of games I have never experienced before. Also, I love pixel graphics.

Recently I've often playing Moto Racer 1 on GOG, it's super effective for having that quick race, or Sensible World of Soccer '96/'97 that feels fun to play and doesn't require you to know all these fancy tricks or getting in-depth with the career mode.

So, what is your appeal to retro gaming? Is it the games, the hardware tinkering or anything else?
 
For me, it depends on the game.
Often there is something about the gameplay mechanics or the story environment I don't like (anything with zombies is an immediate No for me), or it's just a grind-fest.
For example, soccer games bore me, regardless of age or platform. I'm struggling to get through The Witcher 2, and will then have 3 to plough through, yet I've just sunk over 300 hours into Cyberpunk and would happily have done twice as long... As is, I'm wondering what remaining achievements I could try for.
I've likely sunk a few thousand hours into Elite: Dangerous, because while flying cargo circuits is boring as **** and I'll likely have nothing I want to spend my billion credits on, the actual gameplay itself is still fun.

But it's exactly the same with many retro games, too.
Those I do play will likely be on my GBA SP, purely for portability. I'll generally go for 20-90 minutes on that, unless I'm just killing time and get interrupted.
Back in the day, I enjoyed River Raid and Bomb Jack enough to fill the Hi-Score tables and the only boring part was having to (because it was on Spectrum) play through all the lower levels before reaching the challenging ones, each and every time you fired the game up.
 
For me its also about skill, you genuinely feel like you can "crack" an older game and getter better and better the more time you spend with it.

Current gen games you just kind of just get carried along by it a lot of the time.
 
For me it's not so much about the hardware, it's nice to own but it's much more convenient to emulate it and play with a wireless controller with upscaled graphics and be able to use save states if you wish. That said I do like to try and buy physical versions of old games I played if they are not too expensive. I think especially with Sinclair Spectrum games where the back of the case has game screenshots, very nostalgic but lots o fold games have not lost their playability at all.
 
For me it’s the nostalgia of re-playing old games that I enjoyed playing/completing previously. Some of these will have been ground breaking for their time, or big in a social context. Often they will just be tied to a period of past ‘good times’ in my life.

Many new game releases don’t interest me that much anymore or they are just evolutions of previous games. I also like the simplicity of retro systems, you just put the game in and play. I don’t have to download/install yet another update/patch and burn the only bit of spare time I have that evening/weekend.

It’s also a chance to play games/systems I didn’t have at the time, but wanted. I think it’s also fulfilling this urge to ‘collect’ stuff, that I can’t really explain.
 
For me, it's nostalgia for when I was growing up in the 80's. I was at school in the 5th form when home computers started getting popular, and it was an incredibly exciting time, with each day bringing new computers and software, and people were still discovering what these home computers could do. (This is one reason I'm so keen on VR, as it's fresh, and we're discovering new gameplay and techniques daily, so it's very like computer games in the 80's).

The ZX81 was my first computer, and I taught myself basic programming on it. Later I got a C64 and taught myself machine code (though I was never very good at it), and the C64 started a career which nearly 40 years later I'm still doing. However it was the ZX81 and Spectrum (which I played on at friends houses) which initially inspired me.

I think lockdown has given me a bit more of the retro bug. I'm saving money due to not being able to go out, so I've been treating myself with some retro stuff, including a Star Wars Arcade machine replica, a spinner for my Mame cab, and most recently a rubber key ZX Spectrum setup. All of this is 80's retro, so it's a massive nostalgia trip for me.
 
I tend to spend more time aquiring, cleaning, repairing, modifying and tinkering with retro hardware. It's been a great way for me to learn and sharpen my skills with electroncis and soldering. I've not been much of a gamer since ~2005, and I feel like if I start thinking about gaming on retro kit then something else I could be doing to futher the hardware comes to mind instead. Time is a precious resource, but I guess once I'm 'done' tinkering.. then I really should play some games and enjoy that aspect of retro.
 
Funnily enough, the retro habit had me doing soldering and other practical stuff I've not done for years. I dismantled a new Star Wars Yoke, desoldered the trigger microswitches and replaced them with softer, less clicky ones, and I made an enclosure box for my Mame cab spinner because I didn't want to drill holes into the control panel, as I like the existing layout.

I repaired the split rubber skirt on a 1990's RC hovercraft I found in the attic too. Just need to get a better battery for it before I take it onto the nearby lake.
 
IMO Games have become too heavily focused around realism and/or utter time wasting as opposed to something you can pick up for a quick bit of fun.

Stuff like Achievements and Trophies serve no purpose other than to keep people playing a game they would ordinarily no longer want to play.
 
I find games nowadays cater more to human nature and addictions, rather than just having fun. Maybe because there is so much choice now. I've broken free of all the battle pass, skins, big numbers easy gameplay everyone wins kind of games now. Luckily there are a lot of Classic and Remasters coming out, and they are quite popular!
 
Well not all retro games are good though, and nostalgia plays a big part.
I prefer Super Mario Bros 3 to something like New Super Mario Bros U. The later obviously looks better, but ahhh those memories of the summer of '91 is what does it for me
 
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