Remember the days of blowing the dust off the cartridge so
the game would work? It gives me that wistful feeling.
I played a lot of video games as a child. The earliest
gaming memories I had were playing Sonic the Hedgehog on The Sega Master System.
I remember how I'd spend many hours trying to complete every game my dad gave
me with my sister. We played games like Alex the Kidd, Ecco the Dolphin and
Wonder Boy to name a few.
I received a Game Boy from my parents. My sister got Pokémon
Blue and I had Pokémon Red. We spent countless hours playing and trading each
other Pokémon. As we grew older we would get all the other gen Pokémon games — she got
Silver, I got Gold and so on. After we both got Pokémon X and Y, I realized that I didn't feel the same sense of joy I did when I was playing Pokémon Gold
back in the day. Why do I feel like I enjoy the games of my childhood more so
than current games of today? Don't get me wrong, I still love gaming and it
will always be a part of me, but there was something special about the old
days.
FemHype’s June talks about nostalgia in her childhood gaming
experiences:
"I’d be lying if
I said nostalgia wasn’t a huge part of the allure for me. However, I think the
retro gaming resurgence is due to much more than a collective yearning for the
sanctuary of our simple childhoods. When I look at the unabashed joy of retro
gamers, I think it’s due to stressing gaming as gaming first and foremost with
no strings attached, and very little gimmicks."
I agree with June and I still play my childhood games from
time to time, the repetitiveness of it still has its novelty. Maybe it's an
attempt to revisit my childhood and the happiness that comes with it.
June talks about the expansive retro gaming market and how
the internet is exploding with new content every day. She says how "Her
time was spent browsing through countless cartridges, discs, and forgotten
trinkets off Amazon and Ebay."
But why do retro games have great replay value? June
believes that the single player games in early years have better replayability
than games of today, although multiplayer online play is the modern day
equivalent. The storylines in older games relied more on atmosphere and
worldbulidng. They didn't have the best quality graphics of today to be able to
tell stories. They relied on exploration and explication of their worlds, which
helped enrich the solitary experience and furthered immersion for us.
June concludes that she would like to see a renaissance of
retro gaming:
" I would like
the resurgence of retro gaming to something like the boom in vinyl and
cassettes in music. It’s a community driven by a love of certain formats,
styles, and aesthetics. It’s not meant to replace contemporary gaming culture,
but rather, exists as a subculture within gaming that is surprisingly thriving
right now—a subculture which I’ve decided that for myself, personally, has more
substance to it than its contemporary counterparts."
The retro gaming subculture seems to be a larger and growing
interest by gamers old and new. Game developers have released titles that are repackaged
older games such as Atari
Classics, Activision Hits, The Sonic Mega Collection,
Metal Slug Anthology and Sega
Genesis Collection. I personally own the
Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection on PlayStation 3 to play some of my childhood
games and I even discovered some retro games that I hadn't even played before! I'm
all for the expansion of the retro gaming subculture and for retro games to become more
than just a collective memory of video game history.
This
Week in Videogame Blogging:
June's
article Retro Resurgence: Why I Stick to the Nostalgia Subculture:
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