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Late20s's avatar

Good write man. I think the reason we separate games into their own retro category is because the way they made them was so different, look at the budget of early snes games compared to gta five. Whereas with books they’re made exactly the same way, just one person writing them.

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Jamie Alston's avatar

You had me at "Chrono Trigger". Much like you, that game wasn't on my radar back in the 16-bit days since I was not yet aware of RPGs as a genre back then. It wasn't until Final Fantasy Chronicles released in 2001 in my late teens that I got to play CT, and boy did I love it!

But that also speaks to my reasons for playing older games (and eventually collecting for a time). I'm not chasing a feeling. Rather, it sprang from my desire to experience certain games I had missed out on when they were new. I was there, I just couldn't play them for one reason or another. There was so much from the NES/Super NES/Genesis (RPGs, all the Zeldas, etc.) that I wanted to see for myself, and they were still dirt cheap around late 2002. So I figured, "why wonder when you can just get the consoles and enjoy the games"? And that ended up leading me to write about such games several years later (1Up.com, RIP).

Another reason I wanted to play old games was to gain a better understanding of games I discovered later in the series run. Take Mega Man for example. I loved the Mega Man X series and Mega Man 8. But I wanted to appreciate the original NES series beyond just reading about it.

Granted, I did (and still do) get some nostalgic feelings when playing the games I had as a kid, but that was just incidental to how the human brain works. But emotion wasn't the driving force behind why I play older games.

Do I think younger people would enjoy these kinds of games? For sure! But some of it also depends on how modern games have shaped their expectations of what makes a game enjoyable or not. While playing Super Mario Bros. on an NES may still be fun, the lack of any ability to save may not hold their interest long term. I think of it similarly to how I enjoy watching the 70s Superman movie, but it's more for the acting than specifically for the special effects that would have been super impressive at the time it was released (still looks pretty good though).

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