Let me ask a simple question: Why do we play old retro games? Thousands of games are released every single month, why in the world would you stick to the old stuff? I have many theories why I play the old stuff myself but I was curious and I wanted to look and see what others thought about being a gamer that prefers old games. If you look and think about the following tweets below you might come to a similar conclusion to me.
As shown above in the tweets we can see that it varies. For the majority of people it’s nostalgia and the chance to relive the past. N64life uses it to complete the entire series. While I don’t share the eagerness to complete entire series of games I do sympathize with the people who want to experience the past.
For EnergyOfDragon1 it’s the ability to experience something that was a milestone of that time. For that individual it’s also about the character and sometimes modern games just simply don’t do that.
I sympathize with this attitude as it aligns with mine. Many things such as split-screen and just a general feeling of losing the ability to have fun with yourself anymore. When was the last time game allowed for things such as a large focus on couch co-op? Too many old games simply have cool mechanics that were only present for the one game that was produced and then the series flopped. I like looking at old games with weird mechanics that haven’t been replicated in the same way since and replaying them. Halo 1 was the only game to both have a dedicated health bar and a shield and the series hasn’t gone back to that system since. I think that it’s an idea that is ripe to be experimented with and something that should be attempted again for a different franchise.
In conclusion, the reason we play older games varies from person to person evidenced by the above tweet but there is some commonality between us all.
InRetrospectGaming 