Why Retro For You?

[Flack]

As people get older, it's only natural for you to be drawn to things from your childhood. This explains not only my love of classic video games, but also my desire to become a professional breakdancer and have my birthday party hosted by Hulk Hogan.

For the Atari 2600, one thing I've noticed is that while the games I grew up with still seem really fun, the ones I never played seem simple and boring. For example, growing up I had Frogger, which I still enjoy playing from time to time. Freeway, which is a very similar game, seems very boring. Another example -- I was an Atari kid. I've since picked up an Intellivision, and although it had superior graphics, I just can't get into it -- mainly because I never had one as a kid.

So, this question is to those of you who didn't grow up with classic game systems -- maybe you were too young or weren't even born yet, or maybe you were just poor. It doesn't matter. I just want to know -- if you weren't into classic games THEN, what has made you interested in classic games NOW?

[tritium]

I never owned a 16-bit system. So I recently bought myself a genesis. I"m a real big fan of sidescrollers and 2d games, and I'm pretty bored with 2d platformers. I've been able to finally play some good 2d action. The graphics are good, though I'm sure they could be better now, Sony killed the freakin genre.

-Tritium.

[MarioAllStar2600]

So many different reasons.

When I first started collecting NO younger people were really into classic gaming. I think I was 11. I started because of Dig DUg in an arcade.... but back on topic.

I was never the best at video games. I wanted something a little more simple that I wouldn't get bored of at first. So I bought a 2600 with like 30 games. I played that more then anything then, and was getting alot of my friends into it to. I was better at the games I guess. I just found them more appealing then what I had for newer systems.

The more 2600 I started buying the more I researched. I found history of the games to be intresting. When I first read about the ET landfill I was amazind, I think I told just about everyone I know.

I rember at CGE 2k1 I said I was only sticking with the 2600, and I didn't want to branch off. That didn't last very long. I started getting into all systems just cause 2600 was starting to get a little old.

Then I met tons of great people and made lots of new friends. That got me more involved on these boards and wanting to go to more events.

I got hooked cause of fun games, and intresting History I guess. Now I am in it for fun games, the love of collecting, history, and all the friends I have made in the past 4 years.

[Aboliax]

I'm 18 now, I grew up in one of those families that didn't allow games because they "fried the childs mind". They didn't have a problem with Game Boy though. Then my brother came along and everything changed. After he got interested in gaming we got a lot more consoles (Playstation on mostly). The only real retro ones I have though are: SNES (I got this plus 9 games for MegamanX5 complete!) and GB. The SNES is quite a stretch I know, but the Gameboy is getting to be antique. I had around 60 games when I decided to start collecting. I'm up to about 90 now, I've been focusing mostly on rare games and systems.

[Dahne]

Nostalgia, of course, and the fact that my eyes are frigging retarded or something. I cannot understand 3D space. I can play and enjoy 3D games, but only with much difficulty, a lot of fighting with the camera, and the pervading sense that I can't see. 2D games are much more comfortable.

[Promophile]

Personally I never owned an Atari. I'm currently 18, so it was a little before me time. I got my first nintendo when I was 4, and I beat mario 1 at 4 years old. I love the nitnendo, but my favorite retero systems are SNES, Saturn, and Genesis, in that order. I love the SNES just because of the insanely good RPGs on it. Breath of Fire 2, Earthbound, and FF6 are the three best games I have ever played to this day, and there's no way you'll change my mind :P . I totally understand how the games you DIDN'T play as a kid seem boring. It could just be that you didn't play those as a kid BECAUSE they were boring, or it could be that the Nostalgia is what you like the most.

[punkoffgirl]

I was brainwashed by aliens.

[Ed Oscuro]

I play games that I like...I have no time for games that suck.

Games that don't suck might happen to be "retro," so...your guess is as good as mine.

I prefer the term "Golden Age," even though (especially because?) that term's meaning is defined differently for different people (me: Golden Age = Every Age!)

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I'm going to watch this thread for the first instance of "Because Earl told me the Odyssey2 was SO COOL! Man, what was I thinking?"

[Ed Oscuro]

But I already KNEW the O^2 was cool!

LOL

[racecar]

to relived and(corrected/rebuilt) my childhood !!

[Raedon]

This explains not only my love of classic video games, but also my desire to become a professional breakdancer


:eek 2: Wow.. I thought I was the only one. Someday.. Someday...

[SegaAges]

When I was young, I was too young for a 2600 (I am only 21 now). I started on the NES, but we were too poor to afford many games for it. I really enjoy the SNES and genesis, because by the time they were in the household, out family had enough money to actually have games for them.

I do remember one game for the SMS. I don't even remember the name, but it was the only game we had besides hang-on. It was a card game (as in the credit card sized games) and was called haunted castle or something like that. You went around some castle and it was a 2d platformer.

I am not more than retro, I am more into everything. Check my sig for details on that. I have around 50 ps2 games just for the fact that it came out before the cube and box. I know, I need more retro and it is way cheaper to get more retro, but like I said, I am into it all.

I still need a complete sms and my haunted castle game and I will be set.

p.s. - I looked on the dp online guide, and it didn't have haunted castle. Can somebody please tell me the name of this game. It is actually the only reason why I even want a SMS.

[Ed Oscuro]

I do remember one game for the SMS. I don't even remember the name, but it was the only game we had besides hang-on. It was a card game (as in the credit card sized games) and was called haunted castle or something like that. You went around some castle and it was a 2d platformer.
Ugh! I don't know if they were trying to cut Monster Bash down to size or what, but it's not the finest SMS game that ever appeared, to put it mildly. I think the Tectoy folks made a hacked version...well, there's a Brazil-hacked version around out there, ROM image or physical format I can't say.

[Duncan]

I do remember one game for the SMS. I don't even remember the name, but it was the only game we had besides hang-on. It was a card game (as in the credit card sized games) and was called haunted castle or something like that. You went around some castle and it was a 2d platformer.
Ugh! I don't know if they were trying to cut Monster Bash down to size or what, but it's not the finest SMS game that ever appeared, to put it mildly. I think the Tectoy folks made a hacked version...well, there's a Brazil-hacked version around out there, ROM image or physical format I can't say.

Hey, if he had fun with it, why worry? I've played a lot of games that supposedly "sucked" (Primal Rage and all of my Studio II games come to mind), but were a lot of fun when there weren't other options.

[Habeeb Hamusta]

Well. I grew up with an SNES, and I've loved it since the day i got it. That's why I'm collecting for it. I guess we tend to hang on to our roots.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hey, if he had fun with it, why worry? I've played a lot of games that supposedly "sucked" (Primal Rage and all of my Studio II games come to mind), but were a lot of fun when there weren't other options.
True. Opinions are... ;)

[JR]

Since Im brand new to the forum, Ill throw some input of why Im very interested in classic games now...

When I was young(still am young I guess at age 25 LOL ) I owned an atari that was bought for the family and I got hooked into it like crazy! KAboom, keystone Kapers, space invaders, Pac-Man, asteroids, etc. then I hit a lull in video games and money was very tight in my family but finally one easter we got to go get a NES, YAY! We got it way after the release but we got one and several games Zelda, smb1, 2, 3, Tetris, etc. I had maybe 12 games total. Then when I was older and got b-day cash I afforded myself a Genesis the square version. I only had about 8 games for that system, then as I got older the PS1, Xbox, PS2, and GC came to me. I always held onto the old consoles and every once and awhile Ide break out the atari for some oldschool gaming for the pure fun I get out of the games that I did when I was younger. Im very interested in collecting the classics to play probally cuz I drooled over some of the games I couldnt afford to get when I was younger. I was upset as a kid not owning a kickass system like a SNES, but I got one coming in a few days to bring back a feeling of my childhood feelings of being lost in games escaping reality.

Point of story:
I didnt have alot then, and want it now! I guess I was always a Gamer at heart, but didnt have the money that I do now.

BTW I kept all the old systems and manuals so all my classic systems are like new with manuals. I think I have all my atari manuals too!

I just played zelda 1 a few months ago to finally beat the game! I have no Idea why I didnt finish it when I was younger.

[Mr.FoodMonster]

I'm 15. I was really raised on the SNES, and Genesis, but I love classic games back from before I was born. I think my apeal to them is that a lot more attention was paid to gameplay then the graphics, and yet some games look incredible. The general arcady-feel (pick up and play) really draws me in. Graphics nowadays are paid way to much attention, and while a game may look INCREDIBLE, the gameplay could suck. So, that explains why I love my GBA, and why I have some of the 'worse looking' titles on my PS2 (Well, Doom3 on my PC was just a gimmic. But its sooo damned pretty!)

I'm kinda split, I love new and old. Older slightly more, though.

[MegaDrive20XX]

I'm 23, going on 24 next week..my first system was the Commodore 64 and a Coleco Mini-Table Top of Pac-Man, does that make me a bad person? :(

[Richter Belmount]

gameplay , im snoring to xenosaga but having a good time with ff6 , or classic games like galaga are plainly addictive

[Wavelflack]

"but also my desire to become a professional breakdancer"

Fuck yeah! There's a closed down movie theater (now a shoe store) here in town with Lucinda Dickie's footprints in the sidewalk. She's the chick from Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. May have been in the first movie as well..I can't remember.

My friends and I got our parents to excuse us from school and drive us up to the theater that day so we could meet her. I think I was in 5th grade at the time.

Now I'm going to fire up some Midnight Star... :D

[dethink]

i never stopped playing the old stuff, but the new stuff is just becoming less fun to me...even the seemingly undisputed "awesome" games of this generation just don't do it for me. the 'wow factor' was worn out for me by the time the N64 died. i'm selling the xbox and putting all of that towards neo geo MVS carts, since i never owned one back in the day (go figure, as an 11 year old in '91). i'm going back to 2D for good it seems...while GT4 and the DS are tempting me, using that money for a stack of NG or genesis carts sounds infinitely sweeter.

dunno, it seems anyone can "master" a game anymore. i've been playing stuff like ms pac man since i was a wee lad, and for the life of me, i can't figure out how some people are as good as they are. after roughly 20 years, i can make it to level 6 on a GOOD day. new games you can just gameFAQs your way to mastery. you can't do that with something like ms pac man, tempest, street fighter 2, etc. because they require a level of physical dexterity and rote memorization to master. there were just some games you were never meant to beat. now anyone who invests 40 hours of mindless sitting can master a game. there's no "in the zone" feeling anymore. the last game that did that to me was tempest 2000 on the jag...i didn't care if i was staring at vectors and colors, it was 10x more visually and viscerally intense than a "great" action game from this generation like ninja gaiden.

i feel the true art of gaming is almost lost at this point. as a youngster, video games definitely steered me towards a career in the art field. i remember being in awe of how someone could take something as simple as an abstract atari 2600 sprite and create those vivid works of cover art from something like that. despite the crudity of what was on the screen, you could construct that world in your mind. sure, that spaceship was a triangle on the screen, but your mind would fill in all the mechanical detail however you saw fit. now everything is spelled out in glorious realistic 3D that leaves nothing to the viewer other than to sit and stare. not to dismiss all the painstaking artistic work that goes into creating modern wireframes, textures, mapping, etc. but i think the hardware limitations of early machines forced a lot of creativity on the developers. would the original SMB have been the same, if we didn't have to suspend disbelief and believe that little badly drawn 16x16 sprite was a fat italian plumber?

i also think the fact that someone like a miyamoto could be tied to an entire project on all fronts back in the day, is what's hurting a lot of games now, and why they feel homogenous. they're now the vision of hundreds of people out of necessity, not necessarily the singular vision of their creator. if you threw one person in a room and told them to draw a picture, you'd probably either end up with a good picture, or a bad picture. if you threw 100 people in a room, and had them draw a picture, it would probably still come out pretty good - the people that couldn't draw would have sloppy hands in it somewhere, but the skilled ones would make up for it in other areas.

not to mention the art of a fine 2D game on all the levels one suceeds on still has yet to translate over to a 3D game, with precious few exceptions. the best 2D games were precise on a gameplay level not even the best 3D games can touch, and likely never will as companies aim to simply wow everyone away from the competition with visuals and superflous features to hit that "magic 40 hour" mark, and not concentrate on polish. the death of arcades and carts kind of killed the "short but sweet" game that no matter how many times you beat it, you just had to play over and over again to refine your technique.

CD's were going to be a boon to sound in games. no one bothers to compose original music anymore for the most part. just slap some redbook audio in there, and you're good to go! i think everyone will agree that something as primitive as the super mario bros theme has [oddly enough] aged better than whatever real licensed songs graced last years EA games.

dunno, i always liked the candy coated art of classic games. give me f-zeros over GT's. mario's trees with eyes and no expression are infinitely cooler than halo's bump mapped bark. if i want to see a car i'll go into the driveway. if i want to see trees, i'll step outside.

we're so bored we marvel at digital recreations of things we see outside. yikes.

[Algol]

I was a Nintendo fanboy as a youngster in the early 90's. I had all the Nintendo consoles at the time, but my favorite console was the NES, and I guess I just forgot about it when that console's games started mysteriously disappearing off the shelves. The CD based stuff didn't really interest me at all at the time, so I mostly shrugged off video gaming, although I didn't get rid of my old systems.

About the time I started high school, I learned that there were people who still remembered all the old consoles, so I dug up my consoles and started playing again. First for nostalgia and then for all the stuff I missed.

[Jasoco]

Sometimes Retro is just plain better than what's new. They don't make too many games as fun as a lot of the old stuff anymore.

[goatdan]

I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a "retro gamer," but perhaps more a "well-rounded gamer." I enjoy games that are fun to play, and some of my favorite types were games that were only made for older systems. A great example is beat-em-ups. I adore games like the old TMNT series and Maximum Carnage, Streets of Rage and so on. They just don't make games like that any more. Other than Zombie's Revenge. But seriously, if I want a good old dose of 2D beat-em-up action, I'll pull out my NES, SNES or Geni and play a bit.

The other thing that I loved in games that they don't do any more is have you work for a high score. Games are now built around completing them, and while that is fun to an extent, I always liked the feeling of improvement that I had when I finished Galaxian with a new high score or beat another level in Ms. Pac-Man to set a new record or whatever. When I play my Xbox, most of the games I have don't have that built into them at all. Because of that, I have to go back to the systems that had that.

There is some stuff that I do have never systems around for too, of course :)

[Gapporin]

A mixture of nostalgia, video game history, the ability to play something "new", and the chance to perserve something (even if it is just on a personal level). I've yet to get my hands on an Atari 2600, but when I do, I suspect I'll be a happy, happy boy. As for nostalgia, my parents were the one out of ten families to buy the kids an SMS instead of the NES. To this day, I still think the SMS is the superior system (but I still like the NES very much).


p.s. - I looked on the dp online guide, and it didn't have haunted castle. Can somebody please tell me the name of this game. It is actually the only reason why I even want a SMS.

I believe the game you are looking for is Ghost House. It is a Sega Card game.

[jezt]

Its all about the Childhood for me. It's kinda funny, but video games are what kinda brought my family together. Me and my brothers could be having a major fight and just take it out on each other playing street fighter on the SNES.
Also, coming from a lower middle class family, I like to own stuff I use to want when I was a kid. For example, I remember how much I wanted a sega cd when I was a teen. I never got one, but now I do and that kinda makes me feel vindicated. It might sound shallow, but thats another reason. :)

[RockyRaccoon]

For me. It's kinda a mixture of three things.

1.) as a kid my parents never allowed me to have a video game. Though my brother got to have an NES... and a Gameboy. Yeah. Favoritism. My friends all had something cool, like.. NES, or Mastersystem...or Atari. I vowed one day when I got older...I'd get all the game systems I wanted, and no one could do anything about it! Guess I made good due on that promise... I have a 2600, Super NES, Master System, Nintendo 64, Playstation, Dreamcast, Tournament 2000, Genesis, Game Gear, Gameboy...all the things I said I'd get when I was older...therefore beating out my parents from so long ago. Boo-yeah! In yer face
rents! I just need the NES....

2.) When I got to touch my brothers NES...I enjoyed playing it. Lots. Mario Bros 3 ALL THE WAY!

3.) I..just like the systems. I like the games. I'll continue to buy games for the systems I have...and try to get ahold of the systems I don't. I can't explain it...I just like Video games from all Eras.... new and old. I'm a Gamer all around and I LUFF IT.

Alright. there ya go.

[Fuyukaze]

The older I get, the more I realize how much the old stuff ment to me and how much I regret getting rid of it for new stuff. They say hind sight's 20/20 and its so true as I never realized how much fun I had on the "retro" games untill I found myself playing modern games and not having any fun. It's not that I didnt enjoy any of the games on the new systems because there were a number I did enjoy. The problem was it always felt like what ever I had acomplished by beating the game was basicly no more then killing time. New games almost feel like work instead of fun. Each time I fire up my NES and play Golgo 13, I have fun. Each time I do the same with my x-box playind Project Gotham Racing 2, it feels like I am working with all the medal chalenges. They may add to the difficulty and the time required to be perfect, but frankly I'd rather just be having fun then be perfect.

Then again there are games like Space Channel 5, Mars Matrix, and Sakura Taisen that still bring a smile to my face. They may make me work to enjoy it, but I still have fun working em.

[Push Upstairs]

Nostalgia baby!


Thanks to Flack i can now confess that I too wanted the Hulkster to host a b-day party for me...at Chuck E. Cheese.

Spending insane amounts of quarters playing Ninja Turtles...and whack-a-mole and Turbo Outrun.

[Dr. Morbis]

What Dethink said. Now THAT was a post!

Emulation and nostalgia were the gateway drugs that led me to dig out my old NES from the crawl-space. The play control and constant discovery of games that eluded my grasps back in the day are what keep me 'retro'. Initially I had no interest in the pre-crash stuff because it was before my time. Then one day I found an Atari 2600 in a thrift with about 10 games. I bought it more out of curiosity than anything else. When I got home I hooked her up and was testing out the games to make sure they worked when something magical happened: I put in Kaboom. Four hours later I finally cracked 1000 points, but I wanted more. I was addicted to that game (and I still am). I could not believe a game that was that old could be that much fun. Now I know better.

[whoisKeel]

I like games that are FUN, but also games that don't necessarily take up insane amounts of my time. I'm 24, in school, in work, in relationship. I DO have time to play games, but I don't want to sit around playing video games with ALL of my free time.

New games are fun (the good ones), but they require so much of my time, I just can't play them. I won't lie and say I don't stay up till 4 am playing video games now and again, but for the most part i just can't do that.

Also, nostalgia...i guess i do really prefer 2D games, and lately shmups. But really, if i didn't feel like i HAD to be FORCED to play a game for 1-2 hours, i'd be playing alot more new games.

[Flack]

Fuck yeah! There's a closed down movie theater (now a shoe store) here in town with Lucinda Dickie's footprints in the sidewalk. She's the chick from Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. May have been in the first movie as well..I can't remember.

Not only was she in Breakin' (the original), she also starred in Ninja III: The Domination. Puts her up there with Laurence Olivier in my book.

Anyway, back on topic. I think it's neat to see kids checking out stuff from before their time. The Atari 2600 came out when I was 4, so other than picking up a copy of "Abacus Wars", I think I remember just about everything coming out at one time or another.

[dethink]

What Dethink said. Now THAT was a post!

Emulation and nostalgia were the gateway drugs that led me to dig out my old NES from the crawl-space. The play control and constant discovery of games that eluded my grasps back in the day are what keep me 'retro'. Initially I had no interest in the pre-crash stuff because it was before my time. Then one day I found an Atari 2600 in a thrift with about 10 games. I bought it more out of curiosity than anything else. When I got home I hooked her up and was testing out the games to make sure they worked when something magical happened: I put in Kaboom. Four hours later I finally cracked 1000 points, but I wanted more. I was addicted to that game (and I still am). I could not believe a game that was that old could be that much fun. Now I know better.

harh! i need a column. ;)

honestly, i look at it this way - either way you're spending time in front of the TV. as long as it's good, who cares what it is? i just don't want it to run out of shelf life in a week, or require at least 5 hours of time blocked out of my day to get anywhere. honestly, the more complex things have gotten after the 16 bit days, the less i play them. i can still gleefully play through most old nintendo games from scratch. would i ever attempt another project like 100% in GTA 3? though i enjoyed it the first time through, hells no. it's just an exercise in tedium the second time around because of the way modern games are constructed - to be played through from start to finish with minimal interruption in overall start to finish progression...for at least 40 hours.

old games let you advance a little...then back to the beginning...then advance a little more...then back...i can still think of leaps in SMB in world 8 that are leaps of faith. where your hands sweat at the propect of not making it. if i get shot to death in GTA, i get to respawn at the hospital, and plod right through again...

[Vigilante]

Now I have the urge to dig out my "Learn to Breakdance" album.... last time I played that I was 12-13... and broke the tv... anyways

Honestly, now that I'm older, I don't enjoy the newest greatest ps2 stuff. You got ALOT of buttons,... 4, 8...like 8, plus directional and analog. Also ALOT going on on the screen, fast and furious. I can't keep up with all the action. RPG's like Final Fantasy...9? 10? whatever.. you can develop the characters with gem things it different directions... too complicated for me.

(btw, Final Fantasy 10?.. um, the word FINAL is in the title, shouldn't it only have been Final Fantasy 1, then that's it?)

When I sit down to play, after the kids are in bed and the house is FINALLY quiet, I just want to blow sh!t up. Give me a gun and a jump button, that's all I need in a video game. 3d rendering is not needed! If it's on the 2600, sms, tg16, pc, whatever, keep it simple and keep the gameplay. Most new games are just rehashes of things I've played a million times.

My 9 year old is like "Rachet and Clank is so much better then Batman Vengence bla bla...." it's a 3d shooter, pick up stuff, blow stuff up... been there done that... I'll be over here playing Commander Keen.....

[sharc]

i grew up with the 8-bit generation of consoles. i can play most games and base my judgement of them on what other games were around at the time they came out because i remember seeing what was around back then; i have no problem switching between f-zero and f-zero gx and enjoying them both as two great games, but each in a different milieu. i have serious problems getting into anything earlier though, simply because i never saw or had a colecovision or odyssey or anything when i was younger. i can dig the truly old-school games in a sort of abstract sense based on the gameplay, but it's very hard for me to really get into them.

what i tend to like about the older games is that there was less propensity to use anything as a crutch for the game itself - you could use stunning visuals to a degree, but not really enough to prop up awful gameplay. developers also seemed less afraid to make truly difficult games. there's a lot more potential for what a game can do these days; there's more potential to make uninteresting crap, but there's also more potential to make the kind of games i hoped would someday evolve. i don't think i'd want to permenantly go back to the old days, but i do think it's extremely important to preserve the history of gaming - future players need to appreciate what came before their time (wish someone had showed me an atari when i was a kid) and future developers need a grasp of the history of their art.

wait, what's this? oh crap, he's here!

*spills scalding hot espresso on promophile's avatar!*

-sharc

[slip81]

I'm into retro games because of nostalgia and fun factor. My parents had an Atari 2600 and I remember playing an enjoying that (from about ages 3-5, I'm just about 23 now), so I got my own and I still enjoy it, the games are fun. I have also always really liked all Sega stuff so I collect that too. I have a bunch of NES stuff, but lately I have been dissinterested with it, and I'm thinking that I'm gonna ditch NES and just do Sega, and some N64 and SNES here and there. I just get bored with NES to easily, except for certain games. The main reason I'm holding onto it now is cause I still have my original NES from 1986 and some of my games are original (meaning the same ones I bought when they were new) and they hold sentimental value.

I like all types and eras of gaming, and I think the main reason I like classic Atari and Sega is because sometimes I just want to pick up and play a fun game without embarking on an epic endevor, and retro allows me to do that.

[slip81]

(btw, Final Fantasy 10?.. um, the word FINAL is in the title, shouldn't it only have been Final Fantasy 1, then that's it?)

It got the name Final because at the time Sqaresoft was almost bankrupt and they put all their money into one last game (final fantasy). Thinking it would be their last, they put the word FINAL in the title. I guess they decided to keep it as a reminder of the game that put them back on their feet.

[Jasoco]

(btw, Final Fantasy 10?.. um, the word FINAL is in the title, shouldn't it only have been Final Fantasy 1, then that's it?)

It got the name Final because at the time Sqaresoft was almost bankrupt and they put all their money into one last game (final fantasy). Thinking it would be their last, they put the word FINAL in the title. I guess they decided to keep it as a reminder of the game that put them back on their feet.That's only ONE of the myths.

[Ed Oscuro]

That's only ONE of the myths.
I've never seen another explanation. Care to elaborate?

[TRM]

I had always been fond of the NES since I first played it. As the newer consoles came out, I just thought that the games lacked the appeal of the NES so I stuck with the tried and true console, imo.

Around 7th grade I became interested in the Atari 2600 and Colecovision, systems which have no nostalgia to me at all...I wasn't born when they were popular. I managed to grab an Atari 2600 with around 40 games for $30 around 9th grade...I just couldn't get into many of the games at all, except for Super Breakout.

However, the history behind the Atari 2600 is very interesting at times.

I've made a lot of online friends which shared the interests of retrogaming with me. I think as retrogamers, we don't necessarily like the same consoles (I don't care for Atari 2600, but I know that a lot of folks do) but we all have a common interest. Your Atari 2600 can be my NES, we can still relate our consoles.

[Sebastian]

I'm 16...and I have spend most of my life in Poland where (maybe this is shocking) PC gaming is much more popular than consoles. So personally I never saw an Atari untill maybe few years ago.

Well like I was saying - my gaming history was

A. NES (when I was very young)
B. PC (for most of my "gaming" years)
C. Playstation 1 (when I moved to US few years ago...and friends got me into consoles)

So why those retro games? Atari? Arcade?

The Answer is simple....my "gaming" years are behind me. I have no time for it now....High school, part time job, volunteering, clubs ...basically doing everything I can to get some money to go to college...somehow.

SO - when I have those 20 minutes to sit back and play I DON'T WANT TO SPEND IT on trying to figure out controls. "new school" games for most part complicated. Back in the day I had time for Final Fantasy, or Baldur's Gate...now I just want to ....sit down - play - finish playing. and retro is great for that

On the side note it is also great for multiplayer fun. Last year in my high school on the last "official" day of school my friend and i brought in Atari and games and played many of them in multiplayer (surround was a lot of fun) ...in the other room people had X-boxes contected and played Halo. While it took the "noobs" 60 minutes to even get the basic rules/controls of halo...it took them 60 seconds to get how to play surround. So slowly...people shifted from the Halo room to the Atari Room :)

I hope that helps you understand why Flack

[Jasoco]

That's only ONE of the myths.
I've never seen another explanation. Care to elaborate?I don't know the other story. But I know there are two. Which is true is beyond me. Frankly, I like this one. I think I saw it at AA. And I don't mean Alcoholics Anonymous.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm 16...and I have spend most of my life in Poland where (maybe this is shocking) PC gaming is much more popular than consoles. So personally I never saw an Atari untill maybe few years ago.
We forgot POLAND!!!1

...Nothing, I didn't say anything xD

Poland's sweet. A good chunk of my family comes from there.

[Sebastian]

We forgot POLAND!!!1

...Nothing, I didn't say anything xD

If thats a joke....then I don't get it O_O ....buuuut O....k LOL

[Jasoco]

We forgot POLAND!!!1

...Nothing, I didn't say anything xD

If thats a joke....then I don't get it O_O ....buuuut O....k LOLI'm not sure, but it almost seems a reference to Katamari Damacy. Star 7 to be exact. Poland. Where Penguins and Cows walk around with people and fish flop around on the shore.

[CRV]

I'm not sure, but it almost seems a reference to Katamari Damacy. Star 7 to be exact. Poland. Where Penguins and Cows walk around with people and fish flop around on the shore.

No, I'm almost sure it's a reference to the first U.S. Presidential debate. I think John Kerry had said something about not having enough allies backing the US, to which Bush retorted "Don't forget about Poland!". One of the things he was picked on for making such a big deal out of it...Otherwise, it's a big coincidence Ed should joke about forgetting about Poland.

[Jasoco]

I'm not sure, but it almost seems a reference to Katamari Damacy. Star 7 to be exact. Poland. Where Penguins and Cows walk around with people and fish flop around on the shore.

No, I'm almost sure it's a reference to the first U.S. Presidential debate. I think John Kerry had said something about not having enough allies backing the US, to which Bush retorted "Don't forget about Poland!". One of the things he was picked on for making such a big deal out of it...Otherwise, it's a big coincidence Ed should joke about forgetting about Poland.That too. I just saw it on The Daily Show. Wow.. Poland's popular tonight. LOL

[Sebastian]

well poor bush really has no come-backs - so he takes what he can get.... LOL

I guess thats the joke then

[Promophile]

http://www.youforgotpoland.com/