Your personal "sweet spot"

[Cirrus]

First, a quote from "Iron Draggon":


We seem to hold onto alot more than just the games themselves when we get nostalgic about our personal golden eras, so there will always be people who prefer retro gaming over modern gaming, just as there will always be people who prefer modern gaming over retro gaming. But today's modern gamers are most likely to become tomorrow's retro gamers at some point. You just get to a point where keeping up with the latest trends becomes far less desirable than wallowing in the glory days of your youth, and that's when you become a retro gamer and discover which era is your sweet spot. I don't think there's any harm in it. Everyone has a different sweet spot, and everything older or newer than that just doesn't do it for them, that's all.

This was in a post about graphics in old video games, and he responded as such. It's such a true point. We all have our glory era that reminds us of more free and easy going days, where video games were really perfect.

For me, my "sweet spot" is the Nintendo Entertainment System. Heck, my "best friend" was usually whoever had the most NES games. Usually, that was somewhere around 10 or 11, and that was AMAZING. (Even if they were all mediocre games, it was still something to write home about.) Zelda, Mario, Crystalis, Contra, River City Ransom, Gradius, and so much more... that system set ALL video gaming standards for me. If I could have one system on a desert island, it would be an NES with those games mentioned above, and I'd be okay. I'd get to be a kid.

What is your "sweet spot", and why?

[digitalpress]

As usual, I am an anomaly. I have three "sweet spots".

1. The era where I first really discovered gaming in a broad sense - the early 80's when my friend Kevin and I would spend every Sunday together playing Atari 2600 and Intellivision games. I'll never lose the image of seeing kids playing outside thru the window while the two of us went at it in Fishing Derby or Flag Capture.

2. The 16-bit era was the first where I had lots of my own money to spend, and I went NUTS on Genesis, TurboGrafx-16 and SNES. This is the era where I did the most gaming and had the most time to do so. How I long for THOSE days!

3. The current era is going to be remembered for a long, long time. This is the era where we have frequent house parties and lots of guests, loads of party games and an uncountable number of memories shared with a cross-section of local friends and those made through this website!

[Steven]

Saturn because that's the only system I really ever buy games for anymore. It's my favorite system bar none... in fact if it weren't for this system I probably wouldn't even do much game playing these days to be honest.

EDIT: To the original poster I hear ya, man. 10 or 11 games owned waaaay back in the day was like "whoa you're hardcore!" Haha. I remember me and my bro amassed 18 NES titles by 1991 or so. Our friends treated us like Gods or something, heh... those were the good ole days all right.

I guess I also have a sweet spot for the NES-Genesis-SNES days, but not as much as Saturn.

[Xantan the Foul]

As much as I'd like to say NES... SNES style graphics have always had a special place in my heart.

[scooterb23]

Right now, my happy places are the Nintendo Gameboy and the Sega Genesis.

Gameboy games have, for the most part, clean and clear graphics and nice simple gameplay. That's why I'm slowly working on a complete collection. And since they were meant to be portable, Gameboy fits my "I get bored after playing a game for 20 minutes" personality. The Sega Genesis for me is really the perfect system because it still had relatively simple to play games (I hate reading manulas), and really nice graphics, without trying to be all realistic all the time. The games still looked like games. If / when I ever finish my Gameboy collection...Genesis is next.

[Iron Draggon]

WOW! How flattering! I inspired a whole new topic with that post! COOL!

Well as noted in that post, my sweet spot is definitely the 16BIT era, and particularly the Genesis epoch of that era. The Genesis was the system that really started it all for me as a hardcore gamer and collector, even though I had been a gamer and somewhat of a collector all my life, long before then.

There's just something magical about 16BIT games for me. Alot of that magic carries over into the 32BIT era for me too, but the 64BIT & 128BIT eras have much less of that magic and far more of something else that I really enjoy too, but nowhere near as much as the joy of hand drawn 2D!

I think that's really what it is for me, 2D games reached their golden age with the arrival of the 16BIT era, matured with the arrival of the 32BIT era, went into a nursing home during the 64BIT era, and went on life support during the 128BIT era. So I suppose that means they were in their teens during the 8BIT epoch of the NES & SMS, and in their infancy beginning with the Atari 2600. I guess that's why I still enjoy alot of NES & SMS games too, but I just can't get into playing anything before that like I used to anymore. I can still get into all the old relics too, but they just aren't the same now.

I pretty much grew up at the same rate as home video games did, so playing stuff like the 2600 is like playing with my old baby toys. I still have a degree of nostalgia and respect for them, but not enough to want to relive all that. Ironically though, I never owned a NES or an SMS, although I did want an SMS really bad. I just couldn't afford one as a teenager, or at least I couldn't afford to collect for it like I wanted to as a teenager, so during that time I collected card games and board games instead, which were a much more affordable hobby for someone who wasn't old enough to work full time yet.

But by the time the Genesis arrived on American shores, and really started to hit its stride when it took off running with one great game after another, I was 21, I had a very high paying job for someone my age with no degree in anything, and I was ready to spend it like it was going out of style on games! So that's exactly what I did, that's why my collection is so huge, and those were the best years of my life. So that must be why I still revel in that era like the very first time that I ever had an orgasm. It was the time of my life. And like I said, that seems to be what keeps us drawn to our sweet spots.

BTW, great topic! That other thread is great too, but this one is even better!

[Chainsaw_Charlie]

The Snes and Genesis

[suppafly]

I have a theory about this.

Most of the people´s sweet spots is whatever system they played in their pre-teenagehood years (or early teenagehood). I long for those days when I didnt have a job, and played video games after school until very late everyday...

In my case, it was the Genesis. I got mine in 1991, and I was 13 years old....

[pookninja]

mine are the nes and genesis.i had great times playing revenge of shinobi and ghouls and ghost,and playing two player on joe montana sports talk football and streets of rage.just hanging out with my brother and my friends,playing games and hanging out.good times.

[shvnsth]

mine would go from snes all the way to this generation

but if i had to be specific, prob psx/n64/dc

[Flack]

For me it would be the Commodore 64. Everyone knows about the C64's graphical and sound abilities so I won't bore you. For almost a decade the Commie was my gaming platform of choice -- the games were fun, good, and for those of us with black souls, free. To me, the C64 is the crossroads where graphics met gameplay.

[Aussie2B]

Maybe it's a bit broad, but I'm going to say the 10 year period of 1987-1996. That covers when I first got into gaming, pretty much all my favorite NES games, my teenage years of SNES, all the SNES and Super Famicom games I discovered later on, the beginning of N64 in my high school years, and then other cool stuff on Genesis, Game Boy, etc.

What's ironic is that my very top favorite games don't fall in that span. o_O They're all within the last 10 years, but once I get past those few games, the majority of my favorites and the majority of my gaming is stuff that came out between those years.

[Joelius]

My sweet spot has got to be the SNES era. Sure I was playing since I was a kid on the NES, but something about the SNES did a lot for me. Though I have to say it definatly has to be the RPG element of it. That's for sure.

[crazyjackcsa]

I would say the Last half of the 16 bit era with the 32 bit era. I didn't get into Videogames until the Sonic 2 Packaged with the Genny 2. I picked up the Saturn when Sega Rally was the pack in. That Generation and is all I collect. Don't get my wrong I love my DC and that got me back into gaming again, but it isn't my sweet spot.

[digdug]

I was consumed by the addiction of the 2600 and had amassed a huge library of 25 games (for that time period). Then I lost all sense of reality when the c64 came out. My best friend and I would go to computer club meetings copying games ( i know it was wrong but at that time I was poor and only 15). After amassing sometimes close to 50 games a weekend we would stay up ALL night playing them, eating pizza, BBQ chips and pop. Usually the first two classes of school we would just try to wake up from playing the games during the week.

Then came the amiga, and we continued the trend of copying games. However, it was the consoles of the NES, GEN, DC, N64, PS. We didn't copy these games but had part-time jobs and able to buy opposite games, so when we weren't playing one the other person would play the other game.

Now I am back in school (college) and he is working a full-time job and still we go out every weekend and buy games for the current systems. He didn't collect some of the stuff and I kept most of mine, and even bought some of his stuff when he was done with it.

I look at my collection sometimes and it doesn't remind me of all the games I have played but all of the good times I have shared with him and all the other friends I have made along the journey. It is truly a great hobby, we all have


Dig Dug

[GobopopRevisited]

While my experience with it was fairly limited... I have great memories of playing games on my Cousin's Amiga computer. The first Shadow of the Beast was one of the first games I played, and though they are insanely difficult... I always looked forward to visiting my cousin's house just to play it. That's one of the reasons I've just completely fallen in love with Psygnosis' games too, they had some AWESOME games on the Amiga. And I long for the day my cousin finally decides to give me his old Amiga disks. I deffinately consider the 16 bit era my "sweet spot". SNES, Amiga, Genesis, TG16...

[9c1lt1]

I gonna says NES and Atari 2600.

The NES is most memorable because most everyone in my neighborhood had one. I'd buy a game, finish it, and swap with friends for a few weeks. My friend bought a 4 score and 4 people would all huddle together and play World Cup Soccer or Iron Man Stewart's Off -Road Racing. Good times.

The Atari 2600 brings earlier memories. This is before I able to have a video game system. I remember seeing those silver boxes in Service Merchandise. It took me years to find out what system my next door neighbor had. I was 5. It had a blue colored menu screen. It came rushing back when I bought a Colecovision.

[frodo2968]

I have a theory about this.

Most of the people´s sweet spots is whatever system they played in their pre-teenagehood years (or early teenagehood).

Probably true for the most part. My first system was a SNES given to me by my cousin. And those games are still my favorites: Donkey Kong Country (my #1 favorite game of all time) and the Super Mario trilogy.

I never really got into the NES too much, because I could play the Mario games on SNES, and I'm not really into other NES games that much personally. Plus it was "dead" in a sense (don't take me wrong on that, I know it'll never be "dead"), and by that I mean that it was taken over for the most part by SNES for a while there. And then I bought a Genesis, and never really got into that...

So for me it's SNES and GBA SP, the latter due to the SNES games ported over.

[Push Upstairs]

16-bit for me...Genesis of course.

Upon getting my Genesis it kicked off an entire year of gaming excess and it was a great year that will never be equaled.

[crazyjackcsa]

I have a theory about this.

Most of the people´s sweet spots is whatever system they played in their pre-teenagehood years (or early teenagehood). I long for those days when I didnt have a job, and played video games after school until very late everyday...

In my case, it was the Genesis. I got mine in 1991, and I was 13 years old....

I'd agree, I think at that age you really don't have a lot of responsibility,you have a lot of time on your hands and you need something to spend your allowence on. I got into games at 12, I never played games more than at that time, I find these days I talk about games on message boards more than I play them.

[WanganRunner]

I've been gaming since the NES, but I'd say my "sweet spot" is the period between the release of Super Mario 64 and the release of the Gamecube.

So many good releases, all of my "very best games" are from this period:
SM64
Ocarina of Time
Xenogears
FF7
MGS
Pokemon on GB

[Sotenga]

The NES is certainly my Achilles' Heel. I'm biased towards it, what can I say? There are quite a few games that have had several versions, but I find the NES versions of such games to be the best (such as Contra to the arcade version and Battletoads to the Genesis version). Not only that, but I'm actually a sucker for the NES sound chip. In the early days, nothing was very remarkable, but then companies like Konami, Capcom, and especially Sunsoft used the sound to its fullest capabilities, and I was just floored with some of the tunes that I heard. I heart my NES so gotdang much. :kiss:

[Crush Crawfish]

The SNES is most definitely my sweet spot. There's no system I have more fond memories of than that. I fondly remember hanging out with my cousins playing Earthbound, staying up all night beating Chrono Trigger & Mario RPG, and the first time I laid on games like Mega Man X & Donkey Kong Country...hoo boy, nothing beats that feeling.

Nowadays, I love discovering the games I missed back then, great stuff like Spike McFang, Spanky's Quest, and the Ganbare Goemon series.

Ahh, My SNES, how I love you so... :love:

[lendelin]

The 'sweet spot' for most gamers (and also for me) is the era which pushed a gamer seriously into gaming, that means the first game experiences which can't be replicated like your first love.

For me that is the 8-bit era, in particular the NES.

From a more rational point of view I have to say it is the 16bit-era. I see an overarching development era from the beginnings to the end of 16-bit; the 16-bit times were the perfected pinnacle of gameplay (platformers, racers, adventure, RPGs, sports games) and how games were developed including basic conditions of game development. Not the most innovative times, but certainly the times of perfection of longstanding developments.

Since then we entered a new phase; a period in which a silent revolution is going on with the uncertainty where game development and the industry is heading:

At the root of all is the broadening and maturing of the socio-demographics of gameplayers; more money can be earned, and videogames become an accepted form of entertainment. The result of the success:

1) a heavy economic restructering of the industry. The entrance of economically powerful companies as hardware manufacturers and developers/publishers which battle over the living room of the future which goes way beyond videogames. A professionalization of economic structures at the micro- and macrolevel which are the same like in any other successful form of entertainment. (synergy, game development, licenses, the realtionship between smaller and bigger companies, to name a few)

2) Game content and gameplay is changing. We live at a time in which longstanding basics of gameplay and content are questioned and slowly abandoned. 'Platformers' in 3D are an anachronistic part of the past, the range of game content form 'light' to 'darker' themes (including social issues) will become similar to the movie industry and literature, and the integration of refined stories into gameplay (abandoning movie sequences) is slowly, very slowly happening with the emergence of professional scriptwriters for games and gamemakers who try to translate stories into gameplay.

The sweet spot for me is the present. It is an exciting time for gamers. I'm VERY interested in the past; but predominantly because without the past current problems of the industry and game development can neither be understood nor solved.

So, in stark contrast to IRON DRAGGONs opinion, I don't like wallowing in the past at the expense of new trends. New trends in the past were as exciting to me as are new trends of the present now. For me there are also no 'retro-gamers,' I could never draw a line between new and old when it comes to the fun playing games. I enjoyed the first Metroid as much as I enjoyed Metroid Prime. Everyone has certainly personal preferences, but the focus on certain eras or even the exclusion of certain eras (including the present) is a psychological problem: with the first intense game experiences, in particular as kids, we accept everything like it is and don't question it; later on we see change and it means for most of us uncertainty. Most of us don't like uncertainty and therefore change with age.

I can't help it, I like change. Stagnation is boring. I would be bored to death if I only played the same-type 16bit platformers over and over again. I want the new, I want the old, variety which the present AND the past delivers is the best.

[Snapple]

For me, it's the 16-bit era. Particularly the SNES, but it also includes Genesis and TG-16, etc.

I mean, I loved the NES. It was my first system. But when I got my SNES and my brother got his Genesis, I became obsessed.

And though I got into my PS1 and PS2, I'm still stuck on the SNES.

PS1 is a close second though.


It makes you wonder when the technology is going to plateau, and when it does, what that will mean for the industry.

[RetroYoungen]

I would say I have two: the NES era, which got me into playing and collecting, and the Genesis/SNES era, where I did a lot of my growing up as both a person and a gamer. I'll never forget seeing Luigi sprinting across the screen (my first game, my earliest memory. I was about two at the time), and I will always be a bit impressed by seeing just how fast Sonic ran from screen to screen, from level to level.

But, just maybe, I'll be so obsessed with handheld gaming that it'll become the next sweet spot for me.

[squidblatt]

Eighties-very early nineties PC games. I've never recaptured the feeling of just getting lost in the game. Infocom was in a class of its own, but I also remember many others fondly. Empire made me feel like a general waging an epic and desperate war, and thrills mounted with every casualty. Starflight was simply amazing; I still can't believe they managed to accomplish what they did on two 5.25 floppies. I managed to get ahold of nearly every Sierra 3d adventure published. Then there was Wizardry and the SSI Gold Box series. And Wasteland. That was a great game.

[tony_good]

Early 80's arcades, no question.

Roller skating rinks, pizza and hot dog joints, mini golf centers, mall arcades, hole in the wall businesses - they were EVERYWHERE!

Now with MAME I have my own rituals - like ordering pizza from the place I used to eat as a kid, playing Rush 'N Attack and Choplifter waiting for the delivery (those were the games the restaurant used to have). Or playing Yie Ar Kung Fu or Karate Champ before watching The Last Dragon to get me in the mood. Playing Punisher after seeing the film.

And last but not least, enjoying Alien vs. Predator as a game rather than the joke of a movie they tried to pass off.

[NE146]

Ditto. It's definitely the arcade for me.. but yes I enjoyed the 80's arcades of course, but the "sweet spot" for me and the place of the most nostalgia in my thoughts is the lines of Space Invaders machines when they came out. Either cocktail or upright, those things were everywhere and not necessarily in an arcade. It was that time.. pretty much the birth of the 'video' game mania as we know it when Space Invaders was the king. I was lucky enough to travel a bit to Hawaii, the states, and Japan just during that year so I got to experience it in several places and it was always the same. Pure Space Invaders mania. I love it 8-)

[jdc]

My sweetspot will always be the extremely lengthy and wildly popular 64-bit era LOL

I knew what video games were but had never been compelled to play them. One day a Genny-owning friend called me over to see this new Mario game on this new Nintendo system that had just come out. I went over to his place and he showed me this little plumber running around a huge castle on an N64. I was blown away by the 3D thing. I eventually went out and bought my own N64 the day that Diddy Kong Racing was launched.

I spent long hours over many years playing N64 games. The system appealed to me because of all of the platformers and adventure games that it had. It allowed you to wander around in crazy 3D worlds. Playing games by Rare was a highlight of being an N64 gamer. Still is. It may not have been cooler than the Playstation, but it was better.

It's the only system that I actually "collect".

[Sanriostar]

I too, pledge aleigiance to early 80's arcade. Because of Arcade games being far better than the home versions, if you got to play a Pac-Man or Tempest machine, that was sometime the highlight of your day!

But it was intriguing to see how abstracted an arcade game was when squeezed into a 2600, or Intellivison; it was the game, but yet it wasn't. I still focus on Arcade translations for old systems, and the thought of a new discovered proto of an arcade game gets my blood to rise.

[frodo2968]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man arcade machines. Mmmm.

[kirin jensen]

And I'm finally satisfyin' my O2 jones!!!! :D

[DTJAAAAMJSLM]

My sweetspot is the NES. I love tracking down and purchasing cartridges for this system since it was the one that started my interest in video games.