Holy Crap! Digital Press is Poppin!

[YoshiM]

Holy moly....there's some virtual faces I haven't seen in a loooonnnng time.

Zektor: I saw Joe at Midwest Gaming Classic in 2018. He looked pretty good and was doing alright. He laughed at the DP jersey I was wearing and couldn't believe my shirt was still intact after all these years! He's on Facebook and from what he tells me some of the old guard is on there as well.

[TonyTheTiger]

I feel like there's a point where people notice there's just not a whole lot left to say. A decade is forever in Internet time and you just kind of run out of things to talk about on top of the overall drop in popularity of forums as a venue for online communication in general.

[mailman187666]

I've been lurking for a long time, but don't post as much as I used to. This was and sometimes still is a great place to learn the ropes about old school game collecting. The rarity guide helped me out a shxt ton way back when. Kind of similar to what TonyTheTiger said; a lot of knowledge about gaming has been discussed and documented and google searching can net you a lot of answers. Classic game collecting in the mid 2000s, only so many people were doing it, so the information about it wasn't as abundant online. DP had the answers though. The classic gaming/collecting scene has changed quite a bit since then as well. Mostly just got way more expensive lol.

[calthaer]

I feel like there's a point where people notice there's just not a whole lot left to say. A decade is forever in Internet time and you just kind of run out of things to talk about on top of the overall drop in popularity of forums as a venue for online communication in general.

Kind of feels like this for me. Back in the 2000s, modern gaming was a lot more like classic gaming. The GBA was still a viable system, and even the Nintendo DS was pretty "classic". I have no interest in whatever Nintendo's new system is - I can't even remember the name, honestly. Switch, that's it, right? Most of my gaming right now is on PC, downloadable - Steam. I still have some old-school games to get to on my consoles, but it's few and far between.

There are just too many amazing games coming out these days to spend too much time on my retro systems, and I think my gaming tastes have changed. I'm more a fan of turn-based games, RPGs with good stories, and somewhat less interested in "twitch" gaming (platformers and whatnot). Part of that is the fact that the formula seems a little tired ("been there, done that"), and if I'm going to play any platformer, why would I play Cave Meatsplat Knight IV (costs only $5 on Steam) as opposed to running through Contra again...or trying to beat Contra IV for the DS, which I still haven't finished?

The other part of it is that the platformer formula has changed. I am not sure exactly how, but I have the impression that it's geared these days far more towards the "hardcore" twitch gamers. Ever since Cave Story, everyone seems to have these idiotic areas where there is a U-shaped tunnel of spikes and you have to use a series of mid-air dashes and controlled falls / jumps to get through it. Feels stressful; no thanks.

I'll stick with Civ VI, Skyrim, and some of the other games I've been playing over the last few months. But then - no one really talks too much about Civilization VI here, so...

I did re-play System Shock 2, and that reminded me of the time Ed Oscuro and...I can't remember who else? We went through it multiplayer together, sometime back in the mid-2000s. Now that was good times.

EDIT: I guess the other thing is that my personal avatar is gone. I miss it. I'm not sure it does or does not affect the frequency of my visits? But every time I do come back I do wish it were here. It lives on in Steam and Discord and other platforms, though.

[Aussie2B]

I feel like middle ground gaming has somewhat disappeared, especially in the indie scene, where it never really existed to begin with. Everything is either for the "git gud" crowd who want games to play like Kaizo Mario World or designed for younger gamers who complain about games being "Nintendo hard" even when they barely put up any challenge.

[YoshiM]

@calthaer: didn't you have that image of a bard from an old computer RPG (Bard's Tale I wanna say but I could be very wrong)? You could always add it back in.

There's always things to touch on in regards to retro, depending how expansive you want to get. Atari Age is still jumpin', so you can't say everything retro has been said. I'm wondering if people who used to frequent here drifted over there for their primary "retro" fix and don't want to do double post duty?

Personally I don't do The Facebook or dem dere Tweeter or the Insta-pot-gram or whatever. These ol' forums are specific with an audience that's into the medium that the forum is about. The stuff we post about, to a certain degree, stay here and can be found with a search. Can't say that with the modern social media stuff.

[calthaer]

@calthaer: didn't you have that image of a bard from an old computer RPG (Bard's Tale I wanna say but I could be very wrong)? You could always add it back in.

Yes...I did - that's exactly it. How do I do that? I've been trying to figure that out. Every time I go to select an avatar, it makes me pick from a gallery of pre-selected images. Maybe I'll give it a second look.

[Aussie2B]

If you go to Settings and then Edit Avatar you can select to use a custom avatar, either by entering a URL or uploading it.

[jb143]

Personally I don't do The Facebook or dem dere Tweeter or the Insta-pot-gram or whatever. These ol' forums are specific with an audience that's into the medium that the forum is about. The stuff we post about, to a certain degree, stay here and can be found with a search. Can't say that with the modern social media stuff.

I poke around Twitter a bit and one thing I've noticed is that there's a whole generation of people just now getting into retrogaming that havn't heard all the stories, and frankly, could use the education.

The other part of it is that the platformer formula has changed. I am not sure exactly how, but I have the impression that it's geared these days far more towards the "hardcore" twitch gamers. Ever since Cave Story, everyone seems to have these idiotic areas where there is a U-shaped tunnel of spikes and you have to use a series of mid-air dashes and controlled falls / jumps to get through it. Feels stressful; no thanks.

I don't remember Cave Story being that bad, but I just finished Celeste and its basically an entire game of absolutely nothing but that. The one plus is that games these days tend to have infinite continues, otherwise I would have given up after the first few tries.