The rise of the retro consoles

Any avid gamer such as myself will by now have noticed the massive rise in replaying and amassing a collection of the retro consoles and games that many of us grew up on.

What is the motives behind this massive breaking and looking in the rear view mirror from the technological juggernauts? Especially on the heels of all the new upgrades, virtual reality and new developers in the news at the recent E3 conference.

I think a lot it owed to youtube and entertainment game reviewers such as AVGN http://cinemassacre.com/category/avgn/ or classic game room http://classicgameroom.com/ as the more notable mentions. These videos provide entertainment for the younger generations of games all while providing a recollection to those of us in our 40’s, 30's and late 20’s of the sheer frustration certain game series and titles provided us as kids. Perhaps it sparked a fire of “I wanna revisit that game and see if I can beat it now”

The collector side of this rebirth may consider purchasing reconditioned classic NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega Master system, N64, Gameboy and Playstation to name a few, as a way to fill up man caves and display a piece of what made us gamers who we are. It provides the chance to obtain hard to find game cartridges, artwork and collectible items.

Perhaps, in this world of advanced gaming, pre orders, DLC, season passes, new systems, system revisions 2 years later and an onslaught of so much technology that it’s good to step back to an 8 bit 2d game board with the same terrible synthesizer score looped over and over again. Perhaps in the race of visual and social gaming networking that we begin to lose the one thing that originally brought us to gaming. The “fun” factor.

At its core, video gaming was to be an outlet, a small challenge and fun. While the technology today is amazing, perhaps just going back to a wired controller on an old couch with your best friend playing Double Dragon or contra is a great reminder of our childhood and that sometimes you just need some 8bit pixelated therapy to cut through the DDR3, HDR and 1 TB that navigates the gaming industry today.

Thats just my view as a 36 year old gamer who grew up having Metroid and Mike Tyson’s Punch Out as my first games ever bought. Dust off those old consoles and go back in time. It’s well worth the journey.

Mark Schmidt.