On Retro Gaming
There's a lot of nostalgia tied up with retro gaming, perhaps moreso than in other mediums (such as literature). The reason for this is perhaps that gaming is an interactive medium, whereas films, television and books are not. In fact, it could be argued that retro gaming exists entirely to fulfill the nostalgia of the games players from years past.
I say this because while many films from decades ago can be enjoyed by an entirely new audience, born after the actors in the films are dead, and the same can be said for books, it seems much less likely that a modern games player will be dying to play Space Invaders or Pacman. The strange thing about games is that they evolve much more than films or books do. Today, books are printed in essentially the same way they have been for hundreds of years. Films are still experienced in the same passive way as they always have been.
Games, on the other hand, have changed drastically since the days of blasting two-dimensional blocks of pixels from your location at the bottom of the screen. Virtually every game released today has 3D graphics, which are now starting to mimic reality with unnerving accuracy - even handheld consoles are catching up fast with current home console technology. Of course, the input methods for playing games has remained largely the same - a joypad, keyboard or mouse - with some notable exceptions. The EyeToy is one, offering a more direct and non-gamer friendly way of interacting with a game. Also many arcade machine inputs that are tailored for their specific purpose. Do the young gamers of today know where many of the ideas and genres floating around in the ether of the gaming universe came from?
More to the point, do they care? I wonder if the PlayStation generation would gawp at the idea of playing a game with less graphical capability than their phones. Maybe not, but I bet the ones who've played games from the days of the SNES, or NES, or Atari 2600 would perhaps be more willing.
Of course there are still 2D iterations of 3D blockbuster titles (on mobile phones, mainly), and these prove popular. So perhaps there is a willing to try older style games. Perhaps 3D doesn't have the strangle-hold over the gaming world that it seems to.
I raise the point simply because video games of old are passed over and forgotten, unlike the oft mentioned books and films (and yes, there are many many books and films that have been forgotten). They occasionally reappear in the form of best of style collections (Namco Museum et al), but I wonder how many of those who by them are old gamers looking to rekindle their gaming youth? The word 'retro' is never mentioned when you pick up a copy of a Jane Austen novel, or a film from the early 1940's or whatever, yet it is applied to games that are only just 25 years old or less.
Perhaps this is simply because games are so closely tied in with technology. As the march of the silicon chips increases, so newer and more impressive looking (though not necessarily good to play) games are released. And when the next generation comes round, you can forget all the games you played a year ago.
I will go on playing and collecting retro games, of course, because I have played games from an early age and their is a certain nostalgic pang when I see an old favourite again. Though it is equally disappointing when that old favourite turns out to have been a pile of cack all this time.
Maybe with the advent of the X-Box Live arcade, games from the past - or game styles from the past - will become more readily available to the new generation of gamers. I sincerely hope so.
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