@Hue and I had a brief retro gaming discussion over in the light guns thread the other day, which made me feel like it could be fun to have a general retro gaming thread going. So I figured I’d try to resurrect this one.
As an old-ish fogey, I’ve been playing videogames about four times longer than I have not been playing videogames, and have seen many systems and generations come and go. During that time you can’t help but become attached to some games more than others, and it’s inevitable that you’ll later think back on them fondly and want to revisit them.
That’s nostalgia for you, and I think no one is immune to it, and for me that was the original entry point in becoming interested in retro gaming. But it wasn’t long after I installed my first NES emulator that I began branching out to games I had missed the first time around, as well as entire systems I had never touched when they were new.
Once you start peering into the Pandora’s box that is retro gaming, you’ll soon find a whole new world opening up to you and with those come some questions. Like, orginal hardware or PC emulation? Or new hardware capable of playing original games? Or new dedicated gaming hardware capable of emulation?
And then there’s all the new vocabulary… ROMhacking, FPGA, retrobrite, framemeister, front-end, repros…
Point is, this is a big topic and hopefully there’s enough folks here that share the retro gaming interest that we can resurrect this old OT and maybe get a bit of a conversation going.
I’ve written a long enough post already, and then some, so I’ll stop for now. But if there’s a little bit of uptake (or maybe even if there isn’t) I’ll come back later and share a bit about my own personal approach to retro gaming.