Video game players looking forward by looking back

Retro games are gaining popularity as classic games reach milestones

Do you remember the first time you played a video game? If not, do you remember the first time you heard or saw someone play video games? Believe it or not, there was a time when video games used to be a niche thing. Now the kids that first got to play video games are older, and they miss how games used to be. This is where we get retro gaming.

Retro gaming, also known as old school, classic, and vintage gaming, is the playing of older generation video game systems that are obsolete or discontinued but can also be enjoyed using emulation through modern hardware. What is emulation? We’ll get back to that later, but first, why do people play retro games?

Well it is the grand combination of both nostalgia and the fun of a game. People like things that they know were good in the past. The classic gameplay of retro games makes it a timeless experience. Then there is the associated positive past experiences, connecting it with positive emotions.

Those who play retro games say there used to be a lot more passion in games. It feels that every new game is sent out only half finished because they can just fix it later. You couldn’t do that with older games. Those retro games used to take a lot more risks, were more creative, revolutionary, and challenging.

There is also a discussion of what counts as a retro game. The term retro means imitative of a style, fashion, or design from the recent past. So it’s difficult to determine what constitutes a retro game. People say only games as early as before 1990’s count as retro while others say the Wii counts as retro. Then there are some that don’t determine the term retro as a period of time but instead by whether it’s a 2D or 3D game.

Whatever you consider to be retro, there still is a massive problem with playing retro games. Actually finding ways to play them. There are two main ways of playing retro games. These two different ways are called vintage retro gaming and retro gaming emulation. Vintage retrogaming is when players actually track down the original hardware and equipment to play the games. This has led to people developing a hobby for collecting old video games and systems. A large problem with playing retro games this way is that some of these consoles and games can be fairly expensive and hard to find, limiting the access to these old games. It’s a fairly difficult hobby to get into if you don’t have an old game system in the first place. These video games and systems can cost up to hundreds of dollars.

This is where retro gaming emulation comes in. Retro game emulation allows a computing device to emulate a video game console’s hardware and play its games on the emulating platform like a computer. More often than not, emulators carry additional features that surpass the limitations of the original hardware. But without the games to play on the emulators, it’s useless.

That’s where ROMs come in, which stands for “read only memory.” ROMs are the actual games you use emulators on to play games. If it is a ROM of your own game then it may be considered legal but if not, using ROMs of games you don’t own is considered very illegal because it’s breaking copyright law. So these emulator sites are in a legal gray area. What’s interesting is that most game companies seem to ignore these websites and don’t complain about them. Most likely because it in no way harms their sales or business.

There is also an argument made that emulators should be allowed for the sake of preservation. There are those who argue that games should not be lost to time. As most older games are abandoned and lost because those who own those video games’ intellectual property don’t care about them anymore. The people who argue this believe every video game should be allowed to be played for future generations.

We also know that retro games are big business because of the selling of retro game consoles. Retro game consoles are new hardware of smaller recreations of classic retro consoles that enable you to play older games, usually pre-installed on the device. The most popular of these are made by the ones who own the offi cial intellectual property for these games and game consoles. For example the NES Classic Edition sold 2.3 million units.

This shows how big the market is for retro games and the profit that can be made from it. Companies like Nintendo use this to their advantage and sell classic retro games on their modern game consoles. Unfortunately they do not have each of their retro games easily available to play. Now what does Nintendo owe its success to? You could say it’s purely just nostalgia but who is the biggest market for retro games? That is the people who use emulators to play retro games. Meaning that a large part of the success and retro game interest is due to emulation.

The market for retro games continues to grow as retro games are being sold as something valuable to buy. Such as Nintendo’s Online Expansion Pack that gives access to retro Nintendo 64 games and retro Sega Genesis games. As well as Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration that is supposed to take players on an interactive journey through 50 years of video games.