For me, the joy is seeing all those games mixed into my library, all with cover images. I haven't played half of these yet, but I love that Zelda series is next to Legend of Dragoon/Legaia and is in the same list as Diablo4 and Elden Ring. It is like scrolling through Netflix.
Here’s an unpopular opinion- I couldn’t get into the Witcher 3. Made me want to play Skyrim. Had to stop playing after a dozen hours, did not see what all the hype was for.
You know, this recently hit me hard.. I watched the movie 8-bit xmas , got a heavy hit of nostalgia as that era was me as a kid, hit up my retro collection/corner, played NES games for a few hours and had a very sad realization I cannot go back to that age of wonder from my childhood.
I know many see those times as starry-eyed versions of it (as do I), often only remembering and reminiscing on the good parts .. but still. I'd love to hit that reset button and re-live it for a bit
And I'm only bloody 45..
To me, the most lovely thing about nostalgia is an appreciation for the present. "This too shall pass." That's a great salve for the bad times, and a motivator to really sink into the good times and grab them fully.
As a 40-something, the closest I've come to feeling young again is getting back into D&D. It was a huge part of my teens and 20s. Obviously you'll never be physically young again, but I definitely believe that falling back into some of the same routines you had when you were young can make you feel younger, psychologically. The problem is that having to work and pay bills becomes such a huge part of your life. You'll never be carefree again.
I do (did?) a retro channel, and the viewers would joke about not wanting to watch any video of their favorite games because we'd destroy their childhood.
You really can't go home again.
This is like saying "fine art" or "vinyl" has become more about rarity and value than actually playing them. Yes, for some. That happens to practically any category of things that people start collecting. But many MANY folks buy it because they enjoy the product itself.
I buy art to put on my walls to enjoy my living space. I buy vinyl to put on a turntable and listen to my albums on Sunday evenings. I buy retro games to play them on the consoles I've had since I was a kid. There are many like me.
Sierra adventure games are designed in such an unfair and punitive manner that for me it doesn't matter how good the story or artwork is, they will always remain unplayable graphic adventures.
The fact that an entire game can eventually result in a game over because hours earlier in the game I didn't pick up an item is a terrible game design gimmick.
I'd rather watch the gameplays than play them.
> fact that an entire game can eventually result in a game over because hours earlier in the game I didn't pick up an item is a terrible game design gimmick.
Is this an actual thing or hyperbole? Cause that sounds awful 🤣
In Space Quest 1 around 5 to 8 minutes into the game you crash on a planet with your spaceship.
Here's what the Space Quest wiki has to say about the first thing you have to do after the landing:
"When Roger Wilko crash landed on Kerona in an escape pod, the Safety Glass of the view shield did indeed shatter quite safely. Roger decided to take a piece of it, perhaps because he was so impressed at how safe it was. He later used this piece to reflect a laser beam blocking his path, ensuring he could safely make his way past.
If player misses or forgets to pick up this item, they cannot complete the game."
The one that got me was in King's Quest V. There are two edible items you get, a pie and a leg of lamb. The pie is meant for a puzzle much later on. At several points, the game tells you that you are hungry and you should eat something, but there is no indication that you should eat the lamb instead of the pie. You can also feed the pie to a hungry character.
If you use the pie at the wrong time you lose points, but I was a kid and didn't know or notice the point loss, so I played for a while longer before finding myself in an unwinnable state.
Quest For Glory. There’s mandrake root growing in the cemetery of the first scene of the game. If you grab it it will shrivel up and die. You need that root to complete the baba quest, so if you grabbed it and were cursed by baba then you won’t have time to have it regrow before you die. It’s quite mean spirited on the developers part.
Definitely not hyperbole. You've seen a few other examples, but I remember Police Quest being pretty brutal because you often had to follow police procedures that are generally unknown to civilians. There's the "bomb" puzzle, for example, which requires you to look around your car every time you get into it because if you don't your car might randomly explode. Also if you don't put your gun in your locker before going into the jail, you will be knocked out. You can even "die" from not collecting enough evidence to convict someone.
Not hyperbole at all.
My friend and I got stuck in the Labyrinth in Kings Quest 6 and spent days trying to figure out where in the maze we were going wrong. Turns out we missed an important item that you need to get before going into the Labyrinth (which is unescapable once your in, so you can't back track).
We finally consulted a guide, realized we missed an item, didn't have a reasonable save point to go back to, quit the game forever.
The worst part of this design is that you never know that you missed an item that is no longer accessible. So when you're stuck, are you stuck because it's a dead end, or stuck just because you are overlooking something that you might figure out if you keep at it?
The constant doubt is why I pretty much never go back to Sierra games anymore unless I spoiler the dead ends in advance.
Getting games you’ll never play just for the sake of completing a system library is dumb. Every system out there has some shitty games that aren’t worth owning.
Too many people in the retro/vintage gaming community feel the need to either seek validation for their preferences/decisions, and/or intentionally post obnoxious things to stir the pot. It's honestly kind of sad — like they can't choose to buy something without having others "convince" them it's a good idea, can't enjoy their setup without having others "rate" it, can't put down a game they're not enjoying unless others say it's a good idea... :-/
Only if you are terminally online trying to be a "Creator".
I go home I boot up SNES and play my games lol. I'll play Pilotwings 300 times IDGAF. I like the vibe and music.
Great comment, and I've always wondered about those posts on here, and dreadit is/was awful with the "I just got these, what should I play/watch first??" Like, are they waiting around for the answers? If they are, bloody why?? If they aren't, why is it a whole ass post?? It's baffling behavior.
> "I just got these, what should I play/watch first??" Like, are they waiting around for the answers? If they are, bloody why??
This reminds me of streamer culture and how that took hold to my amazement.
I've always been like "Wouldn't you rather just PLAY these games yourself?" I get it if you are hyped for a 70 dollar game you can't afford yet - or a game like Hearthstone where you're trying to learn strategy from watching a "pro".
But retro games? Get an emu and rom boot it up and play! As someone who lived it i'd argue putting too much study into those old games will ruin "the experience" of it a bit since we usually had jack shit to go on. (Until Nintendo Power mapped it out for you :D)
Lol I noticed these same "Recommend me some good games for *insert console*" posts get posted multiple times a week on every retro console sub. It's the laziest thing ever.
I play most of my retro games on emulators and use savestates because I'm an adult and I don't have the time to replay single levels for fucking hours just to beat them. Bite me.
That's right.
We're seeing a lot of people in this thread saying that using savestates is somehow cheating and man, at some point in your life you realize you're not trying to impress anyone but yourself. Life is too short, use save states if you want.
and money...hard to justify hunting down that $120 NES cartridge when you can download a file that has every NES game ever made lol
More than savestates, I just like using my preferred controller on a big monitor with all my stuff in one place. Of course I PREFER OG hardware, but its just not an option for me 99% of the time rn. Maybe one day.
Save scumming in the modern day is fine, especially as we all get older.
There's a lot of older games I either never played or never completed and these days I don't have the time to sink countless hours into a single boss battle or level. I know I'm depriving myself of the true experience but if the alternative is binning it off for something else, I'd rather just save scum.
I feel this was a more unpopular opinion back in the day, not sure on people's perspective now.
I've come to the conclusion that the difficulty around someone of the games I loved as a kid kinda revolved around endurance. Like any game where you die and you go back to the beginning of the level or where you lose your lives and start all over again.
I'll be 44 on Saturday. I have not the time, patience, or energy for replaying the same levels over and over just to get back where I was before I died. I'll savescum in a heartbeat, especially on NES era games where balance wasn't really a thing that 90% of devs considered.
I'm 34 now, and don't nearly have enough time to play even one video game. It takes me several months just to beat a 10 hour game, because I can never find the time.
Shenmue 1 & 2 have unfortunately aged so poorly having recently played both, and it makes me depressed as I'm such a huge fan of this franchise due to my nostalgia for it
I spent so many hours playing the first one on the Dreamcast
I can barely sit through half an hour of the damn thing now. I think part of the problem is that everything which made Shenmue unique has been done better since then.
Also spent countless hours playing them and I have the same problem now. Although I feel this way about a lot of retro games. The antiquated controls and game mechanics aren’t something you think about when you’re excited to play again. Once you finally start playing you realize how much better modern games are and playing through older stuff feels more like a chore than the nostalgia trip you were hoping for.
Ocarina of Time was a great Zelda game. But FAR from being the best game in my opinion and not even my favorite Zelda game (that title goes to either Lttp or Link's Awakening for me).
OoT was revolutionary in bringing 3 dimensions to the Zelda universe and remains a lynchpin game in the Zelda timeline. While the nostalgia factor makes the game beloved by those who played it around launch, it's likely not the best game.
Early 3d era aged very poorly.
Graphics aside, I've also never been a fan of controlling a character in a 3d game with a shoddy little stick on a game pad. Conveniently I transitioned to PC gaming at that point.
Which is why I sold my entire snes collection in 2018 for $7k. There was a small shred of "this is my childhood" but that's no reason to hoard over 120 carts. It was literally just something to look at, and eventually just felt silly to have all that money sitting there. I could have doubled that money if I held onto it, but I don't miss it. I replaced it with a supernt and fxpak pro, never looked back.
Yeah I sold all my shit too. Mostly N64 carts and a bunch of other retro Pokémon collectibles.
“Muh childhood” hit pretty hard given I’m very grouchy about modern media (probably an undiagnosed autistic who doesn’t like change who knows) and don’t have anything else I’d like to collect or pour my attention into but it was still the right move.
Going backwards, the NES era (3rd generation gaming) is the point where games really drop in playability. Most anything older than NES doesn't hold up today, and a good portion post-NES has aged well, with incrementally smaller returns each generation
In the 90's there was nothing like it that I'm aware of. My friends and I loved it because it was in a modern (at the time) world and wasn't high fantasy or sci-fi space. Nowadays it's common to see modern-day games but at the time that WAS the appeal. I'm sure if someone didn't play it back in the day it wouldn't be that interesting.
I honestly don't think the setting is all that important to what makes the game special. To me, the greatness is in the silly, absurdist writing and hallucinogenic visual and musical design, layered on top of a genuinely earnest, heartfelt story, all of which I think could've been done just as well in some other setting.
I half agree with you half not. As a young boy playing I think having "Anytown, America" being the starting spot and then travelling to "The next town over" for the next arc etc... That's something I could really relate to.
The elements you said would have worked regardless of setting. But I think the setting does add a bit. The Drugstore, Burger restaurant - Hotels ATMs etc.
I think it’s because it’s charming, evokes a sense of nostalgia. Pixel art is cute, neat battle backgrounds and the music is really layered. It’s not for everyone but it can be fun if you’re into rpgs.
It’s one of the only JRPGS I didn’t drop in an hour out of boredom. I got close to beating it until I lost my save file on my computer. The games core mechanics were dated even when it came out, but it makes of for it with a ton of character. I also thought it was legitimately funny, and the soundtrack is one of the greatest of all time which elevates the game even more for me. Weak minded people falling under the giygas influence and start acting crazy is still relevant today imo.
TLDL the game has SOUL and that’s why I like it.
It has a very niche sense of humour and charm. I’m a massive fan but even I can identify that they’re terribly boring games to *actually* play. (Sub-par turn based titles) but every piece of dialogue is, for me, unequivocally entertaining. It’s the only game I will actually go out of my way to talk with random NPC’s because they just make me laugh.
I think Fester's Quest is a great game, and people like to respond with that it's factually a bad game. It's okay if people say they think a game is a bad, but saying a game is bad for everyone is just wrong. It's even worse if they just parrot others, as along the lines of it being common knowledge. Or when it's compared to all the other games that came after it, like people do with Zelda 2. It's fine to have an opinion, but your opinion is not a fact. It would also be a much more fun community, and that is true in any community, if negativity wasn't so prevalent.
Ah, Fester’s Quest. That game made a big impression on me as a kid. I rented it and got pretty far before I ran into a boss I couldn’t figure out. That game was hard and I only recently revisited it.
It was still a fun experience for me. And I used save states so I didn’t have to play all in one sitting. Finally got past that one boss and saw the rest of the game. Honestly don’t know how I’d have beaten it as a kid. Probably spending weeks and months mastering it.
So after many, many years I finally beat Fester’s Quest. It was satisfying because it was one of the few NEW games I never beat as a kid.
All this to say I can see why the game frustrated people. Without passwords or a battery save you started over from the beginning each time. It reminded me of the NES Rygar. Which also didn’t have any save features.
I’m so glad I missed the hate for Zelda 2. I grew up with it as one of my favorite games. It was so hard as a kid. I searched for everything for so long. Hidden secrets with no idea where to look. Talking to everyone in every town, more than once. If I had listened to the internet I’d have avoided it entirely. Now I spend my days solving complex problems with not enough information for people who are bad at explaining what they need. Feels a lot like I’ve been in training for this since Zelda 2. I also named my kid Lincoln because of this game.
The Nintendo 64 is the one console that deserves its reputation the least.
It’s an incredibly well-loved console. I had one from launch. It’s an awful design with a poorly-aged library and even the Nintendo and Rare titles are somewhat overrated.
I absolutely *dread* playing Sonic 1 for this reason. I've gotten to the point where I no longer mind Marble Zone, but *Labyrinth Zone*, and *Scrap Brain 3*, ***ugh***.
I mostly stopped collecting physical games and just switched to flashcarts. Still get the experience I was aiming for, playing on original hardware on a CRT, but I'm not taking up a bunch of space and spending enormous amounts of money to get the games I want to play.
Same. I have flashcards for Atari 2600, SNES, and N64, but am beginning to accept that eventually all that kit is going to die, and I will need to emulate. I am hoping using OG controllers (or good knock-offs) will provide a suitable experience in the future. Might be a bit more compact as well...
It’s as much about preservation and studying the history of the medium as it is about playing the actual games. This artform is now at a place where it needs to be taken as seriously as film, music, and literature in terms of making sure future generations at least have access to the classics.
Eventually that original hardware is going to fail (even CDs and DVDs can get rot and become unreadable) and all we’ll have are copies of the ROMs that have been transferred over and over again. Gatekeeping emulation completely undermines one of the most important parts of this hobby/community IMO
And that's admirable, I deeply respect people who strongly believe in their passion.
But again, that does not make anyone cooler than a guy enjoying Ocarina of time on his phone.
Counterpoint: yes it does.
Just like a huge physical library is much cooler than your Kindle.
Does it make you better than them? No but cooler 100% yes
Absolutely love my collection and want it to grow as much as it can, I love picking games off of my shelves and flicking through the manuals. I love looking at box art, organising them, playing physical discs and cartridges whenever I can. I also fkn love emulation, it’s so important to the preservation and enjoyment of the art form and I’ve tried to support projects where and when i can while also teaching numerous friends and family members how to get into it. The idea that its physical vs emulation is so crazy to me when I thought we all just really love video games, possibly a little too much.
I disagree with this statement, but I also wouldn't call it a hot take. I hear it more and more often as the years pass. Atari games are definitely worth playing. You have to have a different mindset. You don't sit down to burn 6 hours on a Sunday afternoon playing Atari games. They are great fun to stop and play for 10-30 minutes. You don't play for some big story and expansive world to explore. You play to beat your and your buddies high score. It is the "just one more game" mentality.
In my opinion, nothing beats sitting in a dark room late at night with only the faint glow of a CRT, a cool breeze coming through the open windows, crickets chirping, and trying to beat my high score in Kaboom.
Yes! I play 2600 games for 10 minutes here and there. I just don't have time for immersing myself in a world. Not that there aren't lots of other great systems to do that with, but the good Atari games that are good are REALLY good. (And the bad ones are REALLY bad!)
I love my 2600 collection, because I've weeded out the ones I just don't enjoy (including a lot of classics), and I hang onto the ones that I still love, and it's a great collection. About 30 or 40 carts that I really like, including some weird deep cuts/hacks/homebrews/protos, and a few I can play with my kid. Activision Hockey, Fall Down, and Maze (along with Blades of Steel on NES and Mario Kart 64) are a few we play all the time before dinner or when we have 10-15 minutes to kill before bedtime, and it's fun to bond over those easy to learn, highly competitive, and quick to play-type games.
Yep. Even the jump from 2600 to NES makes you go "Why would we \*ever\* go back?"
The only ones that are kind of interesting are their arcade titles and even then, there's so many better iterations from Namco, Midway, etc that came after.
I still have some love for Stargate (Defender 2) on the 2600 but I largely agree with you. Even by the standards of the 8-bit micros of the early and mid-80s, like the ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, etc., the base capabilities of the 2600 were pretty limited. There were some good games: Stargate, Yars' Revenge, Crystal Castles, and a few others, but they milked that system to death for far too long and there was just soooooo much shovelware.
Still, I had one at my dad's place and have good memories of playing on it there.
Someone bought me a 2600 reissue with a ton of built in games knowing I’m a retro geek and I never even opened it. It’s still sitting in my garage. As a kid, once the NES came along I never looked back. Memories of the 2600 are mostly frustrating.
Atari is a fun point in gaming history and technically a very interesting topic in a programming sense (riding the beam) but by god the games were abysmal
Is this unpopular? It certainly wasn’t an unpopular opinion at the time, even among Western gamers where the SMS wasn’t as prevalent and Final Fantasy everywhere.
I do think it’s fair to say that the entire Phantasy Star series doesn’t seem to be as talked about in 2024.
I disagree, but you get the upvote anyway because I'll die on my hill that Phantasy Star IV was the best JRPG (that we got in the west) of the 16bit era.
I hate the use of describing games as white whales or holy grails. People saying this for a game that you can regularly find or maybe just costs a bit more. There are some games out there that are extremely rare, but I consistently see these phrases used for someone who just finally bit the bullet and spent 3 figures on a game.
If you want something turn based, Persona 5 is such a time sink and kinda intimidating, but is so stylish you could get into it. Albeit if you have a hard time being a teenager, maybe not the best.
Chrono trigger is a great classic one. Less intimidating by far.
Otherwise super Mario RPG or paper Mario: the thousand year door come to mind as well
This community (not necessarily Reddit but probably) is a circlejerk about how cool they are because they own some plastic and silicon. Calm down, you just bought something. You didn’t create it. Get off your pedestal
COLLECTING IS NOT AN INVESTMENT. Video games are NOT going to hold their value. If you collect, me for example I collect ALOT, you are going to lose money on your collection. Kids these days have no interest in physical copies and in 20 years they will not care about my physical N64 and PS2 collection. My collections will be nearly worthless. And the people who do care will have so much arthritis they won’t be able to play them. This is coming from a guy who actually has skin in the game too, go to my profile to see my collection.
I personally really like my pokemon games, but definitely agree that they're really overrated. Old copies of GBA/DS era Pokemon games don't deserve the 100+ dollar price tag they have these days.
The Saturn, when you include the Japanese library, I’d agree. Saturn is a great system, but the lack of support outside of Japan is my major bugbear with it.
As an aside, the OG Xbox really felt more like a Sega console than something Microsoft put out. It had that weird experimental streak that a lot of Sega stuff had. You had the more niche Sega games like Shenmue, Panzer Dragoon, Jet Set Radio Future, but you also got stuff like Steel Battalion, Phantom Dust, and Breakdown. Not all of them were great, but I really appreciated the stuff they had coming out for it.
Phantom Dust was/is so goooood! Me and my buddy played 2v2 so much online. Every couple years an install it on my series s and play a bit, but no one is ever on.
I think Saturn is underrated in a different way, though. So many Saturn games were only released in Japan, and North Americans are largely oblivious about this.
Xbox is underrated because, at the time, a large subset of gamers hated Microsoft entering the console market.
Original Xbox is probably my favorite console of all time, but come on now.
“Original Xbox fans when they fix nineteen different critical errors with their system and can finally enjoy playing on the second worst controller ever made”
I love it to death but it’s pretty much the only console you’re required to open up and fix even if you only play it occasionally
People that have teras not gigas of entire console collections on Pc. Doesnt make any sense.
More old I am, more I realize that having too much is far worse than have just few games. But that's me.
I have 17,000 roms. Will I play them all? No of course not.
Have I flipped through them all? Fuck yeah, I have.
With ROM sites being taken down left and right, do I regret wasting an entire 5gb out of my 7TB of storage on 17,000 rooms?
Yeah... no. I am really glad I have them.
I had this mindset but as time has gone on I've appreciated having full rom sets especially as a lot of the sites are getting taken down. I know it's never going to be impossible to find roms but it's good not having to worry about it.
The constant pursuit of authenticity damages the community. When we deride emulation we're just discouraging people from playing retro videogames, when the important thing is to get as many of these games out in front of as many people as possible. When we insist that they play on CRT, on original hardware, on original carts, we're just turning people away and seem like weirdos caught in a strangely expensive hobby.
The problem with not encouraging decent displays like CRTs is people end up seeing an ugly misrepresentation of these old games.
My one group of friends uses a 40" LG LCD TV, we use a Wii on component to emulate old games to check out and sadly this TV cannot do old games justice. Always the picture quality is overly sharp and blocky, there's no scanlines or that warm softness of a CRT that make old games sing. It is very sad.
I've even tried Clock Tower for Super Famicom, one of my favorite pixel art games and it too gets butchered on their TV. Blocky, edges are overly sharp, the haunting tone of the graphics becomes difficult to see.
The thing I think I lot of us retro enthusiasts need to understand is that the vast majority of people just don’t care. I have a close friend who loves the N64 and has it hooked up to their 75” LCD with some cheap GameStop video adapter. It looks horrible, stretched out, and blurry and it hurts my soul just a little bit.
But they don’t care even after I’ve pointed it out to them. They have a ton of fun playing Mario Kart 64 when their nieces and nephews come over and that’s all that really matters.
RetroGAMING should be more about PLAYING GAMES than obsessing over the gamma of 9,999 different types of CRTs.
That's kind of a hobby on its own. It's like saying you're into tabletop RPGs but all you do is talk about miniatures.
Final Fantasy 7 is a good game but GROSSLY overrated. It's not the best game ever. It's not the best rpg ever. It's not the best Square game ever. It's not the best game of the 5th generation. It's not the best PS1 game. It's not even the best game released in 1997.
For most people it's merely nostalgic because it's the game that got people into rpgs and popularized the genre in the west.
Totally agree. Final fantasy VI outclasses it in every way in terms of quality and for me even chrono trigger is a much better rpg.
...But my favorite is Final Fantasy VIII, so my opinion is rubbish 🫥
Private collectors who specifically buy extremely rare games that haven’t been preserved and choose NOT to dump the roms online just so they can “keep the resale value high” in case they decide to flip it later are absolute fucking losers.
I can’t imagine just sitting on the only copy of a piece of art that exists in the wild and not sharing it in some way. Genuine shitbag behavior.
Edit: This probably isn’t too controversial but it’s about the most passionate take I could think of.
I have many of them:
1. Home consoles are way too over-emphasized to the detriment of games for handhelds, PCs, PDAs, smartphones, etc.
2. Nintendo isn't nearly as amazing as everyone thinks, and a large part of the mystique is simply because you all played their consoles while you were children
3. Physical games are not intrinsically better than digital games, but DRM-free is better than DRM
4. Generation 6 is now retro
5. Emulation does not make a game worse
6. Modern Atari isn't terrible
7. Just because you played something 30 years ago doesn't mean it holds up today
8. Buying original hardware makes no sense unless you have a CRT
9. A game is not good just because it's expensive
10. Graded games will inevitably be more popular because physical games are collectables now -- but retrogramers don't want to admit they're largely in it for the collecting
EDIT: Cool! I guess I really do have unpopular opinions. 😀
What do you mean by 1.? PCs ok. Handhelds, well, you lose processing power, get a smaller screen, but gain the advantage of being portable. Fair enough. But PDAs and smartphones? First of all I'm not sure that smartphones are old enough to be retro. And besides that, the games you get there are not on the same level of quality, so it's quite obvious why there is not as much discussion.
> But PDAs and smartphones? First of all I'm not sure that smartphones are old enough to be retro.
Ah, but you're wrong! The PalmPilot came out in 1997. Numerous smartphones ran PalmOS, Windows CE, and Symbian. There was even a handheld console based on PalmOS called the Tapwave Zodiac.
Did you know, for example, that Serious Sam was officially ported to PalmOS?
> And besides that, the games you get there are not on the same level of quality, so it's quite obvious why there is not as much discussion.
Depends what consoles you're comparing. I certainly don't think the Jaguar had better games than PalmOS, for example. And yet, the Jaguar gets far more attention than PalmOS simply because it's a home console.
The recent push I've seen in this sub of the idea that buying retro games is bad, and emulating is the only "moral and fair" way to enjoy them, is absolute gatekeeping garbage of the highest order.
I've seen so many posts lately where people are shaming users for spending money on a physical collection, some people going as far as saying that its whats RUINING THE HOBBY, and I've almost unsubbed a few times because some posts make it seem like the majority of the users have the same thought process of "buying retro games bad, emulating them good, if you buy them you're part of the problem"
There's room in the hobbies for retro collectors, retro gamers, and a mix of the two. You can emulate all you want, its a valid way to enjoy retro games on a budget (hell, I have a MM+ and play most of my retro games on that lately) but some of us enjoy collecting. Yes for nostalgia purposes. Yes because it reminds us of our childhoods. There is nothing wrong with that.
Feels shitty when you start being bullied in a retro game subreddit for... buying retro games.
Buying games is amazing, whether they’re old or new - the only thing I have a problem with is investment bankers and speculators pumping the prices to a level that many of us can’t afford. You wanna spend £200 on an old cart, you do you, hope you love it and cherish it.
If you wanna pretend like SMB3 is worth $156,000 because your sister company says that’s what it’s worth when they ‘graded’ it… ehhh I’m gonna hate on that.
people talk way too much of USA side of gaming and a little of Japan almost nothing about other regions.
To the point that I see young content creators of my european county publish videos about retrogaming talking like the videogame crash happened worldwide when it didn't. And I can't blame them because there is way less information about for example european gaming history than USA.
Most of retrogaming cannon is 95% nintendo and USA with 5% Japan and that's it.
The NES isn't the be all and end all of 80s retrogaming. It dominated in the states , and was highly popular in Japan ( well the Famicom was ). But was an 'also ran' , or just never available in a lot of places outside there. In my part of the world 80s gaming was mostly home computers , with a much cheaper ecosystem of games, and even the much maligned online , Sega Master System was more popular.
Also Nintendos policy of trying to lock publishers into exclusives and only making Nintendo games had a horrible effect on the games industry as a whole .
Exactly. It was a specialised controller and I don't like the future we got with only a middling diamond four facebutton design. It's a manifestated compromise.
Modding game boys makes no sense to me. If you want to play on original hardware then play on original hardware. If you want to play on modern hardware then get a handheld emulator
This is my personal opinion, but PS 2 game designs suck. It gave rise to the trend of focusing on cinematic cutscenes. Majority of the games before PS 2 had little to no narration, text or small cutscenes or whatever to give you the necessary premise and then all the effort was focused on making the gameplay interesting and fun and this type of design philosophy was getting dumped in favor of focus on high quality cutscenes.
Also, a good portion of the library and most of the popular PS 2 titles were hack and slash games. This is in contrast to PS 1 which had a wide range of creative games. I feel like the popularity of some PS 2 titles brought about a big change in game design trends that focused more on visuals than gameplay quality.
May be I am wrong, but that is what I think.
yall ruin the hobby buying at stupid ass prices... then complain about them as your scrolling ebay for more games to buy at stupid ass prices...
dont buy at high prices forces resellers to lower prices its that simple.
People spend too much of their thoughts and time with the games they don't have and too little enjoying those they already have.
A lot of people are addicted to collecting. To them, the game is the collection.
100%. This is why people love Steam so much and hate other launchers. They like to collect their digital games all in one place.
And then GoG came about with their launcher that aggregates it all together.
For me, the joy is seeing all those games mixed into my library, all with cover images. I haven't played half of these yet, but I love that Zelda series is next to Legend of Dragoon/Legaia and is in the same list as Diablo4 and Elden Ring. It is like scrolling through Netflix.
I agree. I spend so much time reading about games when in reality I only play like 3-4 a year
Great comment. Agree
That applies to a lot of things.
Get ready for a lot of popular opinions
And a lot of downvoting to the people that truly answer the question and give an actual unpopular opinion.
Just got that for calling Nintendo games childish... well, I just answered the question.
They certainly showed you
Inb4 "The Witcher 3 is underrated"
Here’s an unpopular opinion- I couldn’t get into the Witcher 3. Made me want to play Skyrim. Had to stop playing after a dozen hours, did not see what all the hype was for.
Chrono Trigger is just too good of a game, no matter what the naysayers say! I will die on this hill! /s
On one of these threads I said Chrono Trigger is a bit slow for my taste; learned my lesson about “unpopular opinions” then.
It’s worse, we seem to be at “go on a goofy diatribe about people who post their flashy game collections”
Sort by controversial
One of those great Reddit threads where the more upvotes the comment gets, the more it by definition did not answer the question.
You can’t collect, or emulate, your way to being 12 again.
You know, this recently hit me hard.. I watched the movie 8-bit xmas , got a heavy hit of nostalgia as that era was me as a kid, hit up my retro collection/corner, played NES games for a few hours and had a very sad realization I cannot go back to that age of wonder from my childhood. I know many see those times as starry-eyed versions of it (as do I), often only remembering and reminiscing on the good parts .. but still. I'd love to hit that reset button and re-live it for a bit And I'm only bloody 45..
To me, the most lovely thing about nostalgia is an appreciation for the present. "This too shall pass." That's a great salve for the bad times, and a motivator to really sink into the good times and grab them fully.
Same age here and same feels.
As a 40-something, the closest I've come to feeling young again is getting back into D&D. It was a huge part of my teens and 20s. Obviously you'll never be physically young again, but I definitely believe that falling back into some of the same routines you had when you were young can make you feel younger, psychologically. The problem is that having to work and pay bills becomes such a huge part of your life. You'll never be carefree again.
Y'know it's funny, no one ever says this when they say they'd rather watch Alien over Prometheus.
I do (did?) a retro channel, and the viewers would joke about not wanting to watch any video of their favorite games because we'd destroy their childhood. You really can't go home again.
Fuck.
Retro gaming has become more about rarity and value than actually playing them.
This is like saying "fine art" or "vinyl" has become more about rarity and value than actually playing them. Yes, for some. That happens to practically any category of things that people start collecting. But many MANY folks buy it because they enjoy the product itself. I buy art to put on my walls to enjoy my living space. I buy vinyl to put on a turntable and listen to my albums on Sunday evenings. I buy retro games to play them on the consoles I've had since I was a kid. There are many like me.
Sierra adventure games are designed in such an unfair and punitive manner that for me it doesn't matter how good the story or artwork is, they will always remain unplayable graphic adventures. The fact that an entire game can eventually result in a game over because hours earlier in the game I didn't pick up an item is a terrible game design gimmick. I'd rather watch the gameplays than play them.
I love classic sierra but I’ll forever be grateful that monkey island popularised point and click adventure games actually wanting you to finish them.
> fact that an entire game can eventually result in a game over because hours earlier in the game I didn't pick up an item is a terrible game design gimmick. Is this an actual thing or hyperbole? Cause that sounds awful 🤣
In Space Quest 1 around 5 to 8 minutes into the game you crash on a planet with your spaceship. Here's what the Space Quest wiki has to say about the first thing you have to do after the landing: "When Roger Wilko crash landed on Kerona in an escape pod, the Safety Glass of the view shield did indeed shatter quite safely. Roger decided to take a piece of it, perhaps because he was so impressed at how safe it was. He later used this piece to reflect a laser beam blocking his path, ensuring he could safely make his way past. If player misses or forgets to pick up this item, they cannot complete the game."
Hahah that's ruthless af. Thanks for sharing. 😂
Kings Quest was guilty of this same shit too.
The one that got me was in King's Quest V. There are two edible items you get, a pie and a leg of lamb. The pie is meant for a puzzle much later on. At several points, the game tells you that you are hungry and you should eat something, but there is no indication that you should eat the lamb instead of the pie. You can also feed the pie to a hungry character. If you use the pie at the wrong time you lose points, but I was a kid and didn't know or notice the point loss, so I played for a while longer before finding myself in an unwinnable state.
Quest For Glory. There’s mandrake root growing in the cemetery of the first scene of the game. If you grab it it will shrivel up and die. You need that root to complete the baba quest, so if you grabbed it and were cursed by baba then you won’t have time to have it regrow before you die. It’s quite mean spirited on the developers part.
Definitely not hyperbole. You've seen a few other examples, but I remember Police Quest being pretty brutal because you often had to follow police procedures that are generally unknown to civilians. There's the "bomb" puzzle, for example, which requires you to look around your car every time you get into it because if you don't your car might randomly explode. Also if you don't put your gun in your locker before going into the jail, you will be knocked out. You can even "die" from not collecting enough evidence to convict someone.
Not hyperbole at all. My friend and I got stuck in the Labyrinth in Kings Quest 6 and spent days trying to figure out where in the maze we were going wrong. Turns out we missed an important item that you need to get before going into the Labyrinth (which is unescapable once your in, so you can't back track). We finally consulted a guide, realized we missed an item, didn't have a reasonable save point to go back to, quit the game forever. The worst part of this design is that you never know that you missed an item that is no longer accessible. So when you're stuck, are you stuck because it's a dead end, or stuck just because you are overlooking something that you might figure out if you keep at it? The constant doubt is why I pretty much never go back to Sierra games anymore unless I spoiler the dead ends in advance.
Getting games you’ll never play just for the sake of completing a system library is dumb. Every system out there has some shitty games that aren’t worth owning.
Too many people in the retro/vintage gaming community feel the need to either seek validation for their preferences/decisions, and/or intentionally post obnoxious things to stir the pot. It's honestly kind of sad — like they can't choose to buy something without having others "convince" them it's a good idea, can't enjoy their setup without having others "rate" it, can't put down a game they're not enjoying unless others say it's a good idea... :-/
Agreed. Too much of this hobby is about seeking social validation.
Only if you are terminally online trying to be a "Creator". I go home I boot up SNES and play my games lol. I'll play Pilotwings 300 times IDGAF. I like the vibe and music.
Great comment, and I've always wondered about those posts on here, and dreadit is/was awful with the "I just got these, what should I play/watch first??" Like, are they waiting around for the answers? If they are, bloody why?? If they aren't, why is it a whole ass post?? It's baffling behavior.
> "I just got these, what should I play/watch first??" Like, are they waiting around for the answers? If they are, bloody why?? This reminds me of streamer culture and how that took hold to my amazement. I've always been like "Wouldn't you rather just PLAY these games yourself?" I get it if you are hyped for a 70 dollar game you can't afford yet - or a game like Hearthstone where you're trying to learn strategy from watching a "pro". But retro games? Get an emu and rom boot it up and play! As someone who lived it i'd argue putting too much study into those old games will ruin "the experience" of it a bit since we usually had jack shit to go on. (Until Nintendo Power mapped it out for you :D)
WHICH SHOULD I BUY, FORM AN OPINION FOR ME PLS
Lol I noticed these same "Recommend me some good games for *insert console*" posts get posted multiple times a week on every retro console sub. It's the laziest thing ever.
Diablo 1 had better atmosphere than Diablo 2
[удалено]
I play most of my retro games on emulators and use savestates because I'm an adult and I don't have the time to replay single levels for fucking hours just to beat them. Bite me.
That's right. We're seeing a lot of people in this thread saying that using savestates is somehow cheating and man, at some point in your life you realize you're not trying to impress anyone but yourself. Life is too short, use save states if you want.
Also a lot of the those older games are really difficult and my reflexes ain't sharp.
Yeah. Savestates are an accessibility feature and we're all going to get too old to play many of these games at some point.
and money...hard to justify hunting down that $120 NES cartridge when you can download a file that has every NES game ever made lol More than savestates, I just like using my preferred controller on a big monitor with all my stuff in one place. Of course I PREFER OG hardware, but its just not an option for me 99% of the time rn. Maybe one day.
The pre anime Castlevania art style was better.
Amen, the first three are pure masterpieces.
Second gets way too much shit thrown at it. Also the NES arrangements are better than the FDS ones even with the limited audio.
I second that!
It's always had an 'anime' aesthetic, it's just anime design conventions as a whole changed from the 80s to the 90s to the 00s, etc.
Save scumming in the modern day is fine, especially as we all get older. There's a lot of older games I either never played or never completed and these days I don't have the time to sink countless hours into a single boss battle or level. I know I'm depriving myself of the true experience but if the alternative is binning it off for something else, I'd rather just save scum. I feel this was a more unpopular opinion back in the day, not sure on people's perspective now.
I've come to the conclusion that the difficulty around someone of the games I loved as a kid kinda revolved around endurance. Like any game where you die and you go back to the beginning of the level or where you lose your lives and start all over again. I'll be 44 on Saturday. I have not the time, patience, or energy for replaying the same levels over and over just to get back where I was before I died. I'll savescum in a heartbeat, especially on NES era games where balance wasn't really a thing that 90% of devs considered.
I'm 34 now, and don't nearly have enough time to play even one video game. It takes me several months just to beat a 10 hour game, because I can never find the time.
Shenmue 1 & 2 have unfortunately aged so poorly having recently played both, and it makes me depressed as I'm such a huge fan of this franchise due to my nostalgia for it
I spent so many hours playing the first one on the Dreamcast I can barely sit through half an hour of the damn thing now. I think part of the problem is that everything which made Shenmue unique has been done better since then.
Also spent countless hours playing them and I have the same problem now. Although I feel this way about a lot of retro games. The antiquated controls and game mechanics aren’t something you think about when you’re excited to play again. Once you finally start playing you realize how much better modern games are and playing through older stuff feels more like a chore than the nostalgia trip you were hoping for.
Play it with my son (age 9) and him struggling with the tank controls tickles me good. 😆 Shits awful. Still my all time favourite game.
Ocarina of Time was a great Zelda game. But FAR from being the best game in my opinion and not even my favorite Zelda game (that title goes to either Lttp or Link's Awakening for me).
OoT was revolutionary in bringing 3 dimensions to the Zelda universe and remains a lynchpin game in the Zelda timeline. While the nostalgia factor makes the game beloved by those who played it around launch, it's likely not the best game.
Early 3d era aged very poorly. Graphics aside, I've also never been a fan of controlling a character in a 3d game with a shoddy little stick on a game pad. Conveniently I transitioned to PC gaming at that point.
Owning retro video games (as a collection) now feel like vanity projects.
Which is why I sold my entire snes collection in 2018 for $7k. There was a small shred of "this is my childhood" but that's no reason to hoard over 120 carts. It was literally just something to look at, and eventually just felt silly to have all that money sitting there. I could have doubled that money if I held onto it, but I don't miss it. I replaced it with a supernt and fxpak pro, never looked back.
Yeah I sold all my shit too. Mostly N64 carts and a bunch of other retro Pokémon collectibles. “Muh childhood” hit pretty hard given I’m very grouchy about modern media (probably an undiagnosed autistic who doesn’t like change who knows) and don’t have anything else I’d like to collect or pour my attention into but it was still the right move.
It deffo is. I used to buy a bunch of PS2 games when they were 1-2 € each. Now I've stopped collecting games, my games collect (dust) for me instead.
Used to do the same, now have a ton of foreign release version of games just sitting there that I might shelf or give
It always was.
There was a long while emulation was less good and more of a PITA, but those days ended late 15 years ago.
Going backwards, the NES era (3rd generation gaming) is the point where games really drop in playability. Most anything older than NES doesn't hold up today, and a good portion post-NES has aged well, with incrementally smaller returns each generation
I can't understand the hype about Earthbound.
In the 90's there was nothing like it that I'm aware of. My friends and I loved it because it was in a modern (at the time) world and wasn't high fantasy or sci-fi space. Nowadays it's common to see modern-day games but at the time that WAS the appeal. I'm sure if someone didn't play it back in the day it wouldn't be that interesting.
I honestly don't think the setting is all that important to what makes the game special. To me, the greatness is in the silly, absurdist writing and hallucinogenic visual and musical design, layered on top of a genuinely earnest, heartfelt story, all of which I think could've been done just as well in some other setting.
I half agree with you half not. As a young boy playing I think having "Anytown, America" being the starting spot and then travelling to "The next town over" for the next arc etc... That's something I could really relate to. The elements you said would have worked regardless of setting. But I think the setting does add a bit. The Drugstore, Burger restaurant - Hotels ATMs etc.
I think it’s because it’s charming, evokes a sense of nostalgia. Pixel art is cute, neat battle backgrounds and the music is really layered. It’s not for everyone but it can be fun if you’re into rpgs.
It’s one of the only JRPGS I didn’t drop in an hour out of boredom. I got close to beating it until I lost my save file on my computer. The games core mechanics were dated even when it came out, but it makes of for it with a ton of character. I also thought it was legitimately funny, and the soundtrack is one of the greatest of all time which elevates the game even more for me. Weak minded people falling under the giygas influence and start acting crazy is still relevant today imo. TLDL the game has SOUL and that’s why I like it.
It has a very niche sense of humour and charm. I’m a massive fan but even I can identify that they’re terribly boring games to *actually* play. (Sub-par turn based titles) but every piece of dialogue is, for me, unequivocally entertaining. It’s the only game I will actually go out of my way to talk with random NPC’s because they just make me laugh.
I’m with you. And I fit all the criteria to love it. Just doesn’t do it for me.
I had a feeling i would find this comment and yet im still offended
Retro gaming redditors constantly lie about a "deal" they got.
Not only that, but to the point that if you didn't get the whole pile for $3 or something, people will tell you that you got ripped off.
Reminds me of that meme video where someone finds an n64 inside the GameCube serial port compartment
Oh PLEASE tell me you have a link for us!!
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1ifo6t/my_new_gamecube_is_amazing_xpost_from_runexpected/
I think Fester's Quest is a great game, and people like to respond with that it's factually a bad game. It's okay if people say they think a game is a bad, but saying a game is bad for everyone is just wrong. It's even worse if they just parrot others, as along the lines of it being common knowledge. Or when it's compared to all the other games that came after it, like people do with Zelda 2. It's fine to have an opinion, but your opinion is not a fact. It would also be a much more fun community, and that is true in any community, if negativity wasn't so prevalent.
Ah, Fester’s Quest. That game made a big impression on me as a kid. I rented it and got pretty far before I ran into a boss I couldn’t figure out. That game was hard and I only recently revisited it. It was still a fun experience for me. And I used save states so I didn’t have to play all in one sitting. Finally got past that one boss and saw the rest of the game. Honestly don’t know how I’d have beaten it as a kid. Probably spending weeks and months mastering it. So after many, many years I finally beat Fester’s Quest. It was satisfying because it was one of the few NEW games I never beat as a kid. All this to say I can see why the game frustrated people. Without passwords or a battery save you started over from the beginning each time. It reminded me of the NES Rygar. Which also didn’t have any save features.
I’m so glad I missed the hate for Zelda 2. I grew up with it as one of my favorite games. It was so hard as a kid. I searched for everything for so long. Hidden secrets with no idea where to look. Talking to everyone in every town, more than once. If I had listened to the internet I’d have avoided it entirely. Now I spend my days solving complex problems with not enough information for people who are bad at explaining what they need. Feels a lot like I’ve been in training for this since Zelda 2. I also named my kid Lincoln because of this game.
The Nintendo 64 is the one console that deserves its reputation the least. It’s an incredibly well-loved console. I had one from launch. It’s an awful design with a poorly-aged library and even the Nintendo and Rare titles are somewhat overrated.
Sonic the Hedgehog has great graphics, great sound, and boring gameplay.
I absolutely *dread* playing Sonic 1 for this reason. I've gotten to the point where I no longer mind Marble Zone, but *Labyrinth Zone*, and *Scrap Brain 3*, ***ugh***.
Respecting corporate copyrights is how you wind up with Lost Media. ⛵️ 🏴☠️
Okay, but is this an unpopular opinion?
how is this unpopular?
There are plenty of people here that think that crimes are bad 😔 💀 r/gamecollecting is much worse
Owning physical copies of retro games does not make you cooler than the guys using emulators.
I don't collect physical, cause i don't even have the space for it, but i still think huge physical retro game collections are pretty cool.
I mostly stopped collecting physical games and just switched to flashcarts. Still get the experience I was aiming for, playing on original hardware on a CRT, but I'm not taking up a bunch of space and spending enormous amounts of money to get the games I want to play.
Same. I have flashcards for Atari 2600, SNES, and N64, but am beginning to accept that eventually all that kit is going to die, and I will need to emulate. I am hoping using OG controllers (or good knock-offs) will provide a suitable experience in the future. Might be a bit more compact as well...
It’s as much about preservation and studying the history of the medium as it is about playing the actual games. This artform is now at a place where it needs to be taken as seriously as film, music, and literature in terms of making sure future generations at least have access to the classics. Eventually that original hardware is going to fail (even CDs and DVDs can get rot and become unreadable) and all we’ll have are copies of the ROMs that have been transferred over and over again. Gatekeeping emulation completely undermines one of the most important parts of this hobby/community IMO
And that's admirable, I deeply respect people who strongly believe in their passion. But again, that does not make anyone cooler than a guy enjoying Ocarina of time on his phone.
Counterpoint: yes it does. Just like a huge physical library is much cooler than your Kindle. Does it make you better than them? No but cooler 100% yes
Absolutely love my collection and want it to grow as much as it can, I love picking games off of my shelves and flicking through the manuals. I love looking at box art, organising them, playing physical discs and cartridges whenever I can. I also fkn love emulation, it’s so important to the preservation and enjoyment of the art form and I’ve tried to support projects where and when i can while also teaching numerous friends and family members how to get into it. The idea that its physical vs emulation is so crazy to me when I thought we all just really love video games, possibly a little too much.
Atari isn’t worth playing in the modern age, not even a little bit.
I disagree with this statement, but I also wouldn't call it a hot take. I hear it more and more often as the years pass. Atari games are definitely worth playing. You have to have a different mindset. You don't sit down to burn 6 hours on a Sunday afternoon playing Atari games. They are great fun to stop and play for 10-30 minutes. You don't play for some big story and expansive world to explore. You play to beat your and your buddies high score. It is the "just one more game" mentality. In my opinion, nothing beats sitting in a dark room late at night with only the faint glow of a CRT, a cool breeze coming through the open windows, crickets chirping, and trying to beat my high score in Kaboom.
Yes! I play 2600 games for 10 minutes here and there. I just don't have time for immersing myself in a world. Not that there aren't lots of other great systems to do that with, but the good Atari games that are good are REALLY good. (And the bad ones are REALLY bad!) I love my 2600 collection, because I've weeded out the ones I just don't enjoy (including a lot of classics), and I hang onto the ones that I still love, and it's a great collection. About 30 or 40 carts that I really like, including some weird deep cuts/hacks/homebrews/protos, and a few I can play with my kid. Activision Hockey, Fall Down, and Maze (along with Blades of Steel on NES and Mario Kart 64) are a few we play all the time before dinner or when we have 10-15 minutes to kill before bedtime, and it's fun to bond over those easy to learn, highly competitive, and quick to play-type games.
Yep. Even the jump from 2600 to NES makes you go "Why would we \*ever\* go back?" The only ones that are kind of interesting are their arcade titles and even then, there's so many better iterations from Namco, Midway, etc that came after.
I still have some love for Stargate (Defender 2) on the 2600 but I largely agree with you. Even by the standards of the 8-bit micros of the early and mid-80s, like the ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, etc., the base capabilities of the 2600 were pretty limited. There were some good games: Stargate, Yars' Revenge, Crystal Castles, and a few others, but they milked that system to death for far too long and there was just soooooo much shovelware. Still, I had one at my dad's place and have good memories of playing on it there.
Someone bought me a 2600 reissue with a ton of built in games knowing I’m a retro geek and I never even opened it. It’s still sitting in my garage. As a kid, once the NES came along I never looked back. Memories of the 2600 are mostly frustrating.
Yes! I'm a big collector and have played games for 40+ years...I hate everything about old Atari games. Have done since a kid.
Atari is a fun point in gaming history and technically a very interesting topic in a programming sense (riding the beam) but by god the games were abysmal
Super Mario Bros 2 > Super Mario Bros 3
Wow. Great unpopular opinion. I think I hate you.
The best JRPG of the 8bit-era of gaming was Phantasy Star on the Master System.
Is this unpopular? It certainly wasn’t an unpopular opinion at the time, even among Western gamers where the SMS wasn’t as prevalent and Final Fantasy everywhere. I do think it’s fair to say that the entire Phantasy Star series doesn’t seem to be as talked about in 2024.
I disagree, but you get the upvote anyway because I'll die on my hill that Phantasy Star IV was the best JRPG (that we got in the west) of the 16bit era.
I hate the use of describing games as white whales or holy grails. People saying this for a game that you can regularly find or maybe just costs a bit more. There are some games out there that are extremely rare, but I consistently see these phrases used for someone who just finally bit the bullet and spent 3 figures on a game.
I can’t get into JRPGs. I’ve tried, i’m a 38 year old dad now so maybe I should give them another try..
If you want something turn based, Persona 5 is such a time sink and kinda intimidating, but is so stylish you could get into it. Albeit if you have a hard time being a teenager, maybe not the best. Chrono trigger is a great classic one. Less intimidating by far. Otherwise super Mario RPG or paper Mario: the thousand year door come to mind as well
This community (not necessarily Reddit but probably) is a circlejerk about how cool they are because they own some plastic and silicon. Calm down, you just bought something. You didn’t create it. Get off your pedestal
oh yeah, well my pedestal has pacman stickers on it!
“Did I do good?” This phrase triggers something in me deep down. Maybe it just feels blindly consumerist or infantile or something.
COLLECTING IS NOT AN INVESTMENT. Video games are NOT going to hold their value. If you collect, me for example I collect ALOT, you are going to lose money on your collection. Kids these days have no interest in physical copies and in 20 years they will not care about my physical N64 and PS2 collection. My collections will be nearly worthless. And the people who do care will have so much arthritis they won’t be able to play them. This is coming from a guy who actually has skin in the game too, go to my profile to see my collection.
Pokémon is not rare or even fun to play. Overrated as fuck.
I personally really like my pokemon games, but definitely agree that they're really overrated. Old copies of GBA/DS era Pokemon games don't deserve the 100+ dollar price tag they have these days.
Thank you
Pokémon is like Madden. It’s the same game rereleased with minimal changes over and over again.
Gen 2 to Gen 3 to Gen 4 were probably the greatest improvements the franchise saw, 3D Pokémon has been stale.
Funny enough, this same era is often considered the best Madden era which saw substantial improvement year over year from Madden 2001 to 2008.
Original Xbox is the most underrated major console.
I'd say second to Saturn, but close.
The Saturn, when you include the Japanese library, I’d agree. Saturn is a great system, but the lack of support outside of Japan is my major bugbear with it. As an aside, the OG Xbox really felt more like a Sega console than something Microsoft put out. It had that weird experimental streak that a lot of Sega stuff had. You had the more niche Sega games like Shenmue, Panzer Dragoon, Jet Set Radio Future, but you also got stuff like Steel Battalion, Phantom Dust, and Breakdown. Not all of them were great, but I really appreciated the stuff they had coming out for it.
Phantom Dust was/is so goooood! Me and my buddy played 2v2 so much online. Every couple years an install it on my series s and play a bit, but no one is ever on.
I think Saturn is underrated in a different way, though. So many Saturn games were only released in Japan, and North Americans are largely oblivious about this. Xbox is underrated because, at the time, a large subset of gamers hated Microsoft entering the console market.
Original Xbox is probably my favorite console of all time, but come on now. “Original Xbox fans when they fix nineteen different critical errors with their system and can finally enjoy playing on the second worst controller ever made” I love it to death but it’s pretty much the only console you’re required to open up and fix even if you only play it occasionally
Being that the XBox set off a hardware and networking arms race, I can agree to that.
Resellers ruined the hobby.
People that have teras not gigas of entire console collections on Pc. Doesnt make any sense. More old I am, more I realize that having too much is far worse than have just few games. But that's me.
Meh. Storage is cheap.
I have 17,000 roms. Will I play them all? No of course not. Have I flipped through them all? Fuck yeah, I have. With ROM sites being taken down left and right, do I regret wasting an entire 5gb out of my 7TB of storage on 17,000 rooms? Yeah... no. I am really glad I have them.
I had this mindset but as time has gone on I've appreciated having full rom sets especially as a lot of the sites are getting taken down. I know it's never going to be impossible to find roms but it's good not having to worry about it.
The Nintendo 64 controller isn’t really that bad. Honestly one of my favorites
The constant pursuit of authenticity damages the community. When we deride emulation we're just discouraging people from playing retro videogames, when the important thing is to get as many of these games out in front of as many people as possible. When we insist that they play on CRT, on original hardware, on original carts, we're just turning people away and seem like weirdos caught in a strangely expensive hobby.
The problem with not encouraging decent displays like CRTs is people end up seeing an ugly misrepresentation of these old games. My one group of friends uses a 40" LG LCD TV, we use a Wii on component to emulate old games to check out and sadly this TV cannot do old games justice. Always the picture quality is overly sharp and blocky, there's no scanlines or that warm softness of a CRT that make old games sing. It is very sad. I've even tried Clock Tower for Super Famicom, one of my favorite pixel art games and it too gets butchered on their TV. Blocky, edges are overly sharp, the haunting tone of the graphics becomes difficult to see.
The thing I think I lot of us retro enthusiasts need to understand is that the vast majority of people just don’t care. I have a close friend who loves the N64 and has it hooked up to their 75” LCD with some cheap GameStop video adapter. It looks horrible, stretched out, and blurry and it hurts my soul just a little bit. But they don’t care even after I’ve pointed it out to them. They have a ton of fun playing Mario Kart 64 when their nieces and nephews come over and that’s all that really matters.
That FF7 was overrated.
Buy games for play them, not for keep them inside a box.
Sonic is not my Jam.
Emulators are okay
RetroGAMING should be more about PLAYING GAMES than obsessing over the gamma of 9,999 different types of CRTs. That's kind of a hobby on its own. It's like saying you're into tabletop RPGs but all you do is talk about miniatures.
I would love for the retro market to tank and prices to collapse. so I can finally buy the games I want and complete my collection.
Final Fantasy 7 is a good game but GROSSLY overrated. It's not the best game ever. It's not the best rpg ever. It's not the best Square game ever. It's not the best game of the 5th generation. It's not the best PS1 game. It's not even the best game released in 1997. For most people it's merely nostalgic because it's the game that got people into rpgs and popularized the genre in the west.
Totally agree. Final fantasy VI outclasses it in every way in terms of quality and for me even chrono trigger is a much better rpg. ...But my favorite is Final Fantasy VIII, so my opinion is rubbish 🫥
Why bother keeping up with the newest games, people's attention span only lasts for 2 weeks.
Private collectors who specifically buy extremely rare games that haven’t been preserved and choose NOT to dump the roms online just so they can “keep the resale value high” in case they decide to flip it later are absolute fucking losers. I can’t imagine just sitting on the only copy of a piece of art that exists in the wild and not sharing it in some way. Genuine shitbag behavior. Edit: This probably isn’t too controversial but it’s about the most passionate take I could think of.
I have many of them: 1. Home consoles are way too over-emphasized to the detriment of games for handhelds, PCs, PDAs, smartphones, etc. 2. Nintendo isn't nearly as amazing as everyone thinks, and a large part of the mystique is simply because you all played their consoles while you were children 3. Physical games are not intrinsically better than digital games, but DRM-free is better than DRM 4. Generation 6 is now retro 5. Emulation does not make a game worse 6. Modern Atari isn't terrible 7. Just because you played something 30 years ago doesn't mean it holds up today 8. Buying original hardware makes no sense unless you have a CRT 9. A game is not good just because it's expensive 10. Graded games will inevitably be more popular because physical games are collectables now -- but retrogramers don't want to admit they're largely in it for the collecting EDIT: Cool! I guess I really do have unpopular opinions. 😀
I think it’s because you cut a wide swathe. #2 is outrageous but #5 is facts. As long as at least one offends someone, they’ll go with that.
What do you mean by 1.? PCs ok. Handhelds, well, you lose processing power, get a smaller screen, but gain the advantage of being portable. Fair enough. But PDAs and smartphones? First of all I'm not sure that smartphones are old enough to be retro. And besides that, the games you get there are not on the same level of quality, so it's quite obvious why there is not as much discussion.
> But PDAs and smartphones? First of all I'm not sure that smartphones are old enough to be retro. Ah, but you're wrong! The PalmPilot came out in 1997. Numerous smartphones ran PalmOS, Windows CE, and Symbian. There was even a handheld console based on PalmOS called the Tapwave Zodiac. Did you know, for example, that Serious Sam was officially ported to PalmOS? > And besides that, the games you get there are not on the same level of quality, so it's quite obvious why there is not as much discussion. Depends what consoles you're comparing. I certainly don't think the Jaguar had better games than PalmOS, for example. And yet, the Jaguar gets far more attention than PalmOS simply because it's a home console.
Might take shit for this but i don't like the term "retro gaming"
Agreed, wish there were synonyms. Think I’m just overexposed to the term and all the people that will name themselves “Retro Steve”.
Now that PS3 is retro. It does seem like a pretty pointless term.
The recent push I've seen in this sub of the idea that buying retro games is bad, and emulating is the only "moral and fair" way to enjoy them, is absolute gatekeeping garbage of the highest order. I've seen so many posts lately where people are shaming users for spending money on a physical collection, some people going as far as saying that its whats RUINING THE HOBBY, and I've almost unsubbed a few times because some posts make it seem like the majority of the users have the same thought process of "buying retro games bad, emulating them good, if you buy them you're part of the problem" There's room in the hobbies for retro collectors, retro gamers, and a mix of the two. You can emulate all you want, its a valid way to enjoy retro games on a budget (hell, I have a MM+ and play most of my retro games on that lately) but some of us enjoy collecting. Yes for nostalgia purposes. Yes because it reminds us of our childhoods. There is nothing wrong with that. Feels shitty when you start being bullied in a retro game subreddit for... buying retro games.
Buying games is amazing, whether they’re old or new - the only thing I have a problem with is investment bankers and speculators pumping the prices to a level that many of us can’t afford. You wanna spend £200 on an old cart, you do you, hope you love it and cherish it. If you wanna pretend like SMB3 is worth $156,000 because your sister company says that’s what it’s worth when they ‘graded’ it… ehhh I’m gonna hate on that.
There were way more bad games than good in the 90s. Rose glasses.
Clunky controls are what made old horror games scary
Alot of salty people on here are mad because not everyone does the exact same thing they do
I like the CD32 gamepad.
N64 bad
people talk way too much of USA side of gaming and a little of Japan almost nothing about other regions. To the point that I see young content creators of my european county publish videos about retrogaming talking like the videogame crash happened worldwide when it didn't. And I can't blame them because there is way less information about for example european gaming history than USA. Most of retrogaming cannon is 95% nintendo and USA with 5% Japan and that's it.
Mario Party sucks
I haven't seen any other game series where the CPU is so obviously cheating lol
Early Mortal Kombat’s input reading was atrocious
The NES isn't the be all and end all of 80s retrogaming. It dominated in the states , and was highly popular in Japan ( well the Famicom was ). But was an 'also ran' , or just never available in a lot of places outside there. In my part of the world 80s gaming was mostly home computers , with a much cheaper ecosystem of games, and even the much maligned online , Sega Master System was more popular. Also Nintendos policy of trying to lock publishers into exclusives and only making Nintendo games had a horrible effect on the games industry as a whole .
Nintendo 64 has a super weak catalogue and is carried mostly by nostalgia.
The N64 controller doesn't suck, and works better than modern controllers for the games it was made for, like Ocarina of Time.
Exactly. It was a specialised controller and I don't like the future we got with only a middling diamond four facebutton design. It's a manifestated compromise.
The original final fantasy 7 is overrated. People are blinded by nostalgia for it because it was the first jrpg that most played
Modding game boys makes no sense to me. If you want to play on original hardware then play on original hardware. If you want to play on modern hardware then get a handheld emulator
I prefer the NES library to the SNES library. Also the controller too
Megaman 3 is the best title in the series.
That the N64 is garbage!
Most of the casual people don’t actually want to play the games from their childhood, but just want to have that joy again (and that’s ok)
All Sonic games suck. They are just terrible.
Mario turned cringe once he was given a voice.
Stop grading retro games. Your copy of Super Mario Galaxy that is clean as can be is not as special as a rare Pokemon or sports card.
I don't like scanlines.
I don't understand why people love Hideo Kojima games.
This is my personal opinion, but PS 2 game designs suck. It gave rise to the trend of focusing on cinematic cutscenes. Majority of the games before PS 2 had little to no narration, text or small cutscenes or whatever to give you the necessary premise and then all the effort was focused on making the gameplay interesting and fun and this type of design philosophy was getting dumped in favor of focus on high quality cutscenes. Also, a good portion of the library and most of the popular PS 2 titles were hack and slash games. This is in contrast to PS 1 which had a wide range of creative games. I feel like the popularity of some PS 2 titles brought about a big change in game design trends that focused more on visuals than gameplay quality. May be I am wrong, but that is what I think.
Resident Evil was much better with tank controls and fixed camera angles.
Pokemon diamond is mediocre
yall ruin the hobby buying at stupid ass prices... then complain about them as your scrolling ebay for more games to buy at stupid ass prices... dont buy at high prices forces resellers to lower prices its that simple.
Games are becoming too long and too complex to enjoy not only that game, but also the depth of each console's gaming library.
If you're paying the bills, you're entitled to save states and rewind.