The PROBLEM With Retro Gaming In 2023

the fact this dad was proud enough to share his kids playing retro games should be all that matters....

It’s the games, not the platform. These kids are enjoying software that was designed, developed and loved in an era past. As a father myself, I understand this guy’s pride and it warms my heart that his kids are having fun and enjoying themselves. That’s all that actually matters IMO. I have a mix of clones and original media, and I don’t really give a fig what my daughter plays. Just. Have. Fun. That’s why these games were made in the first place, right?

The fact that you got so passionate about this makes me happy as a dad that it's not just us nerd dads that enjoy seeing the younger generations appreciate what we had at their age. And that wasn't the lack of nicotine that made you feel that way. It's because you're a decent person.

Amen. The past few years I've liquidated my entire retro collection - all systems I bought when they were new, nothing bought used. PSone, genesis, dreamcast, nes, snes, n64, PS3, original xbox, atari lynx, Gameboy etc. I sold them all locally, one at a time, in person, at extremely fair prices. Everyone I sold to was so excited and grateful that I had these still, and that I was willing to let go of them at normal prices. It brought me joy knowing how excited these people were.

These day I’m just emulating . It used to be fun to collect but now everyone thinks every Nintendo and sega game is worth hundreds of bucks ..I’m good with the raspberry pie and the mini systems . I’ve pretty much collected what I’ve wanted anayways at reasonable prices

Dude this video is dead on bro. It's cool to see generations come together and do stuff. It's cool to see a younger generation enjoy stuff that we did as kids. People suck man. Thank you for calling them out. Have a great day man.

This is why the mini consoles that you showed during the video and products like the Evercade really appeal to me. I get to own legitimate copies of these games without needing to pay through the roof for them while also not taking up a tonne of space. My collection looks good and it takes me about 5 seconds to plug one in and start playing. I don't really care if it's just emulation at the end of the day, I'm just happy to be able to play these games again, or in many cases, experience games I never had the chance to when I was younger.

As a kid, we didn't have a lot of money so I was thankful for the games I got to play growing up, but I also know I missed out on a lot of great gaming experiences. As an adult, I'm trying make up for those lost experiences by building my own retro game collection and sharing those experiences with my kids. For example, I've recently picked up and started playing Chrono Trigger for the first time. 5 hours in and I'm loving it! My kids also love the Megaman games of old. That's what retro gaming is all about to me.

Retro elitis absolutely killed my love for this stuff. I'd rather buy a re-release and support the devs, or just find something else. We had a customer at the game store I worked at who claimed playing a greatest hits edition of a game was basically emulation because you're not playing an original print. It doesn't even make sense.

This is honestly true. I remember when the Sega mini came out and a YouTube channel I like a lot went on a whole thing about “just go to a flea market and buy the real thing”. Like that’s so easy and affordable for the regular person.

The worst part about these types of behaviour patterns is that they treat new people to hobbies as if they're somehow inferior because they're not as skilled or knowledgeable in that hobby.

You nailed it!!!! I moved from The U.S. to Tokyo in 2009. I brought all my consoles with me even though space is at a premium. I have a wife and two kids and I set up most of the consoles plugged into a Framemeister to upscale them and for the fake scanlines which I actually like. Their is always a CRT bro in the comments of every post I make on Reddit. The tops was when I finally replaced my lost childhood Colecovision with a new/old stock one I found on Ebay. I had it RGB and composite modded (you need the composite mod if you want to play 2600 games on it too) and despite the Colecovision out of the box not being able to work on any Japanese TV CRT or modern TV here, they literally said, "You have just cut the horn off a unicorn." They then went on to say I should have left it in the box as a collector's item. Besides having the output modded (which looks amazing btw) I had the system recapped as well and the VRAM replaced because that goes bad on Colecovisions or might have already been bad on mine. I feel like I have restored it and made it usable like an old car. These gatekeepers can get f|_|cked.

Crazy how back in 2015 when i started collecting a lot of my nintendo stuff especially gamecube, the cost of games was at a very fair rate. It wasnt until 2020 when i started collecting for gamecube again when I realized how fucked up retro game collecting had become. Like RGT, I truly think that this bubble will never pop and prices will keep going up indefinitely.

You hit the nail on the head with this one man. It does not matter how you play the games, the only thing that matters is enjoying the games with family and friends. People need to understand not everyone has the means or the time to hunt down all original hardware carts and tvs. My kids and I have the same amount of fun playing on our CRT with og hardware as we do playing on an emulator on pc or a modern tv. The gate keeping needs to stop, if they have time to hardware shame people they truly need to get a life.

It almost feels that in the pursuit of finding the ultimate way to play our favourite video game classics, we tend to forget to have fun with them in the meantime. Remember fun? You know, the whole reason you liked playing (retro) video games in the first place? Focus on that, and the rest will either come on its own, or turn out to not be that important anyway.

I used to be a collector and I stopped around 2009. Primarily because my interests shifted and I just didn't have the space. Prices around that time were still pretty reasonable and you could easily find deals at garage sales and swap meets. Prices are just insane now and places like DKOldies just drive up the price everywhere else. Now I just strictly emulate. Almost everything up to PS1 is pretty much spot on and N64 and up gets better every day.

I've been saying it for a long time that the problem with the community is the community. Its very unfortunate and of course it isn't everyone. Hopefully it trends the other way one day.

The problem with modern gaming is they don’t release a finished product.

100% agree. I am a long time collector and I am in this hobby because I love retro games so I want as many people as possible to be able to experience these games. If that means emulation or clone consoles, so be it. The important thing is that these games are being appreciated by a generation who didn't grow up with them and I think that's awesome. Do I prefer to own the original game/hardware? Sure, but that's just me and it's perfectly fine if people would rather emulate or find some other means to play them. With prices being what they are, I don't blame them.

In retro gaming I definitely found two distinct schools of thought. The people who take it as a hobby and it's all about revisiting the games they grew up with and are fond off, and the collector elite who believe there's only one "right" way to play retro games. At the end of the day, it's all about playing the games we love in whatever way is accessible to us. And if we can share that love of games with younger generations all the better