Retroid
Why Playing Games in Their Original Format is Awesome and Superior
on March 14, 2013 at 8:00 amFlashback – 1989
You’re sitting on the floor in your bedroom. It’s late at night and the only source of light is coming from the soft glow of the television. Your parents have already gone to bed but you can’t sleep. No, fate has given you a different task to complete this night; besides, you’re too amped up to go to bed anyways. That’s because you have a NES controller in hand and you just survived Norfair and defeated Ridley.
You’re playing “Metroid”, and this is the night you make it your bitch.
The hauntingly minimalistic tune of Norfair is echoing quietly throughout your room as Samus sits motionless inside the boss chamber. She must be as surprised as you for surviving that fight. “But…,” you think, ”we must press on.” After all, deep in the bowels of Tourian, Mother Brain awaits and your toughest trial is still to come…
…surviving long enough to reach her.
Fatigue is setting in. It’s past your bedtime but your will is strong. Samus is tired too but you’re in this together. You can’t let her down. It hasn’t been easy and the struggles have been fierce but dammit, you’ve got moxie. You steel your resolve, steady your nerves, and take the long walk until you finally descend into Tourian. Your first sight upon arriving, a metroid.
Shit…
Modern Day
You’re feeling nostalgic and wistful. Hellbent on reliving childhood glory, you decide you’re going to break out the ol’ NES, call some friends over, and let everyone relive their 80’s childhood.
“This should be a fun day,” you think to yourself.
You take everything to the living room and start hooking it up to your TV. It’s an LCD but that’s fine, right? You unplug the cable and then try to plug the AC adaptor in.
“Dammit, it’s too fucking big.”
So, you unplug a couple of things to make it fit on the power strip. You don’t have any room in the entertainment center, so you set the NES on the floor. That’s where it used to go anyways, so it will be fine.
You start going through all of your games. There are a lot of memories kept in this box. Ninja Gaiden, Duck Tales, Strider, Mario, Gauntlet, Zelda, Bionic Commando, Duck Hunt, Little Nemo, Mega Man, Faxanadu, Contra, Batman, Life Force, among many others. All faithful companions. Then you come across “Metroid” and your mind drifts off to that fateful night.
You remember getting so close. Mother Brain had been right in front of you but victory was snatched away at the last second. The constant onslaught of the radioactive Cheerios and the relentless assault of the metroids had worn you down too much. You didn’t survive the battle that night. It was a stain, forever imprinted onto your childhood.
The loss was too much and you couldn’t muster up the energy to replenish your supplies after continuing. Your will to complete the game was completely broken. You switched off the NES and went to bed. You never truly returned to “Metroid” after that day. Sure, you ended up using the “Justin Bailey” password to finish things off and tell your friends you beat the game. It wasn’t the same though.
“Not right now,” you say to yourself as you put “Metroid” back into the box.
I agree in every sense. While I didn’t own many games on the NES (Let alone have one in the 90′s. We found an abandoned one in 2004 with about 10 games), it was still a lot better to play on an original console. I recently found my old N64 controller (Been gathering spiderwebs in a box for 6 years now) and found it still works, no problems with the console itself. I’ve had to buy 4 new controllers for my PS3 in 2012 which goes to show a bit more quality as well. An original style has a lot more flair in the long run which is why I am going to try and get more retro gaming systems, if not just for me but to show my future children what they should be playing growing up. Platformer’s and frustrating as all hell. Just like I grew up with (I know I’m only 23 but I had a ton of frustrating times in the 90′s gaming)
Yeah, we’re of the age where we’ve had our asses kicked by old school games, and now get achievements for just playing the first level. There’s something to be said for the old hunks of plastic and metal: this is mine, I own it, the games are mine whenever I pop ‘em in and play. Now it’s some cloud-based-always-on-DRM bull mess that hooks into Facebook.
You kids get off our lawn!
It is weird to think that my NES, SNES, Genesis, etc are all more reliable than any of my newer systems. The more advanced our technology gets, the more things mess up.
This is also because older systems don’t have any moving parts. Now we have hard drives and CD drives that crash, bang, and boom. We also have processors that melt themselves and controllers with all sorts of crap to go wrong, like analog sticks.
I’m on my second 360 (Thanks RRoD.), my second PS3 (Thanks GPU being on your last leg and making my games look crazy town.), and I’m also in need of another PSP but I bought it used, so I’m probably at fault there.
I love new technology and seeing all of the places it can take us but there is a lot to be said for the simpler times. Not just for nostalgia’s sake, either.
I also think it’s funny that we can potentially see the return of cartridges. We already have them on the Vita, DS, and 3DS, but I can totally see consoles go in that direction, as well. In fact, I’d LIKE consoles to move in that direction. The systems after PS4 and Durango…who knows? The tech should be cheap enough.
I agree it would be nice to see games return to cartridge-style, but the fact is that discs have a much larger storage capacity. I’m sure there is a way to make up for this with the fact that flash drives and SD cards have 32GB capacity or higher and all, but who wants to figure out how to do that when discs are the norm? This is also true because the standard now is ‘graphics graphics GRAPHICS!’ as opposed to the standard of ‘make this game AWESOME’ of yesteryear.
That’s not to say that there aren’t awesome games now, but I don’t see the same sense of nostalgia with modern games as there is with older games on classic systems. These days if you go back to a semi-classic modern game the feel is usually “Man, these graphics suck. What is with these crappy controls too? Big Friggin’ Gun Shooter 3c is way better! I’m just gonna go play that!”
Maybe I exaggerate a little. I grew up on games like Mario, Zelda, and Chrono Trigger. The feeling of nostalgia might be different for someone whose first game is Halo.
I still have my SNES, N64, and Dreamcast along with a decent collection of titles for each. While I haven’t played them in years, I can’t imagine giving them up either. Ever.
To use the Halo example, I think older modern games don’t elicit as much nostalgia because each new entry in the series isn’t designed to work in tandem with previous games but, rather, they simply replace the older ones.
No one goes back to play older Halos because if you want the Halo experience, you’re usually better off just playing the newest game. However, with something like Mario, each game works on its own merits. While they’re all platformers that star a pudgy plumber with a spiky shelled dinoturtle as his rival, they’re all fundamentally varied and different experiences.
However, I think this might just be an issue with FPSs as a genre. That’s kind of the way it’s always worked. There is still some nostalgia to be had from plenty of games from the era when Halo was born. Well, maybe not YET but I can totally see myself waxing nostalgic about Shadow Hearts, Persona, Knights of the Old Republic, etc.
Wait…I already do. Eh, whatever. No one is every going to talk about the original Call of Duty like they do many old-school games. Or, for that matter, even Modern Warfare, Black Ops, etc. They just buy the new one and forget, usually.
That was an amazing read, thank you. It made me want to find some old school gamer friends for a similar get together. It also made me regret selling my N64 last year.
I have no idea whatever became of my precious NES, but now I really want to replace it as well.
Thanks again.
I can definitely vouch for the good times had by an old school gaming party. It can be a blast.
Of course, I always take things to the extreme. Which is why, every year, I put on “Tyler’s Ultimate Iron Man of Gaming Decathalon + Awesomefest”. Just “Awesomefest” for short. I create events, most of them entirely too difficult because I overestimate how good my friends are at video games, then lock them in a house filled with food and booze until a victor is decided.
I have an entire room filled with TVs and projectors, with all manner of systems on them. It makes for an extremely fun event.
If you decide to try and get another NES, I HIGHLY recommend trying to buy a top loading model. They’re more expensive, but they work!
Thanks for the support! I appreicate it!