Because they're good games and people are remembering the good ones and not the ocean of forgettable dogshit that it was surrounded by, as happens with all media
In a world of relentless technological advances and increasing AI anxiety, Rivera wonders whether gen Z’s affinity for retro gaming is connected to its stability. “It provides a constant – it’s not going to morph into something else tomorrow,” she says.
Oh look, the consequence of predatory modern AAA gaming coming back to haunt the medium.
Frustratingly, the article does not go into this aspect at all. It's all just "look at the widdle babies retreating into warm cosy nostalgia from the scary adult world"
Games that were made and are fun to pay instead of a micro transaction stuffed physcological grindfest?
fun to pay
LoL I'm leaving it 🤣 mobile fingers.
Idk if this is placebo but it feels like the developers wanted to make those older games. Like you can feel the passion behind it. I get the same kind of feeling with indie games too. But in modern games it just feels like they just follow a script. A script that every other development studio uses. So every game feels bland generic or its just another live service slop glorified casino.
Because of the limitations inherent to the platforms back then (like how most games were single player games or were required to have some single play ability) it was harder to make these skinner box style games you see everywhere today. But exploitative practices have always existed, whether it's dishonest advertising or expensive DLC (see Oblivion's Xbox 360 horse armor DLC). Although there was more incentive to make your game bug free and complete right at release, since you couldn't always count on your player base to have a way to download updates (if such a thing was even possible for your system)
Low spec requirements, cheaper, more of them so theyre more willing to appeal to niche tastes. It makes sense even if I'll never play most of the.
No microtransactions, low advertising etc
It's because (imo) modern games kinda aren't fun and there's something nice about just loading up a game and playing - no cut-scenes, no tutorial, no microtransactions or season passes, no worrying if it'll run on your old computer, no need to make a new account and jump through 2fa hoops and checking for activation e-mails and accepting ToS you didn't read, no need to be online, no need to clear space for an 80gb install, no 4gb patch whenever you go to play, no two minute load times. You just get to start it up and play a game and have a good time.
no cut-scenes
Metal Gear Solid came out in 1998. Cinematic/narrative-heavy games are nothing new
Even going further back, games like Phantasy Star and Ninja Gaiden featured cinematic cut scenes of a type on the 8-bit consoles. It's been a part of the medium since basically the beginning.
It's just not what I think of when I hear retro I guess. But yeah, there's no doubt heaps of exceptions to what I said, just sharing my general sentiment.
Absolutely loved playing the recent Tomb Raider remastered pack because of this. No HUD, no map, you're just plopped into a level and you figure it out from there. Such a breath of fresh air in comparison to the overstimulating, bloated modern games
Modern games are so tedious. I don't want to talk to every npc in the village looking for side quests. I want to go from left to right jumping on bad guys and avoiding spikes
Less enshittification.
Older video games series like Sly Cooper and Devil May Cry hold up very well.
Older games
PS2
I'm gonna crumble into dust like a forgotten skeleton in an ancient barrow
PS2 era is already like early modern gaming to me.
PS2 is just modern to me. The phrase "older game" automatically conjures images of the Atari 2600. "Game" makes me think of maybe around the SNES or early PS1. Any game with 3D graphics, voice over, tutorial levels, and full soundtracks, that's just a current era game to me.
I'm old and dusty I think.
A PS2 is the oldest console I ever used. By the time I was like 8 most of my friends had a PS3
I have no proof but my gut is that Gen Z experienced retro games second hand through video essays or streamers. And they experienced the games at around the age that they'd be feeling nostalgic for now. So I've met zoomers who have like a phantom nostalgia for things like Mario 64 or Doom.
It's neat
Because old video games have a cheaper point of entry with fewer home size/workshop ceilings on its development.
E: old games run on any computer or phone, there’s tons of handhelds that’ll emulate em, you don’t need for real workbench to work on em.
It’s the perfect habit for someone living out of a tent, car, friends couch, dorm, tiny rented room or what have you.
Yeah you can go absolutely nuts ass with old games and spend nothing or almost nothing. Entertainment for tens of thousands of hours.
Because games weren't as shitty back then lmao. Compared with gacha bullshit and aggressive microtransaction, some forgettable platformer with an intellectual property awkwardly shoehorned in is nothing.
The cries of nostalgia is vastly overrated. How would zoomers possibly be nostalgic about something that they've never experienced before? It reminds me of how millennial defenders of modern Simpsons would constantly accuse millennial classic Simpsons enjoyers of being blinded of nostalgia. Then the zoomers grew up and started watching the Simpsons as well and not only vindicated the millennial classic Simpsons enjoyers but are even stricter about what counts as classic Simpsons than the millennials were.
Tbf, many people are nostalgic for things they've never experienced. That's a pretty normal thing
<-- me thinking about the ussr, which was gone before I was born.
but it’s not just gen X and older millennials reliving their heyday: younger millennials and gen Z are getting in on the nostalgia too
This is stolen valor smh.
Jokes aside, its interesting that games are the only art medium that implicitly has a "timer" on it. Nobody writes articles if someone is watching a 70s movie or a 30s book. Neither of those things are even called "retro".
Nobody writes articles if someone is watching a 70s movie or a 30s book.
You will get called a snob on social media tho
The article is okay but wtf is this
This is what we're up against
Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see.
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Authoritarian states with no regard for the freedom of the press.
Bad actors spreading disinformation online to undermine democracy.
But we have something powerful on our side.
We’ve got you.
The Guardian is funded by readers like you in Ireland and the only person who decides what we publish is our editor.
If you want to join us in our mission to share independent, global journalism to the world, we’d love to have you on side.
Wtf is this pathetic shit Guardian. Begging for a 10 euro monthly subscription with this west wing bullshit. "Only you can stop evil Russian and Chinese propaganda! Just give us money so we can publish articles about how our intern looked through some trends on TikTok!"
Because they’re cheap or completely free to play thanks to emulators. Same reason a lot of people I know watch old movies.
because they are good games wtf
Didn’t read the article, but is it a lack of immoral monetization practices and a focus on quality gameplay that comes with only playing the best games from each generation?
Probably because of the influence that Gen Xers have on Millennials and Gen Z.
Yeah, this is the 30 year cycle. The youngest of gen Z is just hitting prime gaming age and the oldest are just barely aging out, and their parents are sharing old faves -- Most likely the very best games from gen X childhood and college years.
Yeah.
Gen Xers have, unfortunately, a huge influence on us Millennials and Gen Z. Everyone wants to be a Gen Xer. They're the original "nerd" generation and it sucks 'cause they have the most toxicity.
I am giving my kid a game boy for car rides instead of a godforsaken ipad. Mario bros sure seemed addicting but it's sure no reskinned pachiinko machine like every mobile game. No casinos, no posting shit online for likes
Gave my nephew the Anbernic gameboy-looking handheld with a list of games I suggest he try and getting updates from him about how much he loves (or even disliked) certain games has been great. Based on what his parents tell me (they're aware of my crusade against the kid-slots mobile market) it's kept him away/uninterested in that too. Highly recommend this strategy.
Because realism is not and never has been everything. Not complicated.
most genres pretty much got their formula down in the 90s and have only done UI, writing and graphics improvements since then. They also made the gameplay worse and less deep in most of them too 
And the pretty much part is important. It wasn't completely boiled down to a formula yet, but common conventions were established enough so.youd know what to expect for the most part within a genre but not so much you (or specifically i) can't tell what the gsmeplay difference even is between games by looking at footage most of the time. It seems like every TREEREPLEE AAAAAY game in the last decade or so is a third person action shooter with rpg and crafting elements, there's your longstanding franchises that may be like...only one or two kinds of game but gameplay wise it seems everyone is trying to make there games a bit of everything at once and it all just looks boring as hell. The newest game I've played that wasn't either Nintendo (who are evil too but as far as games they make fall out of what I'm talking about) and indie games is Fallout New Vegss
Cause a lot of em still rule and also you can get them for free and play them on a pencil at this point.
Because modern video games suck ass
Because old school jrpgs were fucking lit.
i dont believe this sort of thing. they always lie about younger gens to older ones.
just take a lot at the massive numbers on mictotransaction-hell mobile games. even stuff like fortnite.
To be fair, the article isn't saying that Fortnite and Genshin Impact's servers are becoming ghost towns because kids are abandoning them in droves to go play Game Boy Advance games, only that retrogames are popular
I didn't read the article
Is it piracy? Its gotta be piracy right?
"I don't have to pay for this" is a great price for a game that's 15, 20, 30+ years old.
I've been on a binge of 90s games this year and its really impressive how well they still hold up, Half Life 1, Deus Ex, Morrow wind (I think it says alot that Morrowind still has a thriving mod community and a completely rewritten open source version), Just last week I found out they made talkie mods for the first two Monkey Islands, so I'm playing through those too. It's crazy that my 2023 GOTY was the System Shock remake. Point and clicks really are the pinnacle of game design tbh, all the games that have stuck with me over the last through years from Norco to Disco Elysium are essentially just point and clicks.
Probably the aesthetics, a bit of hipterism, and the fact you don’t have a content shop in Pokémon Red.
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
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