How come a lot getting into retro games skip Atari?

[+wongojack]

Ah you're offended - neato

 

The answer is that I made the last comment right before yours, so I wanted to see what the next post was.

[adamchevy]

40 minutes ago, wongojack said:

Ah you're offended - neato

 

The answer is that I made the last comment right before yours, so I wanted to see what the next post was.

Then I heard someone was offended so I got curious.  I started playing street figher 2 in the arcade where I grew up in St. George Utah at the Red Cliffs mall at Tilt.  There was always a line and you had to have your quarter up on the glass or you didnt get to play.  I also recieved a Snes with Street Fighter 2 on it around the same time.  I practiced everyday at home for hours and spent alot of my Dads change bottle money at the arcade in the evenings.  I was pretty good, and I held my own alot of the time against older kids.  I recently got back into it again and started with 3rd Strike.  I came to realize that I am either an old man, or third Strike is a hell of alot harder than I remember in the arcades and on the dreamcast.  

[82-T/A]

On 11/15/2015 at 4:56 AM, totallyterrificpants said:

I'm 25 so obviously I didn't grow up with Atari. I remember I was 12 when I started researching old Atari games, old NES games etc. I got my hands on a 2600 when I was 20 and I love it. I can play Atari for hours. However, I've only met one retro gamer my age who likes Atari. For most, they stop at NES. A lot dismiss what came before it.

 

I've heard from other retro gamers

"Atari is bad"

"Atari is boring"

"Gaming didn't get good until Nintendo"

"Only hipsters like Atari"

 

Most retro gamers I know also dismiss Sega and love anything Nintendo released in the past. Why is this? I would say personal preference but I'd say a good 85% of retro gamers my age adore Nintendo and dismiss Sega and especially dismiss Atari.

 

 

Hahaha... I like the hipster comment.

 

I think it's really just what people consider to be "retro" for them... and more than anything, what they're used to using when they were younger. More important than that though, it also has to do with the age range as well. If I think back to the time where I had the biggest interest in retro gaming, and was actively buying video games and really involved in the hobby... it was when I was in my 20s. But I'm a 45 year old man now... married, have a kid in high school, and I just don't have a lot of time. I have way more expendable income today than I did when I was 25, but I spent a LOT more of my expendable income on video games when I was 25.

 

So what age group is 25 now? That would be the oldest Gen-Zs, and perhaps the youngest Millennials. And so you ask yourself... what games were they playing when they were kids? For the youngest among them, that's the Nintendo Wii (which is hilarious to me that this is a "retro" system). For the rest of them, it might be the Sega Saturn, the Nintendo 64, the original Playstation, what have you.

 

People are funny like that. You're a unique person who's willing to put aside shitty graphics and appreciate the simplicity of something. I think that's a good trait that will take you far in other aspects of your life. But most people are unable to appreciate things that are outside of their reference. A more apropos example is older computer games. Most people who play older games, enjoy them because it's not *just* the game that brings them joy, but all the memories that they associate with playing them. It brings them back to a different time. But most younger people can't really appreciate an older game, simply because the graphics are so bad in comparison that they cannot associate enough enjoyment from them to make it worth playing. The example for me, is the Ultima Series (which I know @Albert is a big fan of). I really, really, have a hard time playing anything older than Ultima 6. U6 was the first Ultima game I ever played, and I played the s**t out of 6, 7, 7p2, Underworld, 8, etc. Every time I try to play Ultima 1-5... I just can't get through it. I've tried playing them on the Nintendo... because they play a bit more like Dragon Warrior (which I loved on the NES), but otherwise... man, I just can't get through them! I know they're awesome, and the stories are deep... haha... I just have never seen that!

 

 

 

[MaximRecoil]

13 hours ago, wongojack said:

Ah you're offended - neato

Your crystal ball is in need of repair.

 

Quote

The answer is that I made the last comment right before yours, so I wanted to see what the next post was.

That doesn't have anything to do with my question. Irrelevance seems to be your thing... and attempts at crystal ball readings.

[82-T/A]

13 hours ago, adamchevy said:

... you had to have your quarter up on the glass or you didnt get to play.

 

This is so awesome. This is a huge part of arcade "culture" that a lot of people who didn't live the time, simply do not understand. I always keep a quarter up on the glass on my Super Pac Man multicade. But what's more funny is how everyone at the time knew this. How it became a thing around the United States in a non-internet connected world, is amazing to me.

 

My daughter brought a friend over a few months ago that saw the quarter on the arcade and he said, "Ooh... I found a quarter!" and then she had to explain to him that this is what you did so you could mark that you were going to be playing next, or that you had a set of games lined up to play.

[MaximRecoil]

On 9/1/2023 at 12:18 PM, 82-T/A said:

 

This is so awesome. This is a huge part of arcade "culture" that a lot of people who didn't live the time, simply do not understand. I always keep a quarter up on the glass on my Super Pac Man multicade. But what's more funny is how everyone at the time knew this. How it became a thing around the United States in a non-internet connected world, is amazing to me.

 

My daughter brought a friend over a few months ago that saw the quarter on the arcade and he said, "Ooh... I found a quarter!" and then she had to explain to him that this is what you did so you could mark that you were going to be playing next, or that you had a set of games lined up to play.

Karate Champ was the first arcade game that I played regularly, in 1984 at the local laundromat. When people would pull down on the joysticks hard, the control panel would pull away from the front glass just enough for any quarters leaning against the glass to fall down into the cabinet. When the route operator would come around to collect the money, he would always find a bunch of extra quarters that weren't in the coin bucket because of that. I remember telling him how it happened because he couldn't figure it out; he was thinking there might be something wrong with the coin mechanism making some of the coins miss the bucket.

Edited September 3, 2023 by MaximRecoil

[LatchKeyKid]

On 9/1/2023 at 8:56 AM, 82-T/A said:

 

 

I think it's really just what people consider to be "retro" for them... and more than anything, what they're used to using when they were younger. More important than that though, it also has to do with the age range as well. If I think back to the time where I had the biggest interest in retro gaming, and was actively buying video games and really involved in the hobby... it was when I was in my 20s. But I'm a 45 year old man now... married, have a kid in high school, and I just don't have a lot of time. I have way more expendable income today than I did when I was 25, but I spent a LOT more of my expendable income on video games when I was 25.

 

I'm in the same bracket and I used to turn my nose up at Atari stuff up until a couple years ago to be honest.  I got into video games post crash and what was in the gas station, convenience store, and pizza parlor arcade corners was way more graphically advanced than what Atari offered in the home on the 2600 (the only machine I knew about at the time).  I played in school during computer class on the Apple IIc/e until I got an NES in 5th or 6th grade so that was my first real nostalgic memory of home gameplay (other than literally two sessions on an uncle's old dusty 2600 on a tiny B&W kitchen tv).  Even during the xbox 360 era when they had the Atari arcade marketplace, I wasn't interested in those games.  It wasn't until I learned 2-3 years ago about the hardware limitations that programmers faced with the 2600 that I appreciated the immense achievements they were able to complete and even more amazed at what the homebrew community came up with in the decades since.  

Edited September 3, 2023 by LatchKeyKid