Pre-crash systems are slowly being forgotten.

[HoshiChiri]

For what it's worth, 2-3 of the retro-based gaming stores in Boston have recently seen a HUGE influx of NES games. At first, I took it as a sign of 1) college-types moving away at the end of the year, and 2) PAX happening recently. But it seems to keep on rolling, with a few stores I've been in having at least doubled their NES inventories. And the stuff I'm seeing isn't just Al Unser Jr.'s Turbo Racing, it's that $15-$30 strata with your Ninja Gaidens and Punch-Outs and the better TMNT games. Like, places are having to find new shelves to stuff them into.

 

And despite this, the SNES supplies seem to have mostly remained static, with Genesis stuff going up in price everywhere.

Generation roll. The kids who grew up on NES got their nostalgia fix. The keepers kept, the rest sold off. Now the 16-bit generation is coming of age to want their childhood games back- and Genesis was the dominant system then, so more people want it now.

 

I'm just curious to see if enough of it's going back to market to affect prices, or if the retrons and what-nots will keep more games in collections.

 

For example: 32-year old Super-Casual Gamer (or perhaps Modern-Only Gamer) is cleaning out their parents' basement. They find a 5200 and a 2600. Mom and Dad don't care, and give Gamer carte blanche to decide what to do with them. Both consoles have been in a box since before SCG was born. They can't get either console to work. They might not know about the RF-to-coax adapter, and aren't QUITE interested enough to do the online research. Maybe they don't have the switchbox for the 5200. Maybe the CX-52 controllers don't work. And maybe they've also seen that AVGN video. So they decide to toss the 5200 and keep the 2600, 'cause, duh, woodgrain and big metal switches, soooo retro. Like on one of those "know your roots" shirts. Maybe they get $25 for the 5200 on craigslist, or maybe it sits there for a week before they decide to take it to the recycling center. The 2600 ends up in their apartment on top of the laserdisc player, and maybe eventually gets hooked up once in a while to play Pitfall (legitimately) and E.T. (ironically). (You could replace the 5200 in this example with the ColecoVision, the Intellivision, the Odyssey2, or any of the other consoles from that generation.)

A kid who's willing to play ET ironically is willing to keep a 5200 as a beer holder for the same reason. Good or bad, as long as it's a known thing they'll be an assumption of value. Which means the Odyssey 2 (or a Fairchild Channel F) are most likely to get tossed.

 

I don't think, at this point, we'll see any real value change for pre-crash. The nostalgia bubble is long burst, the people moving into/out of it aren't enough to affect things. If anything, we'll reach a point where there is no value consensus because so few items are changing hands (you can already see that to a point with Channel F games.)

 

We might see a spike if they become 'historic'and/or 'decorative'. Kind of like how some people buy turn of the century radios and old cameras for décor purposes.

[BassGuitari]

Speaking of things being forgotten, an area of special interest to me is early computer games. Like, *really* early--1970s early. One such game, famously, is Star Trek, which originated on mainframes and teletype systems and proliferated, in innumerable variations and guises, to just about every conceivable computer platform for nearly 20 years. "Trek" games were a genre unto themselves.

Anyway, a few days ago I posted a thread in the Classic Computing forum asking people which versions of Trek they enjoyed, and it's telling that most of the responses were things like Star Trek: SOS or Star Trek 25th Anniversary. Now to be fair, it could be that people thought I just meant official/licensed Star Trek games rather than "Trek" as a game genre. But I thought it was interesting nontheless. Even among the pre-crash crowd, there is such a thing as "too old." Which stands to reason, I guess--these games are primitive, and most nostalgia around here is rooted in early '80s golden age arcades and consoles. It's just funny to me that pre-crash and post-crash groups are really the same, only the timeframe is different:

Post-crasher: "Games didn't really start to get good until the NES. The NES saved the industry and delivered us from all the crappy Atari games that were out. Systems like the Atari 2600 and Intellivision were evolutionary dead-ends."
Pre-crasher: "Games didn't really start to get good until the Atari 2600. The Atari saved the industry and delivered us from all those crappy Pong consoles. Systems like the Channel F and Studio II were evolutionary dead-ends."

Soon it will be the Post-post-crashers saying, "Games didn't really start to get good until the PlayStation 2."

In the meantime, if anything's being truly forgotten, it's early stuff like Trek. And yeah, it makes sense, since those old BASIC games didn't have nearly the cultural impact (except on computer users, who were far fewer and further between then than they are now) that the Atari or NES did, but it's still a shame, I think.

Edited June 15, 2016 by BassGuitari

[Flojomojo]

Even among the pre-crash crowd, there is such a thing as "too old."

 

Well said. I totally feel that way about pre-VCS, and can see how the line can be drawn anywhere from before a person's individual memory kicks in. There's a weird middle spot with the original Playstation. The polygonal 3D games on that machine look old and nasty, while 2D SNES and Genesis hand-drawn pixel games from 5 years prior still look sweet. I bought a bunch of "PS2 classics" for my PS4, and they look like ass in their 4:3 aspect ratio on my 16:9 TV, to say nothing of the primitive textures and geometry. I sure hope the new Xbone and PS4 mid-cycle refresh consoles don't make the standard versions look super old.

 

All that said, a good game is a good game, even if it's just rolling Xs and Os around a black and white screen with a giant trackball, right?

[BassGuitari]

 

All that said, a good game is a good game, even if it's just rolling Xs and Os around a black and white screen with a giant trackball, right?

FOOTBOOOOWWWWL!!!

 

(You bring up another passion of mine: b/w arcades.)

[fiddlepaddle]

BassGuitari:

 

I don't follow the computer threads, so I didn't see your topic until I followed the link, but I did play a couple of different versions of that on mainframes over a telephone line with a teletype...maybe the first time in 1975?

 

That one was BASIC, and fun for a while, but I got bored with it, inspiring me to write a more involved similar game that other (computer geek) friends actually enjoyed playing. I still have it somewhere on a 6 inch diameter spool of paper tape.

 

I don't recall computer programs really having "names", per se; just the command line word used to invoke them, which often had to be disguised to prevent our System Managers from deleting all those pesky games taking up valuable hard disk space that was supposed to be reserved for more important things, like calculating a persons biorhythms or determining pi to some specified precision.

 

Another popular game back in those days was text-based adventure ("go south", "go down", "look around"...), and I remember somewhere seeing a Star Trek game that had been enhanced to respond to additional commands similar those in adventure a couple of years later. We called it "natural language" commands.

Edited June 15, 2016 by fiddlepaddle

[atarilovesyou]

Great topic.

 

My two cents: I'm going to enjoy this stuff until the day I croak. Then, I don't care what people do with my collection. It will have served its purpose, and that was to provide me with enjoyment. You can't replicate the times, and I understand why people someday won't give a hoot.

 

In terms of value, however, you never know. I'm sure original silent movie reels are worth something to someone. I doubt we're going to get rich, but this stuff was (for the most part) well built and lasts, if taken care of properly.

 

Nostalgia is real, but for some reason I don't see the mass appeal of retro systems extending to the PS2 and beyond. That was the era of multiple games for different machines and very little variation to speak of. It's like old CDROM games for PCs...not a huge market for those, far as I can tell. It's because there was nothing 'binding' from society to the equipment. We all had PCs, and well all played Doom. People are nostalgic for the game, not the hardware. Which is odd...because I have my 486, and as soon as I can find a nice Pentium, I'm buying that too. But I'm niche, and that's ok. I simply prefer to play games on the machines they were designed for.

 

Let today enjoy today. Their time shall come too, someday. Enjoy it all while it lasts, and don't worry too much about what happens once we're pushing daisies. These machines have served their purpose for us, and in my case, still serve their purpose.

[Silverfleet]

This is definitely an interesting subject for sure.

 

I was born in 1982. I have an older sister who is 7 years older than I am, and on Christmas of 1982, she got a Colecovision. My older cousins who we were really close with got a 2600. I had early exposure with both consoles, sitting down as a toddler watching them play. I also remember playing both consoles at a very young age. My family moved to a new house in '85, and I remember playing Cosmic Avenger on our old console TV in the old house with my sister. I also remember sneaking in games of Asteroids and Air-Sea Battle on my cousin's Atari when they weren't looking. My first console that I could call my own was the NES, which I got for Christmas in 1987. By then, I was 5, and already had experience playing video games. I didn't shun the older systems, but since that NES was mine, I played it more than anything else. We also had an Apple IIe in the house, and I played some games on that. My most played games on that were Gorgon (Defender clone), Sneakers (sorta like Moon Cresta), and Orbitron.

 

While I was gaming at a very young age, I had no knowledge of the other pre-crash systems until later on at age 12-13. I have always been a student of history, and I know this may sound weird, but my uncle had a huge library of National Geographic magazines at his house dating back to the 1930's, and I used to love looking at the ads in the magazines. I am also big into cars, so seeing the old car ads was really cool. Then, I found the magazine ads in the early 80's were featuring weird game consoles and computers I never heard of before, like this one:

 

 

And this one:

 

 

After that, I made it my mission to find these consoles! And the rest was history. I really got into collecting after that. I eventually bought my own Intellivision, 2600, 5200, and I resurrected the family Colecovision. I also took an interest in old arcade games after a chance trip to Funspot in NH around that time. I found the older stuff, like the black and white Atari games, fascinating for some reason.

 

Now, let's talk about the upcoming generation. I have two nephews: aged 18 and 13, and they are both into gaming. They are aware of the pre-crash stuff to some extent, basically because I've played my Colecovision and 2600 with them. Their oldest console was the Playstation 2, which I bought them when they were really small. To them, those games are classic. They are nostalgic for Guitar Hero and Star Wars Battlefront on the PS2, which they used to play all the time. I've tried to expose them to the older games as much as possible, even giving the younger one a hacked Wii with tons of older games loaded on an SD card. They rarely play it, because they would rather play GTA or Destiny online with their friends. They have no idea what a Bally Astrocade or an Odyssey II is, but they know all about the 2600 and Colecovision from the direct exposure they had from playing them at my house. I would consider them more informed than your average current-generation gamer.

 

So, will these lesser known pre-crash consoles eventually be forgotten? Forgotten by most, yes. You won't see a Fairchild Channel F plug-and-play at the local Dollar General anytime soon. But the more popular ones, like the Atari consoles, the Coleco, an INTV, will live on as game conventions, retro stores, and YouTube personalities continue to exist and make the current and upcoming generations aware of their existence. And for every 10 kids that catch the gaming bug, at least a couple of them might want to know more of what else was around during that time. I think there will always be people that want to play the games on their original hardware, much like vinyl music enthusiasts lookin for an "authentic" listening experience. But that said... as console platforms and proprietary physical formats move by the wayside in the upcoming years, look for emulation of these old consoles to grow even larger than ever.

[Keatah]

Nostalgia is real, but for some reason I don't see the mass appeal of retro systems extending to the PS2 and beyond. That was the era of multiple games for different machines and very little variation to speak of. It's like old CDROM games for PCs...not a huge market for those, far as I can tell. It's because there was nothing 'binding' from society to the equipment. We all had PCs, and well all played Doom. People are nostalgic for the game, not the hardware. Which is odd...because I have my 486, and as soon as I can find a nice Pentium, I'm buying that too. But I'm niche, and that's ok. I simply prefer to play games on the machines they were designed for.

 

I believe that by buying a bare-bones machine, a stripper, and then expanding it up over time makes for better nostalgia as opposed to a store-bought machine you never tear into.

 

On my 486 DX2/50 I added in:

14.4 modem

2 HDD 340MB & 1.6GB

2nd parallel port

2nd game port

Soundblaster

Waveblaster

CD-ROM

1MB graphics card

256K cache

CPU fan

Snappy

Zip Drive

ASP chip for soundblaster

Memory expansion card

4MB - 8MB - 16MB memory

And probably other little things here and there over time.

 

So therefore I feel I configured the machine from scratch and thus have great sentimentality surrounding it.

[Guest LiqMat]

Anyone remember the 486 DX4-100? That was my last 486 build before I moved up to a Pentium 90 and the only reason why I moved up is because it was the recommended CPU for the original Earthsiege. That game made my mouth drop in awe at my local Babbage's before Mechwarrior 2 was released.

[The Usotsuki]

Had one. Also had a 486DX5/133.

[Guest LiqMat]

Had one. Also had a 486DX5/133.

 

Wow, I missed that one completely!

[Professor Gull]

 

Wow, I missed that one completely!

I remember the 133 as well. A friend of mine upgraded every time the speed got bumped. Thankfully a monthly computer show helped make the costs more effective but by the end he had enough parts to build 2 more machines.

 

I miss my Pentium II 450 at times still. Giant CPU cartridge thing was definitely interesting.

[Keatah]

I still have my P2-266. Paid $606 (intel standard pricing of new cpus) for it. I have a P2-350, and P3-450 laying around, too.

 

Some fucking cheap china shit ass capacitors ruined my P3-850.

 

And I use a P3-1.5GHz on a regular basis for testing.

 

As far as 486's go. I only really had the DX2/50. I also did a brief stint with a P90.

[Flojomojo]

My first DOS system was a Mac Quadra 610 with a DOS compatibility card, a 486SX25. I upgraded the socketed CPU to a 486DX66 for like $300. Jeepers what a crazy system that was.

[Keatah]

About 3 years after I got my DX2/50 (Pentium era) I noticed the market starting to pick up in terms of speed increases. A couple hundred MHz speed up every 6 months more or less.

 

The 486 was my first PC that I could afford with my own money, till then I had been using other peoples' rigs and stuff.

[nd2003grad]

I browsed this briefly. I have to say that there will be a dedicated few who preserve at least some of this tradition. For instance, my son Orion. He's 5. I've never "pushed" him with classic consoles. His mom (my ex, I'd never do this) bought him his own non-toy tablet recently. He has a decommissioned Iphone of his own.

 

My boy is OBSESSED with the classic systems. He has a portable Genesis that he's inseparable from. He LOVES Colecovision, NES, Atari, and Intellivision--and he knows the differences. However, you'll all be shocked to know that his absolute favorite is...drum roll please...the BALLY ARCADE aka ASTROCADE. I talks to almost everyone he knows about Incredible Wizard ad nauseum. So, even if most are maybe not into it--my son certainly is. I'm soon to get at least a C64, hopefully an A8 and someday and Amiga. He's already excited about this stuff, and he tried to help me today with a pile of Coleco parts.

 

In short, THERE IS HOPE...we just need to pass it on to our kids/grandkids.

 

Then again, I think as a 35 year old myself it's probably a little strange myself to be obsessed over systems I never even saw growing up in Montana (first system played was an NES, unless you count the days sorely missed of arcades and pinball).

[nd2003grad]

Proof (he's holding a Bally controller):

 

I browsed this briefly. I have to say that there will be a dedicated few who preserve at least some of this tradition. For instance, my son Orion. He's 5. I've never "pushed" him with classic consoles. His mom (my ex, I'd never do this) bought him his own non-toy tablet recently. He has a decommissioned Iphone of his own.

 

My boy is OBSESSED with the classic systems. He has a portable Genesis that he's inseparable from. He LOVES Colecovision, NES, Atari, and Intellivision--and he knows the differences. However, you'll all be shocked to know that his absolute favorite is...drum roll please...the BALLY ARCADE aka ASTROCADE. I talks to almost everyone he knows about Incredible Wizard ad nauseum. So, even if most are maybe not into it--my son certainly is. I'm soon to get at least a C64, hopefully an A8 and someday and Amiga. He's already excited about this stuff, and he tried to help me today with a pile of Coleco parts.

 

In short, THERE IS HOPE...we just need to pass it on to our kids/grandkids.

 

Then again, I think as a 35 year old myself it's probably a little strange myself to be obsessed over systems I never even saw growing up in Montana (first system played was an NES, unless you count the days sorely missed of arcades and pinball).

Edited June 17, 2016 by nd2003grad

[7800fan]

Maybe because the early system had simple graphics that are less distracting and easier to focus on actually playing?

[malducci]

Had one. Also had a 486DX5/133.

That was the AMD model. I had it as well. The interesting thing, is that it had a multiplier option higher than that. The two common overclock options for that chip were 150mhz and 160mhz. The 150mhz came from a 25mhz bus speed, but it ran your PCI bus at 25mhz instead of 33mhz. The boards we had in our techshop where I worked at the time, could set the bus to 40mhz. As long as your PCI video card could handle it, then most AMD chips would do the 160mhz over clock. It was faster than the P90s and at a fraction of the cost.

 

The P-60/66 series was absolute crap. I felt sorry for anyone who bought them.

[Keatah]

The P-60/66 series was absolute crap. I felt sorry for anyone who bought them.

 

I agree. I had a brief stint with a P90 + M54PI mainboard. It was a direct drop-in replacement-swap for the DX2/50. While I was impressed with how well Descent performed, it was a just a few weeks later that I got wind of even faster chips. I said fuck it and "restored" my DX2/50 to the way it was. Today I am happy I did that. Anyways, no big deal. Soon the PII-266 would be out. Soon a new build would be on the horizon.

[high voltage]

Not really, but in this case, don't teach them wrong facts.

Don't tell them that Mario is an Atari character, just tell them that there is a Mario game on Atari.

Mario Bros are.Atari console characters just like Donkey Kong is a Colecovision console character. From arcade to console. Sky Skipper as well, an original Atari CONSOLE game.

[high voltage]

That's high_voltage you're talking to, just put him on ignore like everyone else and all will be fine.

I am on ignore lists, that is so cool, people care.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I am on ignore lists, that is so cool, people care.

Put too many people on your ignore list and you'll miss out on everything from valuable insight to juicy forum drama. Also replies to posts that make no sense without the original reference.

 

As for the original topic, everyone I knew was raised on Nintendo so I finally got one in 2002 at 21 years. I spent the next ten years collection only Nintendo systems and thinking Atari was shit because that's what I was told growing up. I still love Nintendo but it felt so good in 2012 when I bought my Atari and realized how wrong I was all those years.

[Keatah]

Put too many people on your ignore list and you'll miss out on everything from valuable insight to juicy forum drama. Also replies to posts that make no sense without the original reference.

 

As for the original topic, everyone I knew was raised on Nintendo so I finally got one in 2002 at 21 years. I spent the next ten years collection only Nintendo systems and thinking Atari was shit because that's what I was told growing up. I still love Nintendo but it felt so good in 2012 when I bought my Atari and realized how wrong I was all those years.

 

Well, yeh, that's what happens when you listen to other people and let them shape your opinions.

 

If I listened to people's opinions about real hardware vs. emulation I'd have missed out on countless hours of gaming and discovery of so many things along the journey; which has been going since the mid-1990's.

 

Not only have I played games I never would in the physical hardware realm, but I developed tools and techniques. Things that have had great value elsewhere in fields totally unrelated to gaming through emulators.

[Newsdee]

My two cents is that we need to move on past the nostalgia and the collector mentality to find and showcase those games that are truly worth remembering to the younger generations.

 

It's a bit like being a librarian or a curator. There's a lot of things to show but everybody would get bored with 10 of the same thing aligned in a row. Also in an era when somebody can get the whole collection of a system in an SD card that fell off a a truck, it's easy to miss some good stuff.

 

Perhaps we could start a list of games per system which are truly unique (no ports, no clones) and worth playing at least once. Obviously that criteria can be tough for some systems like the Cosmac VIP / Chip8 ... (altough the ant game is pretty funny)