Lookie here! Classic gaming is the latest crAzE!

[HawgWyld]

Check out this little item from the Detroit News:

 

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archiv...&p_product=DTNB

 

It suggests classic gaming is popular. Imagine that!

[AtariLeaf]

I'm getting nothing. Why don't you copy and paste it.

[HawgWyld]

Afraid that might happen due to cookies or whatever else. Okay, I'll paste it, then, although there may be a complaint or two (sorry, very cool article). This ran on July 10 in The Detroit News (yeah, it's a Gannett rag, but I won't hold that against them). Enjoy!

 

July 10, 2004  

Section: Features  

Edition: No Dot  

Page: 01D  

 

Video games play into retro craze

Early titles make a comeback as players look for simple and just plain fun

The Detroit News -- Adam Graham

 

Greg Witulski owns the latest and greatest video game consoles. He's got his Sony PlayStation 2 and his Nintendo GameCube, and he recently tried drinking his own weight in Mountain Dew in order to score a limited-edition, green-colored Microsoft XBox.

 

But when Witulski gets the urge to really get his game on, he turns to "Maniac Mansion" for his original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System.

 

"You don't need all the fancy graphics and the stereo sound with the soundtracks made by popular bands. You don't need all that," says Witulski, 28, who grew up playing original video game systems of the '70s and '80s such as the NES, the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision. "The most important part is the fun factor, and that's still there on those old games."

 

Don't pack up your PS2 just yet, but retro-flavored, old-school video games are making a comeback. In the $7 billion-per-year video game industry, where the popular logic has always been bigger, better, faster, more, gamers are rediscovering the joys of the industry's early days, when the graphics were cheap, the gameplay was primitive, and a mild-mannered plumber named Mario was the big fish in the gaming world's pond.

 

The toy company Jakks Pacific recently fueled the retro-craze when it released a series of hand-held game consoles called "TV Games." The battery-operated systems are in the form of classic joystick controllers, and each contains up to 10 old-school games, including classics such as "Pitfall" and "Breakout."

 

Nintendo, meanwhile, released a series of eight "Classic NES" titles ? including the original "Super Mario Brothers" and "The Legend of Zelda" games ? for its Game Boy Advance console in early June, alongside a limited edition Game Boy Advance designed to look like the original Nintendo system. The specially priced titles have sold in excess of 350,000 copies, Nintendo says. And most of today's current systems have arcade classic titles, which contain many of the early arcade favorites ? think "Frogger" and "Q-Bert" ? that used to populate pizza parlors coast to coast.

 

But oddly, the popularity of retro video games is not limited to the gaming world. Video game blips and bleeps, like those heard in the original "Pac-Man," have sprung up in hit songs from hip-hop artists Beanie Sigel and Lil' Flip, and bands including Arizona's Minibosses have made a career out of playing cover tunes of video game themes. Teens flaunting T-shirts with an iron-on of an old Atari joystick or a Nintendo controller with the words "Know Your Roots" can be seen at malls everywhere.

 

Advertisers are cashing in on the craze too, as recent spots for Saturn and Hummer have drawn inspiration from such games as "Pac-Man" and "Asteroids." Even book publishers have tapped in, publishing coffee table books dedicated to early '80s video game culture.

 

For the gaming world, the re-emergence of simple run-and-jump, side-scrolling gameplay is sort of like if movie audiences suddenly began embracing silent films over big-budget action extravaganzas. So what's driving the recent boom in retro video games?

 

"Obviously, there's a certain nostalgia factor involved," says John Hardie, 38, founder of the annual Classic Gaming Expo (www.cgexpo.com), a two-day celebration of video game culture of the Reagan, and even pre-Reagan, era. "People remember staying up all night, playing the old games as a kid."

 

This year's gaming expo, Aug. 21 and 22 in San Jose, Calif., hopes to draw 2,500 old-school gaming fans both young and old. But it's not just nostalgia that will make them flock to the event.

 

"There's also a simplicity to the old games," Hardie says. "Everything now is like a big movie. It's a big cinematic event. All too often the graphics are the highlight of the game, when in actuality they've lost focus of the game play, which should be the most important part. The great thing about those old games is they didn't have the memory, and it cost too much to spend or splurge on graphics, so they had to just concentrate on game play and make sure the game was fun. That's the way you got people to keep coming back."

 

That's what's kept Nate Carter coming back. "These games were the originators," says Carter, 23, of Detroit, still a fan of such graphically challenged games as "Tetris" and "Metroid," who concurs that fancy graphics do not a great game make. "Games now, they may have the best graphics, but they don't have the same feel to them where you can just play them and enjoy them. Games back then, you loved them even if they didn't have the best graphics."

 

Witulski agrees. The Rochester Hills mortgage broker by day, gaming fanatic by night says he spends about 65 percent of his gaming time tooling around with old games, including the original "Mega Man" titles.

 

Witulski and his old roommate used to make regular pilgrimages to a Funcoland, where they would comb the used bins for old games for their 8-bit Nintendo, picking up many titles for less than $2. Having ditched most of his Nintendo games when he moved on to systems like the Super Nintendo and Sega's Genesis and Dreamcast in the early '90s, Witulski has re-amassed a collection of between 40 and 50 NES games.

 

"They're fun," Witulski says. "Back in the day, it took you three weeks to finish a game, but nowadays you can run through it in about two hours or so. Since you played them so many times as a youngster, you know what's coming before it even gets there. As soon as you see it, it just all comes back to you. It's crazy, your algebra and your physics and your chemistry that you went through when you were in school don't come back to you, but this stuff does."

 

Part of the popularity of the old games can be traced to a boom in all things '80s, as everything from Care Bears to He-Man figures have made a comeback on toy store shelves.

 

But while pop culture's fascination with the games may be short-lived, the games will be around as long as the systems are to play them on, predicts Beth Llewelyn, senior director of public relations for Nintendo.

 

"I think there will always be interest in great games, just like there will always be interest in classic movies," she says. "The original 'Mario Brothers' - people are going to love that game forever, just like people are going to love 'Gone With the Wind' and the original 'Star Wars.' These games, just like the movies, they're going to continue to live on."

 

 

 

Know your roots

 

A handful of early gaming classics:

 

* Pong (1972): Two paddles, one ball.

 

* Pac-Man (1980): Pac-Man ? who resembles a yellow pie with a piece missing ? gobbles up pellets and ghosts. Yum!

 

* Donkey Kong (1981): A man walks across rickety steel structures and climbs ladders while avoiding barrels being hurled at him by an angry ape. Introduces Mario to the gaming world.

 

* Super Mario Brothers (1985): The further journeys of Mario, who travels across lands filled with mushrooms and turtles in order to save a captured princess.

 

* The Legend of Zelda (1987): Link - Nintendo's second most popular character, behind Mario - is introduced in this epic quest to save the land of Hyrule.

[/b]

[Dan Iacovelli]

I believe it , because oddly enough on the e-vites for VGS'04 Iask what type of tourny the guest wants to see, and more people asked for classic then shooters.

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I think it all boils down to What We Were Playing When We Were Kids. For me, that's pong consoles, 2600, Intellivision, and especially Odyssey2. For others, it's NES. For the obscenely young out there, it's N64. By the way, the toy revival thing isn't just an 80s thing - they're also reissuing replicas of the original Star Wars figures on the 1970s packaging this fall around the time the trilogy DVD set comes out. As if there weren't enough games that I needed to be spending my money on.

[homerwannabee]

If they ever start reproducing the atari 2600 hundred again, the retrogaming craze would really boom.