What's your main retro gaming interest / area of expertise?

[BoneSnapDeez]

Mine will come as no surprise.

8 and 16-bit console JRPGs. Whether they're traditional turn-based JRPGs, "Western-style JRPGs", strategy RPGs, rouguelikes, whatever.

I'm taking about series like Ys, Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, Shining, Xak, Mother, Dragon Quest, etc. And developers like Xtalsoft, Square, Enix, Produce, Almanic, Falcom, and Micro Cabin.

I can't get enough of this stuff. And there's so much I have yet to explore.

Secondary interests include anything second gen (Atari 2600, Intellivision, ColecoVision, etc.) and Nintendo franchises (Mario never gets old).

How 'bout yous?

[ElkinFencer10]

My main area of interest and my main area of expertise are different. My area of interest for all of high school and college (and, as such, my main area of expertise) is 3rd generation/8-bit gaming, specifically the NES. My interest has shifted, however, to 5th generation/32 and 64-bit gaming, mostly the more obscure/unsuccessful platforms (I'm a big fan of and very interested in the 3DO and Atari Jaguar, for example).

Here recently, though, my retro gaming has taken a backseat in terms of interest to the Wii, Wii U, and Playstation 4. I go in waves, though, so I'm sure I'll be back to dumping my spare money into 80s and 90s games by the end of the summer.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Oh I love the "failed" 5th gen systems. I have a Jaguar, 3DO, PC-FX, and Amiga CD32 but regrettably haven't explored their respective libraries much. The Casio Loopy and Playdia are also on my radar. Someday......

I'm kinda priced out of modern gaming (which is okay because I don't have a huge interest in it anyway). $60 for a new game is a bit hard for me to swallow and the prices of Xbone and PS4 consoles just seem insane. Ah, the perks of being unemployed.

[Jmustang1968]

Mine would be RPGs (Japanese and Western), tactical and traditional primarily. I have not played much in the way of roguelikes and the first person dungeon crawler styles.

Strategy games (turn-based and some RTS, 4x, grand etc...)

Sports (primarily football, some baseball and basketball, usually tend to play more sim style as opposed to arcade style)

[Anayo]

I've read three or four books on the history of video games beginning with the rise of Atari and ending with the emergence of the Sony Playstation. I've also read innumerable articles online focusing on little chapters in between. If I had to commit to a specific area of expertise I'd say it's having a robust knowledge of video games as a business along with what was hot from one year to the next. For something stereotyped as a socially inept hobby, it has served as neat icebreaker. I can't really talk intelligibly about sports or TV shows but I've had a few cases where chat at work would turn to games and I could chip in, like one time my boss was trying to remember what Revolution X was called.

"Gaming history" is kind of broad so to answer more specifically, I can say for sure my area of expertise is not MMO's. A buddy of mine is gaga for World of Warcraft and I just zone out whenever he starts lecturing me about the history of that game.

[Sarge]

So my area of interest has always been Japanese RPGs. Or really, RPGs of any stripe. It's just that JRPGs were the ones I was most exposed to when I was younger. I did have a go at some C64 RPGs like Phantasie, Questron, Sword of Fargoal, Ultima IV, and the like, but the majority of my own gaming time was spent on the NES. This continued through... well, the PS2 era. For the longest time, I picked up pretty much anything RPG-related for the systems I owned. It's ridiculous enough that I'm only really missing Brandish and Harvest Moon, plus a few CRPG ports, for SNES, the King's Field games and Chocobo Mystery Dungeon 2 for PSX, and a couple of really late-gen RPGs like Mana Khemia 2 and Eternal Poison for PS2.

During the PS2 generation, however, I stumbled on an uncomfortable revelation; outside of a few games like Shining Force, I never finished any of the SRPGs I bought. The interest was there, but I always ended up just not putting in the effort to beat them. So I kinda stopped buying most of them. I still make the occasional exception if the price is right, though.

Now, if you want to talk expertise, I think most folks here would probably say that I'm rather good at 8-bit and 16-bit platformers. Or, really, platformers of any stripe, but anything in the older, 2D style in particular. While I played them a lot growing up, I didn't prioritize them (except for Mega Man!) like I did RPGs. As I get older, and my patience and gaming time grow increasingly limited (and my realization that my potential reaction time is likely heading that way as well), I appreciate the tough-as-nails games more than I used to, or just that era of platformers in general.

[nightrnr]

I'm a bit of a "Jack of all trades". A student of many, a master of none (or few anyways).

I tend to be stuck in the 90's though.
Those that mentioned 3DO and Jaguar, I have a strange fascination with, even though my actual genre specializations lie outside what the systems offer (mostly).

I like Fighters, ARPG's, and RPG's in general (although, my repertoire of played RPGs is much smaller than my collection of them...).

But really, anything from or relating to my precious 1990's is my arena.
One day I will properly catch up to the 00's at least.

EDIT
Ooh! Forgot to mention:
I know a lot about the Sega Game Gear. I may be the biggest fan here of that crazy system. One day (maybe soon), I want to do a blog for it.

[Gunstar Green]

Primarily probably DOS and early Windows PC gaming even though I don't tend to collect these games beyond my absolute favorites. If I was someone more into running legacy PCs that might be different but I'm content with Steam, GOG and legal gray area downloads.

For consoles it would be the Atari 2600, NES and Genesis/Mega Drive. This follows the gaming lineage of my childhood unsurprisingly. I can probably count the SNES in here too though on a smaller scale.

I love golden age arcade games and other second gen stuff but I don't hunt down the hardware for either besides the 2600. I own way too many arcade compilations.

As for the games themselves I focus on my favorite genres which tend to be action games and platformers. Certain genres like RPGs I only have a very general knowledge of and very little interest.

I've always had an interest in Nintendo's handhelds as well. I wouldn't call myself an expert there though.

My knowledge becomes much more casual and limited to my personal interests once you get into 5th gen and beyond excepting maybe the Dreamcast.

[laurenhiya21]

Hmm... This was actually a really difficult question to answer

I'm interested in many, many different games (across many genres), but I'm not sure if anything stands out as "this is my main interest!". I do play more RPGs more than most other genres I think, but is that because that's the "safe" option for me (I started playing RPG X, liked it, so maybe I'll like RPG Y...) or do I actually like them more than other genres? I'm not sure :/ That might seem like an odd answer, but it's a little difficult for me to feel many strong positive emotions like "I love this!!! BEST GAME EVAR". Usually I will guess that I like a game if I go "huh, this isn't bad" I suppose

Don't really any particular interest in any systems either. I've been trying to focus PS2/PS3 games as of late, but that's more because there are a lot of cheap games for those systems, rather than I'm really interested in them.

My area of expertise is a little simpler, and that's just I know little bits of lots of different games ha. I like reading articles about different game things, even if it's not something I plan to ever play.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I think I'd also say I'm more of a jack-of-trades, though not all of them.

I play lots of genres, and I'm pretty good to competent at all the ones I do play, with my major areas of badness being RTS games, fighting games, and console-FPS. Other than that I tend to play lots of RPG's, action RPG's, strategy games, but I can also get a lot of enjoyment out of an action game or a brawler like Streets of Rage 2 or God Hand.

I tend to just generally remember lots of facts, so I guess my area of experteise would be mostly from the 16-bit stuff to the end of the GameCube era. After that I start to get a little sketchy, and anything before that I'm just not terribly interested in.