Age and gaming preferences

[HungryGarou]

I'm 21. My first experience with gaming was the Nes. It belonged to my aunt, who got it as a Christmas gift in 87'. I played the hell out of it too. even as gaming hardware advanced, and eventually got newer systems, i always found the Nes superior and more appealing , i just wasn't really aware 'till years later. I have very fond memories of sitting in front of the TV for hours on end playing mario 1, 2, 3, q-bert, tetris, and many others. eventually she got herself an SNES w/ SMW, DKC, and a few other games i can't remember. we didn't have a lot of games for it, but almost every weekend we'd got to Blockbuster and Hastings and rent some games for the weekend. I remember renting q-bert 3 almost all the time. later on i got a Genesis 2 w/ sonic 2 bundle for Christmas. never really thought much of the genesis back then. it wasn't until recently that i had a sudden interest in all things Sega a while back, thanks to places like Sega-16. Later she bought an N64, then i became glued to it playing Mario 64, then eventually renting several games for it, like bomberman 64, and starfox 64.

As for how i view games older than me, i find them to be some of the better games I've played. I remember when i got an PSX many years ago, some of the games i got for it were Namco Museum vol. 1 & 3. First time going in, i was hooked. at the time it was my real first experience with retro games. i just loved touring the virtual museum and reading on Namco's history, looking at the old flyers and even looking at all of the sprites and animation frames in the theater. The games were fun as hell too.

[BoringSupreez]

I was born in 1993. I grew up with Win 3.1, 95, and Sega Genesis (my parents always had to have the latest version of Windows, so I always had a relatively modern gaming computer, but they didn't give a rip about videogame consoles, so I was stuck playing PC and my neighbors old Sega whilst everyone else was playing N64 and Playstation.) Later, in 2003, I was getting enough spending money that I decided to buy a PS1. I got the slim model, along with Medal of Honor, and Ace Combat 3 (rented). A year later, when Walmart stopped carrying PS1 games, I saved up for a PS2. After that, I started buying games at an alarming rate. I never started "retro gaming" per se. I was always playing old games from the start, so I never had to decide to play old stuff, I had been all along (one of the fringe benefits of being lower middle class as a young child, you never develop the need to always have new stuff, you're just as content with old and used as new). That's why I can be satisfied with a new SNES game while most people I know have to have the latest 360 game, and won't touch my old games, because they're "too old".

[Dakinggamer87]

I'm 23 and I grew up with Atari 2600/Intellivision/NES and then moved onto newer consoles as they came out. I remember playing my SNES and Genesis all the time with my brother. The great memories of Sonic, TMNT: Turtles in Time, Super Mario Bros./RPG. Saving up for games like Donkey Kong Country 2 doing lots of extra work to get. I use to be a big PC gamer with games like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Unreal Tournament, and games like Secret of Money Island, Grim Fandango.

I still go back and pick up older consoles/games I couldn't get when I was younger like the Neo-Geo AES or consoles I skipped like the Atari Jaguar. For my retro gaming preferences I like many consoles but I would narrow it to NES,SNES, Genesis, Dreamcast, and Saturn. Handhelds I prefer GBA for classics and PSP for modern games/emulation. For current-gen I play my PS3 more than my Wii or Xbox 360. I only play my Xbox 360 for exclusives/downloadable games and Wii for Nintendo first-party and the few third-party games that are good. I still play my PS2 fairly often since I still have a few games I haven't finished yet.