Why do we still play retro games?

[noiseredux]

boy I've missed you Izzy!

[isiolia]

Why do people still watch old movies when there's so many new movies out there?
Why do people still read old books when there's so many new books out there?
Why do people still listen to old music when there's so much new music out there?

etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

It's all the same reason. Age is no reason to dismiss anything.

This. Though I'd also say it goes both ways. New stuff can be good, old stuff can be good.

While video games are interactive, and perhaps have more aspects in which they've developed, I think the bigger thing that separates them from a lot of other media is the fragmentation between different consoles. While you still have that with movies/music/etc to a point, it's typically more with obscure stuff that wasn't popular enough to get transferred to the new medium. Games are split between consoles even when new.

[Hatta]

Retro games aren't any simpler than their modern counterparts. Does this ring a bell:



It holds for other genres too. When was the last time an AAA RPG was released that wasn't a hack and slash affair? How much does character choice actually affect modern RPGs? Not as much as it used to.

[hashiriya1]

Nostalgia.

[I Feel Asleep!!]

I still play retro games largely for nostalgia reasons, I love to re experience the games that helped define my childhood and shape my imagination, it's fun to revisit them...They aren't just games to me, they're how I zen out, lol. It helps make gaming more of an escape for me when I need to get my mind off of all the frustrating and/or sad things I have to deal with now. PLUS, a lot of the classics and even the not so classics have a special feel to them that is lost in modern gaming where cutscenes rule (amazing to look at as they may be) and originality is harder to come by. Oh yeah, and the music of retro games tends to be far more memorable to me than any of the new over-produced or highly orchestrated (FF13 is a good example of this) music in modern games too. All that new music sounds great, and I enjoy it while I'm playing these new games, but I won't be humming any of it to myself and looking up remixes of it on youtube later in the day or anything.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

/snip

The maps are one of the reasons I keep going back to older FPS games.

I play older games because I find them interesting, there's really not much more too it than that.

I also take to games with very cool art styles and music along with gameplay concepts that just don't seem to get released these days. TF2 is one of the few newer games that I can think of where the art style and music just really took me.

In particular I find a lot of what Sega was doing throughout the 90's to be wonderful. Ristar, Comix Zone, Sonic, Nights, Panzer Dragoon, and many many others that just give you an experience you can't find these days.

[Luke]

Either this question is really deep, or very obvious.

[AmericanMuffin]

Either this question is really deep, or very obvious.

True

[Reprise]

The same reason I still listen to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. I agree with AppleQueso on the first page. Although it is a bit odd how no one would blink twice if someone says they're into an old band, like the ones I mentioned above, or if they're into an old film or book, but the second someone says "I bought myself a new game the other day, Dynamite Headdy on the Sega Genesis" people will look at you funny asking "why?"

[hashiriya1]

True