At what age did you become a retro gamer?

[J T]

In the 80s I sold my Colecovision and all my games to be able to afford a new NES game. I bought Pro Wrestling. Now, I love the way The Amazon bites heads, and there are few things more satisfying that landing a flying Hayabusa kick on the back of someone's head, but Pro Wrestling wasn't good enough to make up for the loss of my entire collection of Colecovision games (Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Frogger, Zaxxon, Venture, Looping, Lady Bug, Popeye, Smurfs). The fact that it has been 25 years and I still remember selling off those games should tell you something about how much I regretted that decision as a kid. Lesson learned. I stopped selling games after that experience, and so I guess that makes me a retro gamer since 1987 when I was 10 years old.

[Menegrothx]

In the 80s I sold my Colecovision and all my games to be able to afford a new NES game. I bought Pro Wrestling. Now, I love the way The Amazon bites heads, and there are few things more satisfying that landing a flying Hayabusa kick on the back of someone's head, but Pro Wrestling wasn't good enough to make up for the loss of my entire collection of Colecovision games (Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Frogger, Zaxxon, Venture, Looping, Lady Bug, Popeye, Smurfs). The fact that it has been 25 years and I still remember selling off those games should tell you something about how much I regretted that decision as a kid. Lesson learned. I stopped selling games after that experience, and so I guess that makes me a retro gamer since 1987 when I was 10 years old.

I remember trading 5 or 6 Xbox 360 games in Gamestop and paying them 5 euros after that just to afford a used copy of a recently released game that I ended up playing for 2 hours tops after I became bored with it... never again

[Key-Glyph]

I'm interpreting the original question as "when did you become interested in games/consoles specifically because they were outdated," instead of "when did you start playing games that are considered outdated by today's standards."

Short answer: 2003.

Long answer: The first console I bought past its heyday was the SNES. I'd had a Sega Genesis growing up and hadn't had the faintest interest in Nintendo's 16-bit console until I played A Link to the Past at a friend's house in 1997 or 1998. I (incredibly) asked her if I could borrow the entire system along with the game so that I could play it at my own house, but she (understandably) said no. She let me borrow a strategy guide instead, which I poured over obsessively, but which only fanned the fire. So I asked myself: could I justify buying an entire system for myself for the sake of playing one game?

I justified myself over at FuncoLand shortly thereafter, but even then I still wasn't thinking of games in retro terms yet. The concept of time wasn't a conscious factor in my thought process -- I wasn't "revisiting an outdated console" or even "experiencing an old game I missed out on" -- I was just playing a good game. All games still existed "in the now" to me back then, with the only real distinction being that some were cheaper or less popular than others. That changed in 2003, when a new-ish friend in high school exclaimed, "You own an SNES and you've never played Final Fantasy VI?!" He forced his duplicate copy on me a few days later, with a weight of cultural obligation. It was something I must do. My ignorance was an infraction to be fixed.

Playing that game was the first time the dimension of time came into my thinking. FFVI wasn't simply a game I hadn't played before, but it was a game I hadn't played at the right time. I hardly knew anything about it, and yet it was a huge part of many other people's childhoods. It was an experience I could still have, but it was still somehow an experience I missed out on. Some boat had sailed already, and I hadn't gotten to ride on it. So my friend implied.

And that's the first time my thought changed from the simple "What else can I get my hands on that I don't have?" to the more nuanced "What else can I get my hands on that I missed?"

[ElkinFencer10]

I suppose I've always been a retro gamer. When I three or so, I started playing the NES we'd had since I was a few months old (my mom won it on Jeopardy!, so it just kind of sat there until I was old enough to play it), and by that point, the SNES was in pretty full swing. I never really "left" older games; I just added newer ones to what I played, though I did lean towards whatever was newest until I was about 16, so I guess really I've been a retro gamer at heart my whole life, but around 16 was when it really "cemented" for me.

[retrosportsgamer]

Technically, I was 15 at the time. In 1994 I made my first fleamarket video game purchase. I finally had my own NES. I swear I've been years behind the curve since then - although I almost caught up in the PS1/DC/PS2 era (got systems a year after launch - 2 years for the psx).

[ujnhunter]

I've always been a retro gamer... I've been playing my NES & SNES & Dreamcast since they came out and still do. :\

[retrosportsgamer]

Blah blah bla.



And Power Rangers toys. Can't forget the Power Rangers toys.

How old are you mate?

I turned 14 last August.

And as a testament to your posting and accumen, no one really could tell. Nice story. Kudos.

[sevin0seven]

^yep, for a 14 yr old teen his posting abilities and retro knowledge are top notch.

[o.pwuaioc]

Technically, I was 15 at the time. In 1994

For some reason, I thought you were much older.

As for me, it was 1996. I had just gotten an N64 for my birthday, but after playing for a little bit, despite the great games for it, I was just drawn much more to my SNES, and to a lesser degree to my Genesis. Despite this brand new system, I didn't go buy games for it, but rather went to garage sales and found SNES games that way. (Never did see any Genesis games.) Games I played after I got an N64 include Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Kirby's Dream Course, Demon's Crest, Pilotwings, and I'm sure a few others that I cannot think of at the moment. Only with the PS2 and Xbox did I really keep up with current gen stuff, but so much so that I was completely oblivious when the PS3/Wii/360 came out. I was shocked one day to find all the Xbox games taken down from Blockbuster's shelves, and saddened to not find too many gems for sale (stupid sports glut). Even now, I have no current gen systems, and although I am about to get a Wii, it too is at the end of its life.

However, I didn't really get deep into the "retro gaming" scene until a few years ago when I discovered emulators. And really only one year was I able to start collecting in earnest now that I have the money and space (for the most part, my girlfriend disagrees with me on the space issue). I want from maybe 30 games to 524 games (not including downloaded computer games/Steam games) from Combat on the Atari 2600 to Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii, mostly thanks to the excellent traders here.

[3DSStrider]

I turned 14 last August.

And as a testament to your posting and accumen, no one really could tell. Nice story. Kudos.

And I thought he was asking about the PR toys.
Well, that was my wall o' text for the month, now back to thoughtless single sentence posts.