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Why are younger generations embracing the retro game revival? [Guardian]

Shut0wen

Banned
Because they're annoying idiots who want to stand out in the modern faff of social media. Nostalgic people who lived it not included.

If they end up actually enjoying it, that's great though.
This is what i think, theres a fucking majority of gen z that base there whole looks off characters from stranger things, there mentally retarded and wont bring back the flame pants from the 90s
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
Seems to align with the Mat’s numbers regarding modern consoles hardware spending. I have certainly noticed a rise of such retro/cosy gamers content on instagram and tiktok in the past year or so.

Interesting but not really surprising to hear the younger generations already know how to run emulation on PC
 

IAmRei

Member
Reminds me to NewRetroWave genre in music, its actually synth music in 80s vein. Which an era i often to listen. And say what? I nostalgic over nothing, there is fake nostalgia on the musics. I heard the sounds and tunes, feels like i had memories, but its not there. There is almost no music like NewRetroWave back in the 80s. Similar but not the same, and yet still brings memories that never was there.

I'm kind of difficult to say it, you will know if you hear the songs of this genre.

Similar with new "retro" games. The veins are similar, but You will almost never see that kind of graphic in older era. Just looks kinda same but it is acually not.
 

Hugare

Member
Ok, let’s not get crazy here. Old JRPGs didn’t respect your time whatsoever (for the most part). Grinding was seen as a natural part of games since devs used that to extend the time to complete.

But overall I agree with the OP and what folks are saying here.

- Retro games are cheap and can run on crap hardware
- Retro games don’t need Internet connections, MTX, daily logins or other crap.
- They haven’t been created to wage a culture war.
- Retro games are generally easier to pick up and play (maybe not Saga games, lol)
- There is something comforting in simpler 3D or 2D graphics. This can be seen in recent success of 2D-3D games from SE and others.

This trend makes me feel better about gaming and future of our hobby with Gen Z.
I agree, but today we find "boring walk sequence", lengthy cutscenes and other just as boring stuff in pretty much any genre.

And variety was SO much better back then. PS2/GC generation had crazy variety of games. Today we find the same mechanics over and over again.
 

Danknugz

Member
Reminds me to NewRetroWave genre in music, its actually synth music in 80s vein. Which an era i often to listen. And say what? I nostalgic over nothing, there is fake nostalgia on the musics. I heard the sounds and tunes, feels like i had memories, but its not there. There is almost no music like NewRetroWave back in the 80s. Similar but not the same, and yet still brings memories that never was there.

I'm kind of difficult to say it, you will know if you hear the songs of this genre.

Similar with new "retro" games. The veins are similar, but You will almost never see that kind of graphic in older era. Just looks kinda same but it is acually not.
this is because the internet provides a layer of abstraction from experiencing these things in real life and these days when new trends and fads go viral, it's for different reasons than what they were before internet, when it was just mainly word of mouth, people you know and based more on artistic merit as a result.
also, something tells me that with the internet being an internationally accessible resource, for art forms that originate within internet communities, you lose any of the locality and variation in art that naturally arises from diversity of culture and country of origin.
 
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StereoVsn

Gold Member
I agree, but today we find "boring walk sequence", lengthy cutscenes and other just as boring stuff in pretty much any genre.

And variety was SO much better back then. PS2/GC generation had crazy variety of games. Today we find the same mechanics over and over again.
It’s basically a lot more expensive and risky to try something new now days due to development time and cost. A single failure can sink a studio.
 

Hudo

Member
Because games back then were a one-and-done product, which is comforting on multiple fronts. And also, people still gave a shit about game design and not using video games as a medium to tell their mediocre stories because they couldn't get a movie writer gig and are too bad to be an actual author (of books).
 
I think its very simple, a fun game is a fun game and there is a huge amount of good games from back in the day specially when we consider they weren't restricted in their development because DEI/ESG politics, while graphics are very important it doesn't mean that every single games has to have cutting edge graphics and if we consider that lot of phone games doesnt look better than games back in the day then its more easier for young people to adapt to them, I was yesterday looking at a macross game for switch but then I remember the amazing macross games from back in the day for snes and playstation I played them(with questionable legality), and also the ones that are full free movement 3d mech games that sill look and play amazing for PS2 and even for PS1, so if you like macross and play the switch game you dont have to stop there you can go back to those amazing games from the past that are as good if not better than games form today and in other genres that are not available today and you wont see hikaru/rick hunter as a black asian girl in a lesbian love tirangle with lynn minmay and misa
 

Deerock71

Member
Because gameplay is king.
Happy Gilmore GIF

Bitch.
 

Raven117

Member
Yeah, no idea why the kids think they are cool.

But there is a simple fun magic to the 8/16bit era. Fun to play. Fun to listen to. And your imagination of what’s going (like for Final fantasy) was just awesome.
 

onQ123

Member
I see people trying to use this as a chance to post their views on wokeness & so on but that's dumb ass hell because these kids don't care about that stuff at all lol
 
So I randomly made this thread about a reset for the kids before I went to sleep last night then wake up to this lol.

Your thread's premise was created out of spite (a.k.a. ____ must suffer because I did). This thread's premise isn't.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
I… really don’t think they are.

If some actually are, most of them wouldn’t last an afternoon without savestates.

You’ll know Gen Z is truly into this “revival” when articles about how “problematic” old games are get published on a weekly basis.
Until then, I’ll assume it’s just people fiddling around with emulators for five minutes and giving up when they realize that there’s no tutorials or handholding, you have to read dialogues, and the games don’t automatically save your progress.
 

Rayderism

Member
Retro games are easy to acquire and you can have hundreds or thousands of them, and all those games take up less space than one modern game, especially when talking about retro games made before optical disks. Also, since there are hundreds or thousands of retro games, you are sure to find something to play, as opposed to that one modern game that you found you didn't like, or got tired of playing. Even if you only play one round on a retro game, since you have hundreds or thousands of them, you still have games for days.

For example, I have one of those multi-cade arcade machines that came with 300 built-in games (AtGames Legends Ultimate, or ALU), but I also added literally thousands more retro games to it. Everything from retro arcade games to legacy console emulation to old computer systems. I've been playing on that more than my PS5 for the last couple weeks. Games. For. Days. And besides the price of the cab and a couple flashdrives, those thousands of added games cost nothing but a little time to gather. And I've only used 2 of the 3 popular methods of adding games to it, so I could still add more.

Is it any wonder, in these overly expensive times we are living in, that people are getting into cheaper alternatives for gaming? Retro gaming is a game hoarder's treasure trove, it costs MUCH less and you get MUCH more for your HDD space than modern games could ever provide.
 

onQ123

Member
Your thread's premise was created out of spite (a.k.a. ____ must suffer because I did). This thread's premise isn't.
Wrong I said let them witness the growing pains so they will have memories of how things changed when the new games & consoles come out.

Im talking about starting with the best ray-traced graphics the next generation can give us with simple geometry then it gets better & more complex as the new hardware comes out.
 
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Bond007

Member
Fun. Easy to pick up and put down.
These days most games are a bajillion hours long and require some sort of grind to keep you hooked rather than good ol gameplay.
 
Wrong I said let them witness the growing pains so they will have memories of how things changed when the new games & consoles come out.

Im talking about starting with the best ray-traced graphics the next generation can give us with simple geometry then it gets better & more complex as the new hardware comes out.
But you and I both know that's not how it works when it comes to ray tracing. That's why I'm saying it's out of spite, because you want them to experience graphical growing pains, just because.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
It's not because of wokeness or modern games sucking. Most Gen z don't care about the former and the latter simply isn't true.

It's because they are cheap. You can emulate up to ps2 on a decent phone, and store entire rom libraries on a 256gb SD card. The economy sucks and no one is gonna be out here paying 70 dollars for a game, especially kids/teenagers/starving college students. It's just cause they're accessible.

And this is coming from an actual Gen Z who's also talked to other kids- I think my opinion matters more here.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
It's not because of wokeness or modern games sucking.
I do think there's still some truth to this though, more specifically most modern AAA simply not being worth the price tag (besides retro, many gen z are also playing indie games). Wokeness also directly affects the quality of the story/presentation of the game even if a person doesn't particularly care about it, making it less appealing overall.
 
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SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
The younger generation isn't growing up in an era of graphics wars like we did. For them, pixel art or blocky polys have always just been an aesthetic choice, not a technical limitation, and games like Minecraft and Among Us are massive hits with kids.

So yeah, when they see something that looks like it's from generations past, they don't necessarily see it as dated the way that kids raised on SNES would have looked at Atari.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
most modern AAA simply not being worth the price tag (
To most, no video game is worth more than 50 bucks no matter how good it may be. 90+ Metacritic simply doesn't make the value of the dollar go up.

Many of these kids are still in school or college, and don't have salaries. Some of them need to pay for their own food and clothing. Needless to say a great video game can wait...

And as for the wokeness thing, many of the aesthetic choices you guys attribute to wokeness have been in games popular with gen z (fortnite, apex, valorant) for years now. We are kind of used to that stuff.
 

Puscifer

Member
They're embracing it because
A) older games are often much better than what we get today.
B) They're not woke


Why do I favor remasters/remakes so much? Simple. Playing those older games with a fresh coat of paint and achievements/trophies is often more fun than the crap we get today.

Also, don't forget some of these AMAZING ways to emulate these days both software and hardware.

The Miyoo Minis, RG35XX, Retroid Pockets being crazy cheap and available.

Budget emulation APU powered pcs that are doing every console up to switch in great quality for a couple hundred bucks

The steam deck can boot into batocera and just be an on the go emulation station

We have OLED gameboy color mods, FPGAs, Analogue Pockets, super NTS, IPS mods for GBA and psp so you can go back and experience older consoles even better.

There's truly a renaissance in the retro scene and I love it.


Because they're annoying idiots who want to stand out in the modern faff of social media. Nostalgic people who lived it not included.

If they end up actually enjoying it, that's great though.

Cringe response. Maybe they like it because it's just fun and as I mentioned in my post we have great ways to experience titles like never before? I would 100% love to go back in time and play some titles like Silent Hill 3 on an OLED for the first time
 
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64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
It's also why many of them stick to a couple games like minecraft, roblox, and fortnite. 2 of the aforementioned are free and all 3 are very accessible and somewhat easy to run, a deadly combination for most Gen z ers. If they are on consoles maybe add cod and fifa

Other games might look really cool to them but the price tag turns people off
 
I'd say it is because there were a lot of great retro games and these younger folks are just finding them and realizing that these kind of games were fun also.
 

simpatico

Member
The games are mostly better and made with actual artistic intent instead of just a tech job with design by committee.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
And as for the wokeness thing, many of the aesthetic choices you guys attribute to wokeness have been in games popular with gen z (fortnite, apex, valorant) for years now. We are kind of used to that stuff.
It's less about the aesthetics and more about characters and writing. Naturally that's only really valid for story-driven games, i truly doubt anyone would care about this stuff in a f2p competitive game.
 
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IAmRei

Member
this is because the internet provides a layer of abstraction from experiencing these things in real life and these days when new trends and fads go viral, it's for different reasons than what they were before internet, when it was just mainly word of mouth, people you know and based more on artistic merit as a result.
also, something tells me that with the internet being an internationally accessible resource, for art forms that originate within internet communities, you lose any of the locality and variation in art that naturally arises from diversity of culture and country of origin.
Thoughtful. With internet, everyone have more information as long as they are trying. And give more edge for people who have curiousity more. And sometimes stumbled upon new horizon and new views. Good answer Buddy, i think i have understand now. And some of GenZ in my studio (while not all) open to new horizons by discussing lot of things. I teach them about many things which sometimes buried on the internet. Especially retro games, and they sometimes tried to understand histories of certain genres they never knew. Maybe they are just curious persons as general.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Because they're annoying idiots who want to stand out in the modern faff of social media. Nostalgic people who lived it not included.

If they end up actually enjoying it, that's great though.
Probably cause a kid got famous with tetris and tiktok people purely care about fame 🤷‍♂️
I… really don’t think they are.

If some actually are, most of them wouldn’t last an afternoon without savestates.

You’ll know Gen Z is truly into this “revival” when articles about how “problematic” old games are get published on a weekly basis.
Until then, I’ll assume it’s just people fiddling around with emulators for five minutes and giving up when they realize that there’s no tutorials or handholding, you have to read dialogues, and the games don’t automatically save your progress.
Also these posts are honestly pessimistic, cynical and admittedly piss me off

for one thing if people like you could beat those games there's really no reason why some kid with dozens of online guides and savestates to guide him wouldn't.

Moreover tiktok plays a factor but sometimes people just want to enjoy good games. Do you not think that retro games are enjoyable? This movement wouldn't get started if they didn't delight in playing old games now did they?

Not to mention that this has been a thing with younger gamers for years. I've known kids who learnt how to emulate at single digit ages, and I am one of them myself lol. This trend hardly is anything new and I'm sure it predates the big old tiktok boogeyman you think everyone under the age of 40 worships
 

Lambogenie

Member
Also these posts are honestly pessimistic, cynical and admittedly piss me off

for one thing if people like you could beat those games there's really no reason why some kid with dozens of online guides and savestates to guide him wouldn't.

Moreover tiktok plays a factor but sometimes people just want to enjoy good games. Do you not think that retro games are enjoyable? This movement wouldn't get started if they didn't delight in playing old games now did they?

Not to mention that this has been a thing with younger gamers for years. I've known kids who learnt how to emulate at single digit ages, and I am one of them myself lol. This trend hardly is anything new and I'm sure it predates the big old tiktok boogeyman you think everyone under the age of 40 worships
I'm an old git. Kids are trend chasing gits more than ever thanks to social media.
 
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Lambogenie

Member
Also, don't forget some of these AMAZING ways to emulate these days both software and hardware.

The Miyoo Minis, RG35XX, Retroid Pockets being crazy cheap and available.

Budget emulation APU powered pcs that are doing every console up to switch in great quality for a couple hundred bucks

The steam deck can boot into batocera and just be an on the go emulation station

We have OLED gameboy color mods, FPGAs, Analogue Pockets, super NTS, IPS mods for GBA and psp so you can go back and experience older consoles even better.

There's truly a renaissance in the retro scene and I love it.




Cringe response. Maybe they like it because it's just fun and as I mentioned in my post we have great ways to experience titles like never before? I would 100% love to go back in time and play some titles like Silent Hill 3 on an OLED for the first time
Your mum is cringe :)
 

Zelduh

Member
Anecdotal: I tried to start my son off with SNES games via emulation on PC when he was 6. He was asking to play games and I figured I would start him off with the classics, then work him through the PS1 and PS2 era stuff so he had some context for the newer games.

The first day I tried to show him Super Mario World he said "This game looks old. I want a new game that looks good." I wound up buying a few of the Lego games on sale and it was transformative for him. He wound up putting hundreds of hours into Lego Marvel Super Heroes and the Batman games, which were also great for couch co-op. Then he got Minecraft (again, hundreds of hours building shit), and eventually he got into Cuphead, Super Meat Boy, and Fortnite.

More recently he's gotten curious about some older games and on his own, he downloaded some emulators for PS2 and Gamecube. But the only 16-Bit era stuff he's sought out are the old Sonic games.

He didn't like Super Mario World and said it looked old and bad? Throw away the whole kid.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
He didn't like Super Mario World and said it looked old and bad? Throw away the whole kid.
He started playing 16 bit Sonic and cuphead, give him a couple and he'll be playing 2d mario soon.

If not he should be given mario wonder.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Easier games. Less attention span needed.

They just released a new version of Scrabble aimed at the younger crowd because traditional Scrabble is too competitive, hard and wordy. A game where all you got to have is have a half decent vocabulary, combined with basic strategies how to use the S properly and not opening up the board too much giving opponents opportunity to score big points. A game invented around WWII is somehow too hard to comprehend.

 
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sachos

Member
Uh, thats really interesting. Even if it is a fad created by TikTok it is still really cool that they get interested in them. Also is this just validation to old folks that 6th gen is best gen?
 
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JimboJones

Member
I think most people like variety and with some games simply not well represented these days it's pretty easy to turn to such a large backlog of retro games to scratch that itch.
 
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