/vr/ - Retro Games

An Atari 8 bit ad for the night.

Did your older family members play games when you were young?

I grew up in the NES era and one of the fun things about it is that it was very much a cool thing and there was a sense of universality to it. Almost everyone had an NES. I remember playing games like Metroid with my dad, Bubble Bobble with my mom, Zelda 2 with an aunt and Punch-Out with an uncle. Extended family all had their own NES and their own game collection. It made visiting family members on holidays a lot of fun.

Then when 16-bit rolled around they all just kind of stopped. I'm not sure if it's because games got too complicated (I remember my mom's eyes glazing over when i handed her a 6-button SNES controller for the first time) or if it was just a fad that passed. Mom would go on to play Solitaire on our PC and later on Candy Crush style games.