/vr/ - Retro Games

>>1144286
Mostly agreed.

Britfag of 1984 here. I grew up playing on 8-bit home computers, then DOS games in the mid 1990s, followed by Windows 95 era and N64 games. So I got to experience a whole line of classics (Jet Set Willy, Lemmings, Command & Conquer, Duke Nukem 3D, Deus Ex, Majora's Mask...) as they were released.

But when I got access to emulators, I could play all the classics I had missed, often on different platforms. In the mid 1990s, I played classic ZX Spectrum games like Lords of Midnight and Deflektor. In the late 1990s, I played old arcade games like Spy Hunter and Star Wars on MAME. It wasn't until the early 2000s that I played Zelda 3 and Sonic 1-3.

Pic related: I played Megaman for the first time yesterday.

But even though I'm still having fun playing great games from 25 years ago for the first time, and someone growing up today could do the same, I think having lived through the different eras gives you a much better "historical" understanding of the cultural context of the time. You really appreciate what is unusual or outstanding in a particular game, or what other games it is likely to be drawing influences from.

Also, when you play modern indie games with "retro" graphics, the anachronisms are really obvious. I'm not just talking about things anyone could spot, like mixing pixellated graphics of different resolutions, but also things like having 10 sprites moving at once with no slowdown.