/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.1323234]

Is it possible to recreate a childhood gaming experience?

I've been replaying Chrono Trigger and BG2 but they're not the same...

[Anonymous No.1323238]

>>1323234
>Is it possible to recreate a childhood gaming experience?

Yes, if you know how to time travel and swap pieces of your consciousness with a past you.

Your best bet is to play a similar game that you've never played before under similar circumstances.

[Anonymous No.1323242]

>>1323238

I get a similar feeling playing Dark Souls

[ikilledjfk !/dY3DZ0ABM No.1323245]

>>1323234
Enjoy it for what it is. I got lucky by getting too busy for gaming for about a 7 or 8 year time span and now modern games don't feel as satisfying as the retro games to me. Remember modern conventions are there to make the game easier to play more streamlined and the gameplay is alot more involved when you play the games from the earlier era. Just enjoy them and give them time and they will show you what they have.

[Anonymous No.1323249]

>>1323234
You grew up, your taste got a lot stricter, you got to know different things. Maybe those stories and gameplay values you've adored as a kid weren't as hot as you thought they were...

[Anonymous No.1323257]

>>1323234
No.
I found this out for sure when I started playing New Leaf.
The closest I can get is when I try a new racing game and I feel that initial exhilaration, then it's gone again.

[Anonymous No.1323258]

>>1323249
I feel that way about pokemon. I love and always will love R/B and G/S. However I can't into the newest ones ever. I also likely won't ever replay those games for anything other then to nostalgia over it. They are as simplistic of a game as you can get with too easy of a single player. However they probably are my fondest gaming memories as a child.

[Anonymous No.1323262]

No, but it is possible to create gaming experiences for the age you are now.

Sort out your life, and this will occur naturally.

[Anonymous No.1323268]

Yes

[Anonymous No.1323269]

>>1323262
>Sort out your life
Note: This step is totally optional

[Anonymous No.1323285]

it happens but its very rare

exploring the overworld of fallout 3 felt exactly like exploring the overworld of ultima 4, I never knew what I was going to discover, and both games never let me down, there are little secrets absolutely everywhere

granted the 'ultima 4' definition of a secret is quite depricated by modern standards

for months I was 10 years old again

[Anonymous No.1323306]

I've always been looking to find an mmorpg like ultima online, a sandbox world where u can do as you please, with PKing and world PvP.

I used to play on a free shard, sphere based, with moving + casting. Amazing times, I played there like 6-12hours a day for a year lol...

Nothing like it exists...plus I changed too...so fuck

[Anonymous No.1323383]

>>1323306
>ultima online
iktfb

[Anonymous No.1323394]

I got great retro animu feels out of playing through the Sega RPGs I never played as a kid. But they weren't on the same level as when I played FFIV or Chrono Trigger as a 15 year old because I'm not a teenager anymore. It takes the sort of deep story you simply can't find in vidya games to move me that much as an adult. But they came very close.

[Anonymous No.1323421]

Your soul is ebbing away OP. I'm 23 and BG2 still gives me all sorts of feels of wonder and adventure even after all these years.

[Anonymous No.1323539]

>>1323269
It really isn't. As long as you are distracted by other issues in your life you'll never be able to enjoy games in the same way you could as a teen or child (the best way).

You may use video games as an escape, but it is a poor escape, and does disservice to the game.

[Anonymous No.1323565]

Your childhood is never coming back, OP.

You got to deal with that fact.

[Anonymous No.1323564]

>>1323234
No. Any gameplay experiences that you have while under the age of 25 will be unique and impossible to recreate after you fully grow up and your personality just wont be the same anymore. As I have sadly now learned while in my 30's. It's all part of the process of growing older.

[Anonymous No.1323695]

>>1323539
This guy gets it. Age has it's responsibilities and burdens that have calloused the mind over the course of your lifetime.

Occasionally I touch upon small hits of genuine child-like wonder when playing retro games, usually when playing games I missed from my childhood and usually when I have the leisure time to do so without feeling guilty. I didn't feel guilty for wasting time playing games as a kid because life was so care free at that stage, but that is a lifestyle I can't afford anymore.

Modern gaming can bring wonderment to me, like exploring lush environments like in Skyrim, for example, but nostalgia is a little harder to produce. Some indie games done in the style of retro games do the trick. I found that Splunkey does that.

The best nostalgia when playing retro games I have experienced have been playing old games with longtime friends or being in an altered state.

[Anonymous No.1323720]

>>1323695
>in an altered state.
told you.

[Anonymous No.1323814]

You cant go through your life trying to recreate old experiences, you have to go and make new ones. Find games that can bring back that feeling and give yourself time to get lost in them. Pick up a new MMO or try and find games with a really in depth world that has a lot to discover. Maybe find a time that you can just sit down and play games to your heart's extent, like a break between semesters or even get a bit of time off work and just allot that time to be just for video games. Don't make any plans and just get cozy, you'll enjoy yourself.
Worst case scenario Maybe you just don't enjoy vidya as much and it isn't for you anymore
I hope it doesn't come to that but best of luck to you

[Anonymous No.1323951]

Its easier to suspend your beliefs as a kid, so it was easier to overlook some of the broken game elements and needless difficulty.

[Anonymous No.1324624]

Remember when you looked at somewhere far, or beyond the level's boundaries/invisible walls and imagined if there was something there?

You know now there's nothing there. Looking for secrets on SMW might have been fun, but it's a chore now. You just look at a FAQ. Speaking of FAQs, back then it was possible to discover a new secret or easter egg that blew your mind months or years after the game came out.

Now, even IF games have secrets, no more than a few days after release there's an IGN video "CHECK OUT THIS AMAZING EASTER EGG". Yeah, there was that secret Batman Arkham Asylum room, but that's an exception these days.

So the combination of an adult mind that's more rational and less imaginative, more critical and less patient, along with the pressures of adult life and that large side portion of Internet and speed of information have pretty much destroyed your childhood concept of playing a video game and created something new.

I don't think it's possible for an adult to experience a child's mind unless you take drugs or hit your head with rocks until you're dumb as a 5 year old.

[Anonymous No.1324656]

I need somebody else to play vidya with now in order to be able to enjoy it in the same/a similar way anymore.

[Anonymous No.1324663]

>>1323234
NOPE but the closest you can get is to find a good game on the system you grew up that you haven't played yet.

[Anonymous No.1324687]

>>1323234

Depends on the person OP. I can still play classic games and have fun.

I have the opposite effect where I despise a lot of modern games.

[Anonymous No.1324707]

I still love playing classic games, but they don't create the same sense of sheer joy that they once did - probably because I've played them a billion times before. The trick is to find a current game that gives you that feeling. Recently I picked up Super Mario 3D World, and in playing it I felt like a kid again. Had a big dumb smile on my face the entire time. I had a similar feeling when I started to git gud at Dark Souls and W101.

[Anonymous No.1325671]

>>1323234
Sure. Play cave explorer with your son just like your dad did with you.

[Anonymous No.1325697]

>>1323242
This. Playing Dark Souls felt like a combination of my favorite childhood games in one, (ghosts n goblins, ocarina of time, dark ages) but with a more brutal and twisted edge to it.

[Anonymous No.1325707]

I recently replayed chrono trigger for the third time in my life and still got a lot out of it, not near childhood experience though but I still find things I miss or just forgot.

[Anonymous No.1325761]

I know I'm gonna get flak for posting this; but me and some friends got high as fuck and played GTA5 when it came out, best gaming experience I had in nearly a decade.
It was pretty childlike, exploring, going bananas over the new features, 6 hours and only like 20 minutes of that was used for missions

[Anonymous No.1325791]

>>1325761
>wasting drugs for video games
People actually do this?

[Anonymous No.1326014]

>>1324624
There's a lot to this.

I think some of the reason why it's harder to feel the magic when playing retro games is because the graphics don't impress us as much as it used to.

I remember being blown away by the echo effect of the underground levels of Super Mario All-stars. I had never heard something like that with the NES.

Every year from around 1990 til 2000 seemed like one great leap after another. I played a lot of games (especially rpgs) just to see a pretty lightshow during the big showdowns.

Now, if you go back and play a game you missed as a kid or teen you can appreciate what it can do with the hardware, but it's not going to entrance you like it once did.

I think the best way to get that feeling now is to play games which are on the cutting edge. Of course, as adults a lot of us don' t have the time or money to put into that.

[Anonymous No.1326019]

>>1325791
>Smoking weed with his friends and having tons of fun together
>Wasting drugs
Yesh... Ricky Gervais is about right.

[Anonymous No.1326106]

>>1324624

I got that kind of feeling a few years ago when I explored a cave in Minecraft for the first time. I didn't know what the game's engine could really do, and I'd never played any game that did anything much like that before, so as far as I knew that cave might really go on FOREVER, and have absolutely any kind of exotic magical things in it....

Similarly, I became briefly delirious with excitement when I first tried Narbacular Drop (the game that sort of became Portal). And it was pretty amazing for me to learn about roguelikes for the first time, too... NetHack is a pretty vast world with a lot of extremely unclear borders, for somebody who is new to it.

I was age 25-30 when these things happened. When I was 12, things like that could happen all the time. Now they happen rarely. But there are still pieces of my brain that are quite ready to be twisted into dreamy ecstasy by some new game mechanic. That potential hasn't all been mined out.

[Anonymous No.1326141]

It's not about your childhood, it's about letting the fucked-up modern gaming ideals ruin your mind.

The sooner you realize console gaming from the late 90s on essentially served to neuter gaming into a weak, poor experience and make people look on older, more pure games as "inferior", the better you'll be able to realize that sitting down with a good game is just as good now as it was then.

[Anonymous No.1326194]

>>1323234
If you can allow yourself to not take yourself and enjoy a game for what it is, you're likely to come close to that child-like wonder you're talking about. I had a moment like that recently when I first played Shadow of the Colossus (not /vr/, I know), and was awestruck.

Find games that spark your imagination.

[Anonymous No.1326205]

>>1323234
If you can allow yourself to not take yourself seriously and enjoy a game for what it is, you're likely to come close to that child-like wonder you're talking about. I had a moment like that recently when I first played Shadow of the Colossus (not /vr/, I know), and was awestruck.

Find games that spark your imagination.

[Anonymous No.1326306]

>>1323234
Not unless you are unemployed.
Everything you do have a extra sence of urgency that didn't had before

[Anonymous No.1326314]

>>1326306
I'm unemployed and it doesn't help me enjoy games more.

Not that I'm feeling lost or anything. I still like games, but I can confirm it has nothing to do with me being unemployed.

Then again, I'm looking for work and not a sad sack NEET, so I dunno if I count? I still got worries of my own. I just know that not having work isn't helping.

I'll get back to you when I'm finally retired, though.

[Anonymous No.1326368]

For fuck's sake everyone, there's a reason we have drugs!

Smoke a joint!
Drink Robitussin!
Eat seeds!
Swallow paper!

Altering one's consciousness is easily possible with drugs. Put yourself in the same child-like state you were in eons ago. Usually when I'm high and play a game I'll remember things about my first experience playing it that I've never remembered during sober runs, because as a kid my brain was releasing dopamine and DMT all the time and those early highs were so profound they would lay down behavioral patterns that lasted for years. Taking 4-Aco-DMT allowed me to meditate on the wonder I originally felt from the Pokémon franchise (alt, 1 3 0) and experience it anew. Playing the games while high connect to me places, memories I made while first playing the games, stuff I had long forgotten until my brain felt a familiar tingle.

[Anonymous No.1326375]

>>1326368
Or you could, like, just not be a fag.

[Anonymous No.1326387]

Its very easy for me to find a game that sparks my imagination. Dark souls has an A+ atmosphere for instance

But than I actually play it and either bad or just too mediocre to handle. I could never enjoy dark souls because its just a monster hunter clone and monster hunter is a boring combat system to begin with.

Its extremly rare for a game to have both a great sense of adventure and be fun to actually play.

[Anonymous No.1326727]

>>1326387

the dark souls atmosphere is pretty amazing though, the first time through is really fun, even if you die 100 times at the start before you figure out how to fight

[Anonymous No.1326729]

>>1326368
sometimes i have one or two shots of tequila when i come from work and all i want is to relax and enjoy a game, but i don't get wasted on alcohol just for the sake of nostalgia

[Anonymous No.1327023]

I hadnt played NES TMNT in 20 years. I dusted it off to test myself in the dam level. It was always really difficult for me as a kid.

As an adult I blew threw it on the first try, one turtle, barely hurt, with 40 seconds to spare. I was very disappointed.

Tfw you are too smart and talented to be happy.

[Anonymous No.1328075]

>>1326368
Sup their drug buddy.

I'm about to take some acid this saturday, got any good recommendations to play?

[Anonymous No.1328496]

sometimes I wish I had autism so I can have fun again...

[Anonymous No.1329027]

>>1323234

Alright I've been sitting here for give minutes trying to figure out what BG2 is. Someone clue me in.

[Anonymous No.1329029]

>>1329027

Five even, christ's sake.

Point still stands.

[Anonymous No.1329050]

I don't think trying to have that experience again works with story based games. Literature they are not, and much of the nuance and depth you would get from rereading a great book simply are not there in classic games. I also find that with alot of these story based games, the mechanics aren't so tight, and have aged very poorly. Without the carrot of not knowing what's going to happen next to keep you going, these old games can be dull.

However, with great action games, or games with very good mechanics, it's a different situation. I can go back to something like Castlevania IV or Doom 2 and be right into it, having a total blast. Despite the age of these titles, the great design and polish that went into the gameplay systems keeps them fresh to play even now.

[Anonymous No.1329054]

>>1329027
>>1329029
Baldur's Gate 2, dear Anon.

[Anonymous No.1329068]

For starters, I'd say you need to be as you were as a child. Content and happy is probably it for most. Easier said than done.

What were the things that filled your life as a child? For me it was mostly school, friends, family and video games. It's hard to have all these things the same way as an adult though, but you can try to add elements of them to your daily life.

There needs to be downs in your days so the highs feel more special, the downs being a job or whatever and the highs of course being video games. In order to not get worn out by the downs, you need energy, which you had an abundance of as a kid, but most likely not so much now. Lack of energy is most likely from passive lifestyle, so you could add exercise or whatever /sp/ activity to your daily "downs" list.

Then there's the inevitable adult cynicism and critical thinking. I don't know how to deal with this really, other than trying to have more open mind and trying to be more humble and thankful of the little things. Of course, you can try to suppress with little alcohol if it works for you.

[Anonymous No.1329960]

>>1323234
420

[Anonymous No.1329974]

>>1325761
I had pretty much the same thing with a friend of mine. GTA V + beers + weed + friends = infinite laughter

[Anonymous No.1330609]

I find it easier to get back into an old title if I meet certain conditions:

1. Get the game on the original console. The loading sounds of the ps1 is something that completes it for me.
2. Get some food you used to eat while playing it or an album you used to listen to at that time, you need to add extra dimensions to cement the nostalgia, otherwise you'll focus on how it's not the same.
3. Disconnect from the internet. If I'm playing an old game and I get stuck I'll either look up a guide or find something else to do, like dick about on 4chan.
4. Play when you've got something else to be doing - coursework or housework or something.
If I start playing a game when I know I have the whole day free, chances are it'll have me restless or depressed and make me reflect on wtf I'm doing with my life.

For example:
Last week I had a day off work and had told my wife I sleepily agreed to do DIY x and household task y by time she got in.

You bet your ass I relished playing Driver on the ps1 listening to Americana by The Offspring and mindlessly chomping on cola-flavored candy like I was 12 years old.

On another note, keep a bear in your mind that although we love older titles, the way you felt about those games can be found with contemporary releases, and it's a shame to miss out on new feelings of comfort by clinging to old ones. I played Dragon's Dogma this week and realised it was what I wanted from an RPG as a kid, something that felt like playing a game of Heroquest, which is something I haven't felt before and it was just lovely.

tl;dr /vr/ is not my blog but I sure typed like it was.

[Anonymous No.1332331]

Cheetos so you have to wipe your hands on the carpet every ten seconds to keep playing.

[Anonymous No.1332830]

>>1330609
>keep a bear in your mind

always.

[Anonymous No.1334043]

>>1323234
Closest I've got was after not playing any games for a year whilst working hard in my career, I ended up being pretty ill and taking a few weeks sick leave.

It just so happened that the new Bioshock was out (I'd kept up with news, just not had time to play). I bought it, played it and after over a year of nogaems and working life it was like discovering games again. I kept away from using the internet/guides and enjoyed every minute of it! I then spent the next week playing games like I hadn't in years.

Didn't last obviously, I became jaded again and work started up. It was nice while it lasted though!

[Anonymous No.1334063]

[Anonymous No.1334328]

>>1334063
i've played other rpgs before pokemon, its a good game but doesnt do anything new. The whole pet collecting was done by shin megami before.

The trouble is that once you play about a dozen really good games from a certain genre that genre loses its magic. Than you want something entirly new and the game industry is very slow to come up with new ideas. RPGs have not changed much at all since pokemon and shin megami were first released.

[Anonymous No.1334364]

>>1334063
B-b-but... I never played Gen I.

[Anonymous No.1334368]

>>1323234
I'm playing Planescape: Torment for the first time, and it's exactly the "childhood gaming experience". I even played for 10 hours straight...

One of the secrets is patience, I think. Do not open Gamefaqs every other second, do not use quicksaves all the time. The more authentic experience is actually more fun in the long run.

Also, I would advise to not play "retro" games, but simply really good games, be they old or not. Sites like Hardcore Gaming 101 are great for finding new / old games that you will love.

[Anonymous No.1334520]

>>1323234
No, there are too many things in your life that distract your thoughts from the game now, too much stress, games lost their magic because you played so many and have easy access to more games etc etc.

Your best bet is to replay an old game that had a great soundtrack and let the nostalgia carry you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vENgqRRagqs

[Anonymous No.1334553]

lol if you play video games for fun

[Anonymous No.1336578]

to get the same experience you'd not only have to be playing a great game, but playing a great game for the first time.

unfortunately there is a limited number of great games...

[Anonymous No.1336621]

>>1324663
This. Playing the same games just doesn't do it for me. Part of it is to experience something new, not the same thing again.

[Anonymous No.1338330]

I'm really hyped for dark souls 2. I don't like new games at all cuz they lack atmosphere character and charm but Dark souls has it all for some reason...

If only it had a few npcs to join u and a bit more of a story