/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9961112]

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.

[Anonymous No.9961129]

My exposure to video games to begin with was through my parents, who already had a SNES when I was born (early 90s). After I was born they mostly stopped playing save for a little bit of something like Goldeneye or Eternal Darkness here or there and most of the video game purchases were with me in mind, but they’re where I got my start and a few of my games originally belonged to them. In particular my copy of Super Mario World has my dad’s initials carved into it for whatever reason and I have a copy of Aero the Acrobat which was apparently a birthday gift from my dad to my mom.

My mom didn’t play as many games but I do remember playing some version of Mortal Kombat with her when I was younger, also.

[Anonymous No.9961460]

>>9961112
Had an alcoholic aunt that was really into the NES and had mastered Mario, Zelda, Snow Bros and others and would completely school everyone at most games. It was kinda weird but also pretty cool. She died from liver failure about 10 years ago

[Anonymous No.9961469]

>>9961460
That cartridge looks like it has an unreleased label variant. It's not the common ones I'm familiar with.

[Anonymous No.9961472]

my dad would play tetris on my gameboy if i left it out. thats the only video game i can recall him ever playing. never saw my mom play anything. my grandparents had a colecovision and my grandma would play it with my brother and i. her favorite game was ladybug. the only other family member i remember ever playing games with me was my uncle playing duck hunt once. he was an actual duck hunter in real life so he got a kick out of it.

[Anonymous No.9961481]

>>9961112
My mom had a C64 growing up and would play SNES occasionally, but my grandma (on her side) still plays Ms. Pac-Man on Genesis with the og hardware. I think my aunt still plays retro games too, mostly 8-bit and 16-bit stuff.

[Anonymous No.9961483]

>>9961481
Completely forgot about my sister somehow. The SNES was actually originally hers, then she moved onto PS1, PS2, and PSP which she barely played while I got all of the later Nintendo stuff, but I still played tons of PS1 games as well and pretty much own it as well as the SNES now (the PS2 and PSP are still here but I never really got into them as much)

[Anonymous No.9961484]

>>9961472
actually i remember my mom playing D with us the day we got our ps1. i think it was the only game we had for a while. it creeped her out lol

[Anonymous No.9961565]

Mom and dad hated games.
Brother was heavy into arcades, started using crack around sf2. He was a retard forever after.

[Anonymous No.9961843]

I too found it strange how almost everyone I knew had a 2600, then an NES, then suddenly stopped in the 16-bit era. Zelda 1 was about as popular with adults as it was with children, and adults buying the Game Boy for Tetris was a huge part of the early install base. I blame the sudden push in the media in the 90's to label videogames as being a children's toy. Prior to that, it was just considered the hot new thing. Adults visited arcades, even my grandmother could play a mean game of Pac-Man. Myst proved that the casual crowd of adult gamers hadn't left gaming entirely, they just got shamed out of console gaming.
Between the media push to label videogames as a toy for kids and the whole push by gaming media in the 90's to divide out hardcore and casual gamers, attitudes towards videogames really got weird in the 90's.

[Anonymous No.9961873]

>>9961843
Yeah in the 90s, gaming went from a family thing to strictly only for kids. The mid 90s in particular to the end of the decade really feel like gaming's bratty adolescence with an obsession with gore and the nebulous concept of attitude. The 2000s is the same audience but now high school or college aged. A game magazine from 2003 is pretty much a gaming themed Maxim at that point.
I have no idea who the modern era of gaming is supposed to be appealing to, but it feels like the same sort of progressive middlebrow nerd that dominates everything nowadays.