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Forums - Gaming - Are you a retrogamer?

 

How much of a retrogamer are you?

I play at least one old game a year. 3 8.57%
 
I play three or four old games a year. 7 20.00%
 
I play more than four old games a year. 10 28.57%
 
I own more old games than modern games. 12 34.29%
 
I never play old games bu... 1 2.86%
 
I started playing games a... 0 0%
 
I started playing games a... 0 0%
 
I don't even play modern ... 0 0%
 
2 5.71%
 
Total:35

I mostly play games from early 2000s to early 2010s. Currently playing Resi4 original on Steam. I practically don't play modern games, the last one was TLoU2.



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Deus Ex (2000) - a game that pushes the boundaries of what the video game medium is capable of to a degree unmatched to this very day.

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HoloDust said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

The smaller the CRT the better it looks due to higher phosphor density. I would recommend finding a 13 inch PVM or RGB moddable Sony from 1994-2005. 

I grew up with ~13" color TV in my room back in early 80s (before that, in late 70s it was even smaller black&white TV), and apart from ~19" in living room, that's where most of my 8/16 bit era in 80s was spent on. 13" feels quite small for TV, but we kids (well, adults as well) were oblivious to radiation coming from them, so we sat very close, pretty much using them as monitors.

I'm not sure I want that close up experience again (for obvious reasons) - my current CRT is 29", which I find to be too big and too...I don't know, not as authentic to feeling of those 80s consumer sets, so I want something smaller, 17-19", but definitively not PVM/BVM. I had some of those at work (I'm in film/TV industry) back in days (SONY, don't remember exact models) and I find them to be too clean and precise for 8/16 bit gaming era.

Well if you were working in the film industry a lot of those will have insanely high TVL counts. Also you can just turn aperture or phase down. One of those two effects sharpness. 



Cerebralbore101 said:
HoloDust said:

I grew up with ~13" color TV in my room back in early 80s (before that, in late 70s it was even smaller black&white TV), and apart from ~19" in living room, that's where most of my 8/16 bit era in 80s was spent on. 13" feels quite small for TV, but we kids (well, adults as well) were oblivious to radiation coming from them, so we sat very close, pretty much using them as monitors.

I'm not sure I want that close up experience again (for obvious reasons) - my current CRT is 29", which I find to be too big and too...I don't know, not as authentic to feeling of those 80s consumer sets, so I want something smaller, 17-19", but definitively not PVM/BVM. I had some of those at work (I'm in film/TV industry) back in days (SONY, don't remember exact models) and I find them to be too clean and precise for 8/16 bit gaming era.

Well if you were working in the film industry a lot of those will have insanely high TVL counts. Also you can just turn aperture or phase down. One of those two effects sharpness. 

Oh, don't get me wrong, they were great for editing video (I'm a sound editor/re-recording mixer), I just never liked them for 80s games...well, except for maybe games from arcades' golden age.



Yes. The only 2020s games I've played till now are Mario Wonder and Pkmn Violet. In fact, I find myself playing games from before the 2010s way more often than anything post that



Yes, I play and love retro games (even of the 1970s and 1980s), but I also love new games with all bells and whistles (raytracing, path tracing, VR games...).

At least once per decade I play all Lucasfilm/Lucas Arts point&click adventures and my favorite Sierra adventures (point&click and parser-based).

In 2020 I replayed the PS1 point&click adventure "Blazing Dragons" (1996) via ScummVM + the complete "Quest for Glory" series (1990 - 1999)

In 2021 I replayed "Dark Seed 1 + 2", "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis", "Riven - The Sequel to Myst" and "Spy Fox 1"... all point&click adventures from the 1990s. Also "Labyrinth" (1986) via C64 emulation.

In 2023 I replayed "Mystery House" (1980) and Sierra's other "High-Res Adventures", "Laura Bow 1 + 2" (1989/1992) on my iPad Pro via ScummVM. Also Zork 1 - 3 (1980 - 1982) via iOS-App "The Lost Treasures of Infocom", "Dragon's Lair" (1983) and "Space Ace" (1984) on my Steam Deck and the GOG version of "Diablo 1 + Hellfire" on my PC.

In 2024 I replayed Sierra's "Soft Porn Adventure" (1994) and all "Leisure Suit Larry 1" versions (EGA, VGA, Reloaded). Also "Die Fugger 2" ("The Fuggers 2", 1996) and the successor series "Die Gilde" ("The Guild", 2002).

In 2025 I replayed the point&click adventures "Call of Cthulhu 1: Shadow of the Comet" (1993) and "Call of Cthulhu 2: Prisoner of Ice" (1995) on my Steam Deck. Also "Super Mario Bros. 1 - 3" (1980s), "Super Mario World" (1991) and "Kirby's Dream Land" (1992) via Nintendo Online on my Switch OLED and "The Hobbit" (1982).

This year (so far) I enjoyed the interactive documentary "The Making of Karateka" and played through different versions of Jordan Mechner's "Death Bounce" (1982) and "Karateka" (1984 prototype + Apple 2 version, 1985 C64 + Atari 8-bit versions and the 2023 remastered version).

Yesterday I bought the interactive documentary "Atari 50". Today I played the included games "Pong" (1972 arcade version), Quadratank (a new version of the 1970s series "Tanks") and "Breakout" (1976 arcade version and the 2022 "reimagined" version "Neo Breakout"). Next "Atari 50" game in the timeline is "Sprint 8" (1977).

I also bought the interactive documentary "Tetris Forever" in the Steam Sale... but that is a story for another day.



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HoloDust said:
SanAndreasX said:

Eh, not a big deal to me. I prefer the cleaner presentation of modern displays. Pixels and all. 

Fair enough. I'm not stranger to playing on modern displays, I do however use shaders to emulate CRT on them - pixel art from that era was made with all the quirks of CRTs (and composite input, while were at it, to a degree) in mind, so I find that without it colors don't blend as they should, and art has significantly different look to its originally indented representation.

That's why I said "kinda."

I like playing old games I grew up with from time to time. I'm not dedicated enough to it to clutter my living space with bulky old TV sets that look like they're ready for the bin. I also do use original consoles in a lot of cases, but I have a RGB to HDMI converter box to play them on my 65 inch OLED TV, and they play and look just fine. I also buy re-issues on modern hardware when they become available. I'm definitely not dedicated enough to retrogaming to spend $275 on a PS1 copy of Suikoden II when I have a great port of it for my Switch that also comes with the first game, and even for those games where I was lucky enough to buy them new back in the day, like Valkyrie Profile, I am just as happy to display my original 2000 copy on my shelf and load up the PS5 version when I want to play that. Ditto with Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, which I did buy new on Gamecube 20 years ago but can now play on Switch 2 without having to plug and unplug hardware. Forget trying to track down a working original Bally Astrocade and then having to hook it up, when BallyAlley has the system's entire library available through MAME. 

Last edited by SanAndreasX - 1 day ago

I do play more old games than modern ones and own more of them too.

When you think of it. no mandatory updates before you get to play.



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Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.

SanAndreasX said:
HoloDust said:

Fair enough. I'm not stranger to playing on modern displays, I do however use shaders to emulate CRT on them - pixel art from that era was made with all the quirks of CRTs (and composite input, while were at it, to a degree) in mind, so I find that without it colors don't blend as they should, and art has significantly different look to its originally indented representation.

That's why I said "kinda."

I like playing old games I grew up with from time to time. I'm not dedicated enough to it to clutter my living space with bulky old TV sets that look like they're ready for the bin. I also do use original consoles in a lot of cases, but I have a RGB to HDMI converter box to play them on my 65 inch OLED TV, and they play and look just fine. I also buy re-issues on modern hardware when they become available. I'm definitely not dedicated enough to retrogaming to spend $275 on a PS1 copy of Suikoden II when I have a great port of it for my Switch that also comes with the first game, and even for those games where I was lucky enough to buy them new back in the day, like Valkyrie Profile, I am just as happy to display my original 2000 copy on my shelf and load up the PS5 version when I want to play that. Ditto with Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, which I did buy new on Gamecube 20 years ago but can now play on Switch 2 without having to plug and unplug hardware. Forget trying to track down a working original Bally Astrocade and then having to hook it up, when BallyAlley has the system's entire library available through MAME. 

Back in days, before advanced shaders were possible, I often enabled one of those interpolating upscaling algorithms, like Eagle, 2xSal, hqx, xBR and similar. They do make 2D games from 80s look like remasters of a sort, but for me anything is better then straight up original raw pixels on modern displays (since they were never meant to be experienced in such a way).

I think as technology gets better, we'll be seeing more stand alone boxes that have enough juice to run heavy processing that either emulates CRTs or do real-time ML upscaling (or both, so that user can pick preferred option).

Cause sooner or later, all those CRTs will be dead, and I'm hoping to see good enough replacement for them by that time.



Nah, I have a hunger for new experiences, bigger and better all the time. Well, I guess old games can be new experiences as well, if you haven't played them before.
However, there was a period in my life a few yers ago when I went through a couple of PC classics that I did not have access to back in the nineties. I was an Amiga guy back then, and then hopped on to Playstation where I have remained ever since. Got the PC much later in life. Not even for gaming, but just a cheap laptop to go online and whatnot. I scratched a very specific itch from the past with that PC and now it's gathering dust again.