Why are younger generations embracing the retro game revival?

Because they're good games and people are remembering the good ones and not the ocean of forgettable dogshit that it was surrounded by, as happens with all media

In a world of relentless technological advances and increasing AI anxiety, Rivera wonders whether gen Z’s affinity for retro gaming is connected to its stability. “It provides a constant – it’s not going to morph into something else tomorrow,” she says.

Oh look, the consequence of predatory modern AAA gaming coming back to haunt the medium.

Games that were made and are fun to pay instead of a micro transaction stuffed physcological grindfest?

Idk if this is placebo but it feels like the developers wanted to make those older games. Like you can feel the passion behind it. I get the same kind of feeling with indie games too. But in modern games it just feels like they just follow a script. A script that every other development studio uses. So every game feels bland generic or its just another live service slop glorified casino.

Low spec requirements, cheaper, more of them so theyre more willing to appeal to niche tastes. It makes sense even if I'll never play most of the.

It's because (imo) modern games kinda aren't fun and there's something nice about just loading up a game and playing - no cut-scenes, no tutorial, no microtransactions or season passes, no worrying if it'll run on your old computer, no need to make a new account and jump through 2fa hoops and checking for activation e-mails and accepting ToS you didn't read, no need to be online, no need to clear space for an 80gb install, no 4gb patch whenever you go to play, no two minute load times. You just get to start it up and play a game and have a good time.

I have no proof but my gut is that Gen Z experienced retro games second hand through video essays or streamers. And they experienced the games at around the age that they'd be feeling nostalgic for now. So I've met zoomers who have like a phantom nostalgia for things like Mario 64 or Doom.

It's neat

Less enshittification.

Older video games series like Sly Cooper and Devil May Cry hold up very well.

Because old video games have a cheaper point of entry with fewer home size/workshop ceilings on its development.

E: old games run on any computer or phone, there’s tons of handhelds that’ll emulate em, you don’t need for real workbench to work on em.

It’s the perfect habit for someone living out of a tent, car, friends couch, dorm, tiny rented room or what have you.

Because games weren't as shitty back then lmao. Compared with gacha bullshit and aggressive microtransaction, some forgettable platformer with an intellectual property awkwardly shoehorned in is nothing.

The cries of nostalgia is vastly overrated. How would zoomers possibly be nostalgic about something that they've never experienced before? It reminds me of how millennial defenders of modern Simpsons would constantly accuse millennial classic Simpsons enjoyers of being blinded of nostalgia. Then the zoomers grew up and started watching the Simpsons as well and not only vindicated the millennial classic Simpsons enjoyers but are even stricter about what counts as classic Simpsons than the millennials were.

but it’s not just gen X and older millennials reliving their heyday: younger millennials and gen Z are getting in on the nostalgia too

This is stolen valor smh.

Jokes aside, its interesting that games are the only art medium that implicitly has a "timer" on it. Nobody writes articles if someone is watching a 70s movie or a 30s book. Neither of those things are even called "retro".

The article is okay but wtf is this

This is what we're up against

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But we have something powerful on our side.

We’ve got you.

The Guardian is funded by readers like you in Ireland and the only person who decides what we publish is our editor.

If you want to join us in our mission to share independent, global journalism to the world, we’d love to have you on side.

Wtf is this pathetic shit Guardian. Begging for a 10 euro monthly subscription with this west wing bullshit. "Only you can stop evil Russian and Chinese propaganda! Just give us money so we can publish articles about how our intern looked through some trends on TikTok!"

Because they’re cheap or completely free to play thanks to emulators. Same reason a lot of people I know watch old movies.

Didn’t read the article, but is it a lack of immoral monetization practices and a focus on quality gameplay that comes with only playing the best games from each generation?

because they are good games wtf

I am giving my kid a game boy for car rides instead of a godforsaken ipad. Mario bros sure seemed addicting but it's sure no reskinned pachiinko machine like every mobile game. No casinos, no posting shit online for likes

Because realism is not and never has been everything. Not complicated.

most genres pretty much got their formula down in the 90s and have only done UI, writing and graphics improvements since then. They also made the gameplay worse and less deep in most of them too

Cause a lot of em still rule and also you can get them for free and play them on a pencil at this point.

Because modern video games suck ass

i dont believe this sort of thing. they always lie about younger gens to older ones.

just take a lot at the massive numbers on mictotransaction-hell mobile games. even stuff like fortnite.

Because old school jrpgs were fucking lit.

I've been on a binge of 90s games this year and its really impressive how well they still hold up, Half Life 1, Deus Ex, Morrow wind (I think it says alot that Morrowind still has a thriving mod community and a completely rewritten open source version), Just last week I found out they made talkie mods for the first two Monkey Islands, so I'm playing through those too. It's crazy that my 2023 GOTY was the System Shock remake. Point and clicks really are the pinnacle of game design tbh, all the games that have stuck with me over the last through years from Norco to Disco Elysium are essentially just point and clicks.

I didn't read the article

Is it piracy? Its gotta be piracy right?

"I don't have to pay for this" is a great price for a game that's 15, 20, 30+ years old.

Probably the aesthetics, a bit of hipterism, and the fact you don’t have a content shop in Pokémon Red.

i played Cave Story and genuinely fucking loved it. also played Rayman Redemptions (free remake of the original rayman game) because my brother recommended it, and a lot of the old Megaman games because there was a legacy edition

probably wanna play Majora's Mask or Ocarina of Time sometime. heard Earthbound or Mother 3 or whatever were good but idk if i fw rpg battle systems

I've got a feeling that the reason for this is similar to how older music competes against modern stuff thanks to streaming platforms. As more and more media comes into existence this process can only accelerate until it reaches some kind of maximum where the zeitgeist just can't hold any more, and when that happens I suspect that it's the middle that will fall out first while people remember the first generations and current ones.