Although the reader count might be low — for now — I love making these reviews about games once popular before my time.
The reason I decided to write these each week? I have been an active gamer for much of my life and gaming has always been a way for me to relax and suspend my disbelief occasionally.
And the retro part? Well, it has always fascinated me to see what has been popular to different groups at different points in time.
Retro to me is defined as a when a game starts to show age, almost as if you can tell when it was made. Like how the Sony PlayStation 2 would now be considered retro just like the Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis.
They are games played on a system and in a style that was once popular but have fallen out among the mainstream audience. They aren’t bad games anymore, just from a different time.
This is a common theme in sports — my other passion — with constant arguments over which era was better and what team or player is the best from a certain time.
Music is another place where I see this, with an example being of legendary grunge group Nirvana. In their time, they were world famous icons. This still holds true today with them being one of the best bands of all-time. From the ‘90s to now there are people who love them and people who just don’t like them.
Why people hold these opinions is what fascinates me. I like putting myself in the shoes of people from the past and see what the landscape was like from their point of view.
Nowadays, the top down adventure games and platformers that made Nintendo a powerhouse in the industry still hold their popularity but don’t hold the same mainstream appeal as in the back half of the 20th-century.
That is why I have played games like “A Link to the Past,” “Punch-Out” and “Joe and Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics.” I wanted to take a mini trip to the past and see what things were like for gamers back in the day.
To sum this all up, retro to me is just a game in the past being kind of old for lack of a better term.
I want to put myself in the shoes of the gamers at the time a game came out and see what world they lived in, understand what paths they took in their adventures and understand their expectations by taking a step back and seeing where the enjoyment came from.
Zack will be back with his regularly scheduled retro game reviews later this week.
Zack Kellogg can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @kellogg_zack.