What’s behind the explosion in retro gaming?
Why are we increasingly using our high-speed broadband connections for 50-year-old retro gaming experiences?
This might have been a quiet year for new gaming hardware, but 2024 has still been a vintage year for vintage gaming.
While we wait for the delayed Nintendo Switch 2, other manufacturers have been bringing out tributes – and direct clones – of computer hardware from the last century.
Examples include the Atari 7800 Plus, The Spectrum and the A500 Mini Amiga reboot – the latter a 16-bit successor to the 8-bit RetroGames C64 Mini.
Then there are multiformat machines, which dare to cross-pollinate platforms and software developers.
The Evercade VS resembles an NES console, but it also supports Atari and Codemasters titles, while the Polymega can accept original SNES and Sega cartridges alike.
Yet in an age of gigabit home broadband connections and incredible processing power on even modestly priced new laptops, why is there so much focus on retro gaming?
Old is the new new
Part of the reason behind the current explosion of retro gaming is that today’s advertising managers and company directors remember the first wave of home gaming.
They grew up with Commodore Amigas and Sega Mega Drives, and these formative influences are now percolating through into popular culture.
Older music has also been embraced by the mainstream, from Eighties and Nineties songs appearing in contemporary advertising to the resurgence in cassette and vinyl sales.
Meanwhile, consumers are also buying into nostalgia.
This year saw the cinematic debut of The Rubber Keyed Wonder, celebrating the Sinclair Spectrum, and the continuing rollout of the NQ64 retro gaming arcades.
In these neon-lit temples of boom, you can play everything from Pac-Man and Space Invaders to Need For Speed Underground and Guitar Hero Arcade.
Troubled times tend to drive a renewed appreciation of bygone eras, and it’s entirely understandable why today’s consumers might wish to immerse themselves in happy memories.
If you were there the first time, recalling the joys of 8-bit gaming can make today’s hostile world feel less threatening. If you weren’t, it’s easy to be seduced by 20th century gaming.
Because the hardware of the time lacked GPUs and gigabytes of RAM, games developers focused on addictive gameplay, perfectly judged difficulty curves and instant gratification.
In many respects, the halo games of the 1980s and 1990s were similar to some of the 21st century’s best smartphone games – Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Minecraft.
Basic graphics weren’t an issue because these games were (and are) instantly understandable and highly addictive.
Diminishing returns?
We haven’t yet seen every retro games machine immortalised in a 2020s reboot, but most of the last century’s most iconic platforms have now been remanufactured.
You can buy miniaturised and modernised versions of the C64, PS1, Mega Drive and Game Boy, among many others.
Each comes supplied with dozens (if not hundreds) of the era’s defining games, with more often available as downloadable content.
As such, it’s not entirely clear where the retro gaming phenomenon goes next, other than a simplified and unified online experience.
Today, if you want to play the aforementioned Burnout Revenge on a PC, you have to download an emulator, then download a separate BIOS, then find the title itself.
Any of these stages could be sabotaged by malware, and any PC equipped with antivirus software is likely to raise multiple warning flags about each stage of the installation process.
It would be far simpler if there was a single online directory of retro gaming titles, suitable for use with either a touchscreen, keyboard or old-fashioned joystick.
Until then, standalone consoles and emulators will continue to represent the easiest way to relive a golden age of computer gaming.
