The nostalgia bug

If people ever looked at my gaming collection they may think that I’m a retro gamer and a Nintendo fan. At the moment I have in my collection a NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, PS3, PS4, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PSP Go, Mega drive, Gameboy, Gameboy advance, DS, 3DS and New 3DS. I also think somewhere in my attic is a game gear that is no longer portable as its dependant on the ac adaptor.

I tend to play my SNES the most followed closely by the Xbox One; now at one time if I wanted to buy games for my SNES or any of the other retro consoles I would have to rely on eBay. But over the last couple of years two shops have popped up in my local area that mainly sell retro games and consoles and they are reasonably priced.

These retro consoles over the years have survived several moves and my gamer rage. The NES has had the brunt of my gamer rage. Ninja Gaiden, Contra, TNMT and Battletoads would be the main instigators of my gamer rage. Now this out of my collection is oldest console and still works perfectly fine. On the flip side of the coin I think have had to replace a Blu ruy drive on the PS3 and get a new 360 after it had a mild case of red ring of death.

No matter the length of time I’ve had them I am slightly tempted to put a few of them in a display case and buy a Retron 5 (although I have heard mixed reviews). Now I have pre-ordered the mini NES as it would be cheaper to buy that than it would to buy the games that are on my wish list and now we have the announcement of the anniversary addition of the Mega Drive with Mortal Kombat 1-3 on it which I’m very tempted to order as well. Now I was never a big mega drive fan but my best friend when growing up was and I did like some of the games on it for example Comix Zone, Sonic, Streets of Rage, Shinobi and Golden Axe (I think these 3 was on a single cartridge).

As these are both coming out during September-December period which is a really expensive time in gaming as it is with games like the latest instalment of FIFA, Destiny: Rise of Iron, Skyrim Special Edition, WWE 2K17, Dishonoured 2, Battlefield 1, Titanfall 2, Call Of Duty and Pokémon sun or moon coming out. Like previous years I will have to prioritise what games I’d like to add to my collection and what games I might pick up at a later date.

If I was to make the decision at this very moment in time I would narrow it down to Mini NES, Mega Drive, Skyrim and Pokémon. The reason behind this is simple all of these would provide months and months of entertainment compared to hours of entertainment.

But am I blinded by Nostalgia tinted glasses?

Well honestly I would say 70% of my decision is based on nostalgia but I wouldn’t say I’m being blinded by nostalgia as I work hard for my monthly pay check (those of you who know me stop laughing, I do work hard) I try and justify my purchases as I don’t like to think I’ve wasted my money. I know I will play the Pokémon games over and over again because even though the formula hasn’t changed much over the year it’s still enjoyable; Skyrim I don’t think I actually completed but I did have fun exploring and going off on my own quests and finally the two retro consoles will provide me month and months of entertainment trying to complete games that I played as a child or never got to play and always wanted to. But not only that they will provide entertainment to my friends and family who visit over the holiday period as it will be fun to play some classic couch co-op games.

Another question I find myself asking is how long will it be before Nintendo release a Mini SNES or N64?

Don’t get me wrong I know I would buy them as well but hopefully Nintendo will take note of the criticism of the mini NES not having a SD port, capability of playing cartridges or ability to connect to the Nintendo store and downloading additional games brought off the e-shop to an internal hard drive.

I joke sometimes about Nintendo selling my childhood back to me but I don’t mind when paying the same price for a mini console with 30 games as I would for a brand new game that won’t last me as long and maybe broken at launch.

I limit my nostalgia to the virtual console and pay attention to how much I'm spending in a month. I think it can become a serious and costly addiction. I find myself obsessing about a game, then I buy it and get the rush of excitement, then finally I play it for 20 minutes and forget about it. I did that with street fighter2 turbo for the n3ds VC.. stopped playing wii U, obsessed, bought, played 20 mins.. then right back to wii U as if I had never even bought street fighter 2. Might never play it again. At least it was only $8 though.

Over the past 5 years (or 10 years? i dunno when wii VC started) I've spent probably 500-800 doing this.. have so many gb, gbc, gba, nes, snes, n64, genesis,etc. virtual console games that I couldn't possibly list half of them from memory. If I had bought all them as carts and consoles I would have spent far more and a portion of them probably wouldnt work anymore (if they ever did to begin with).

Suppose I should also note that I got my NES as a kid in 1988, just to put the nostalgia fuel in perspective. These games were the happiest part of my childhood. I still have an n64, gb, gba, ps2, etc. in the closet.. no CRT tv though and I find the handhelds are impossible to play as I'm more used to a n3ds XL with a comfy grip and much bigger screen.

I guess a mini SNES/N64 will happen, but if I had to take a guess, it would be 10+ years from now. At any rate, I tend to be a nostalgic gamer myself, but I do play some of the new stuff. So I'm a little bit of modern, but I keep my retro perspective solid.

But honestly, there are still games from the old games that I tend to avoid with a passion. So in effect I'm a very picky gamer who knows what he likes, and knows what he doesn't.