Lately I've been on a retro kick. It started in early May, with the purchase of an Atari 7800 and a ColecoVision, and has continued on since with a slew of game purchases from eBay, local flea markets, and most recently with the purchase of an Atari 5200. It's a bug that bit not necessarily so suddenly, but persistently, gnawing at my hide like a tireless insect that feeds on addiction. My retro collection wasn't exactly nonexistent before. I already had an NES, SNES, N64, and Genesis, and my latest game spending spree has not left them untouched either. I've added a handful of NES games to my library, a couple SNES games, a few for the Genesis, and I've doubled my meager N64 selection. But I seem to have taken up an even greater interest in pre-3rd generation consoles, to the point of dwarfing all other systems I own with the 8-bit era.
Perhaps there's just something appealing about that age just before the video game market crash, when video games were new. The industry was a completely different place back then, when arcades were the source of all originality, and home consoles were treated merely as a platform to play those games at home. Back then everything was exciting about video games. Just the idea of them, playing games using a computer--it was revolutionary. No longer bound by what could be done mechanically, as had been the case with pinball machines and carnival games, now you could create challenges out of anything, limited only by your imagination and the computing capabilities of the time. Indeed the earliest arcades started off essentially as electronic versions of mechanical cabinet games, such as shooting galleries and driving games. Pong was an interpretation of a tabletop sport, preceded by Tennis for Two as the first attempt at a computer game. Other games were exploring new possibilities, like Space Wars, and Asteroids and Space Invaders after that. Once color came into play in 1979 (a milestone ironically preceded by the decidedly underpowered home console, the Atari VCS), the sky was the limit. Characters could be distinct from one another, recognizable forms could take shape, and games could be flashy and eye-catching, leading to an utter explosion in popularity that surged unabated until 1983.
Home consoles essentially rode that wave for those first several years, borrowing classics from the arcade to drive their popularity with consumers. If a game was successful in the arcade, it could probably be a big hit on a console. But as technology advanced and new consoles started to emerge, people started to realize they were getting the same games over and over again, just with better, more faithful visuals to their arcade counterparts. These were games played for the sheer thrill of improving your score, and part of the excitement of that was lost at home when you didn't have a leaderboard of the top players like in the arcades. These were games you could only really enjoy for short bursts at a time, and there was no real sense of progression or achievement besides the goals you set for yourself or by your friends.
With a slew of rehashes, a dearth of originality, an overwhelming onslaught of games and game systems without much oversight for quality, the games market collapsed under its own weight in North America, taking with it a great many awesome game systems and companies that had yet to realize their true potential. The ColecoVision lasted a measly two years, as did the Vectrex, and the Atari 7800 wasn't even released, instead held off until 1986 when its arcade offerings were no longer adequate in a gaming environment transformed by the Nintendo revolution. Nintendo knew that gamers were craving deeper experiences, and they had games more expansive and varied than any that had been seen outside of the PC. More importantly, they had a true end-game, something rare in games before its generation, and that gave gamers something to shoot for, a reason to keep playing, and a sense of accomplishment and completion when they finally obtained it. People were playing the NES for longer, and with far more ravenous an appetite than they ever played games before.
I was not alive for any of this. I hold no nostalgic memories of this generation. So what is the source of my appeal towards old games? It could be largely aesthetic. The 80s styling of hardware, with its silvery accents, or faux wood grain decals, the sharp rectangular shapes, the molded vent grating on all spare surfaces, the curvy lettering... Maybe it's the bright graphics of the games, the colorful melodies and fluttering sound effects, or the simple and challenging gameplay. The enthusiasm of the era shows in all the various aspects of the arcade classics of the time. Videogames were burgeoning with success and optimism, and hot with anticipation of a promising future.
More than anything I think it's just the feeling of owning a piece of history. Games back then were nothing like games that would define the modern era of the industry, making for a completely different experience that's uniquely separate from what was to come in the future. Sure, the gameplay was shallow and entertaining only for brief periods at a time, but as a collector that's part of their charm. They're perfect to pull out of the closet for a short play session or two (or three or four), and to remember the quaint and simplistic fun of a gaming age many decades gone by.
